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Comment by jswinghammer | Hacker News Reader

A few observations:

- Your post is a little judgmental of the people living this area. 9-5 jobs are nothing to be ashamed of and wanting to watch TV after a hard day isn't necessarily a fault. If I were a business leader in this area I'm not sure I'd be interested in working to fix this if such a thing is even possible or desirable.

- What is your skillset? Are you a programmer? If so then you should be able to find work anywhere, you could work remotely, or start a business.

Doing something out of guilt is nothing I'd ever recommend. If you were doing this out of love then maybe this might make sense.

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1) Re: 9-5 - Thanks for catching that. My frustration came through on that a bit. I changed the wording.

2) Re: skills - I do everything but program. And by everything I mean everything - funding, prod dev, marketing, sales, operations, strategy, etc.

Great point about not doing something driven by guilt. Thanks for your feedback.

Is it possible that you actually can't really do those things if your startup failed? In other words, is it possible you're representing having skills that you don't actually have? (It reads to me as if you have a willingness to practice those skills, though they aren't well developed.) Maybe it's time to honestly evaluate where you're at and invest some time into personal growth and development. You will reduce cognitive dissonance and through surrender to the mastery process some of your depression will be ameliorated.

Really good point, how do I go about achieving this? I'd like to believe that I have the skills, insights, strength, and endurance for all these things, but yet, I have to accept the reality that so far it has gotten me nothing. I'm open to change/learning - if my family weren't an issue I'd go anywhere in the world to learn, reboot, start over, grow, etc.

Important edit: I recommend buying books if you can afford it. Many reasons for this. One, it's fun to receive packages in the mail. I get a rush every time I rip a package open. Two, it's good for the ego. It helps you keep perspective on how much you've been reading. Three, you can underline the books as you read them, this can be VERY helpful. Unfortunately I do not recommend loaning books to friends, you will never get them back.

Awesome! You can start by reading 1 book a week, which is an aggressive but doable goal. To some it may not sound like much but if you have not been making a habit of reading regularly, it will take you a while to get back into it. In a year you will have read 52 books. I am of the belief that compound interest is most effective when you have staggering sums of money. It is second most effective when it comes to knowledge.

Amazon will sell you books for cheap, but there are many business classics that will probably be available at the local library. I bet your local library will at least have one of these seven books:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

{anything} by Seth Godin

Positioning by Al Ries

Getting Things Done by David Allen

21 Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell

Reading books can be a useful starting point, but by themselves they won't get you those skills. They're called skills for a reason: you have to practice them.

I'll repeat the advice out of one of Peter Drucker's books: the only way to really improve in life is to feed back from actions to results. Try to do something. When you fail (and you probably will, the first time), take an honest look at your performance, and identify one thing that you could've done better. Then do it again, but this time do that one thing differently. Did you get better results? If so, find something else you could've done better, and practice that next. If not, do it differently again, and measure the results. Repeat until you're doing everything awesomely. You have now mastered the skill.

I am still working at finding the right process for absorbing information and integrating it into habit.

How's life at Google?

You do realize that startups fail for any number of reasons. Founder's not having all the necessary skills may be a contributing factor, but I would be willing to wager quite a bit that it is not a leading cause.

"Sales fixes everything" - Guy Kawasaki

I was going to recommend that living with the parents might free up some time to hack out a new idea, but I see you aren't a developer. As such, I'll suggest a non-programming idea: rebuild the old version of Techcrunch. Write a blog about cool startups. Actually use the products, provide screenshots and reviews. Don't write about Apple,Google,Facebook,Twitter, or funding rounds greater than 1 million. I promise you'll have at least 1 reader ;)

Why not take the time to learn to hack? What with all the internet resources out there, IRC, mailing lists, and whatnot, it doesn't really matter where you are, and some 'peace and quiet' would be good for the concentration you'll need.

At that point, maybe you can have a go at doing something along the lines of "Start Small, Stay Small":

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YH9MMI?ie=UTF8&tag=...

The idea being that with a niche product, it's not going to be an all-or-nothing venture, and you'll be able to run it just fine from wherever you are - no need to be somewhere where startups are 'hip' and you can recruit 30 people after you get your millions in funding.

Move close in but not with your parents, get a job, and learn programming -- it's very empowering. I had one of my friends over that is doing just that. Six months back when he started he was quite bleak, but now he's close to $0, and on a roll. He seemed not tense for the first time since I've known him.

What is the best way to go about starting to learn programming if you do work a 9-5? I am finishing school and paying for a website to be designed right now but would love to learn more...

The things I have done are to start a side project or find something at work I can write a program to help with.

practice, practice, practice

don't just read, but write too

Think of something simple you'd like to make and learn whatever you need to make it. Perhaps a small but useful widget for your website. Attachment to a creative vision can motivate you in a way that tutorials and classes cannot.

I lost my job in PR earlier this year and used the several months of non-employment to laser focus on becoming a professional programmer. I got my first job doing so last month.

If you don't know who you are professionally, it's probably because your heart isn't in whatever it is you do. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and learn to program.

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