Maintaining a Sense of Urgency | Hacker News Reader

Maintaining a Sense of Urgency

blog.jabbik.com

25 pointsecommercematt13 comments

In my experience most of us only maintain a sense of urgency over time out of fear. That's certainly the basis of most of this advice. I've always been somewhat conflicted about using fear to motivate myself and others. I feel almost guilty that it's the best tool I've found. I feel much better about the work I do out of pure excitement, but most of the time after the initial excitement wears off, I find it's fear of failing that keeps me going strong.

And that's why your startup needs an enemy. Otherwise you will have to be the one everyone is fearful of.

6) Leave your job and move to San Francisco to work on your startup full time.

Like he said, don't treat it like a hobby. I've found that moving has really focused my mind and put my efforts in another orbit.

This has been true for me as well. Moving was completely necessary for me to really get things rolling with Jabbik.

Urgency is the key to driving business deals. If there's isn't any, everyone adopts a "wait and see" stance.

Excellent read. There is a lot of great advice in this post, especially the note about urgency at the end.

Huh. A coincidence that this showed up today, right after I posted this:

http://www.gmathacks.com/gmat-verbal-bible/coming-soon-the-g...

Great advice. I especially like:

2) Spend A Lot More Time Building Something Than You Spend Thinking About, Reflecting On, And Analyzing Your Ideas.

It's so much easier to think about something than to do it.

I would like to add a complimentary point: "You are what you measure."

An honest results focused to-do list with daily/weekly reflection does wonders.

In some situations that can mean that thinking about something is better than doing it. Like if you can dismiss a plan by thinking about it, you have wasted less energy than if you execute the plan and fail.

Maybe. Maybe not. I know it seems counterintuitive, but sometimes it works out better when you build something you never needed in the first place. At least you have a "bird in the hand".

This advice struck me particularly hard because I have done both. I have laid out the most fantastic apps with pencil and paper. OTOH, things never really became crystal clear until I actually built it.

It is better rephrased as "Spend a lot more time thinking by building than thinking by reflecting on and analyzing your ideas."

Analyzing = Passive thinking.

Building = Active thinking.

I disagree.

Startups succeed and fail for many reasons. For example, lot of startups fail simply because the idea doesn't work, not execution. Read the "black swan" book, the single most important reason for failure or success is actually luck. Keep tinkering with things, and you may get lucky.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com