Ask HN: Breakfree 101 for the Salaryman | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Breakfree 101 for the Salaryman

2 pointsmomotomo4 comments

I notice a lot of submissions on Ask with small slices of this - quit my job, kicking off a product, maintaining a side project etc.

However, if you had to do a shortlist of suggestions, books, sites, materials to absorb to get in the right frame for this - what would the top entires be?

This is in the context of myself (and a good few people I know), who seem to have a decent set of technical or managerial talents, no real ties (under thirty, no family, no debt), but don't seem to have the understanding that they are well positioned to make the jump into something self-started.

There's obviously a large community of motivated and talented people here, but a few of us reading often have that sensation that you're performing at levels of risk and ambition that seem quite superhuman!

TL;DR: Whats the mandatory reading for a wage slave looking to wake up and leverage opportunity?

A lot of it has nothing to do with your practical ability to quit your job and start a company, or with the genuine risks involved (which often turn out to be very low... What's the worst that can happen? Your startup fails and you have to get a job?). A lot - perhaps most - of it has to do with your confidence in yourself. Or to put it another way your ability to push fear of failure (and ultimately fear of what others think) out of the way. To that end, I recommend immersing yourself in true stories of people who (a) have overcome fear, (b) have not let fear stand in their way or (c) don't seem to have fear. Two books that come to mind are The 50th Law (about hip hop artist 50 cent) by Robert Greene and How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis (don't worry it's NOT a self-help book but the autobiography of one of Britain's richest men).

The 50 cent one is interesting. I've always been completely fascinated by the attitude of a lot of people that do well in Hip Hop - because it does seem to be pure raw determination to succeed in a lot of cases.

I highly, highly recommend it. The basic thesis is that fearlessness is, if not the key, then one of the keys to 50 cent's success. The reference to '50th law' is also a nod to Robert Greene's book, The 48 Laws of Power.

Excellent, thank you! Your original reply was a good insight too. I'm a pretty analytical guy, so they idea of mindset and soft skills coming into play has always been a bit of a blindspot.

Always assumed you could always build X to solve Y, etc etc.

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