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Over the past year and a half, I've really let both my health and social life slip from under me because I put my startup above all else. And lately it's really been catching up to me. For the past month or two, I haven't been able to get much done. I can't focus anymore and it takes me a week to get something done because I'm tired of looking at my screen at the same few hundreds (thousands?) of lines of code. I've known for a while that this is a result of eating poorly, lack of daily exercise, and lack of social life; but I kept telling myself to just get the startup done first and everything will turn around.

Now I'm finally realizing that I'm going to have to shift my priorities and make every decision the best one, which includes the simplest things like what I eat or what time I go to sleep and wake up... or the startup won't succeed. At some point, I seemed to reach a breaking point where my level of happiness began to directly reflect on the quality of my work on my startup. I won't stop until I succeed though. It's now just a matter of making all the right decisions, I think, which includes prioritizing my health and happiness over my work.

This is false.

Nothing bothers me more than people making statements as if they are fact, especially with no evidence whatsoever.

I am living evidence of the opposite of your statement.

I played in a band professionally for a few years, and got to learn a few sociopaths very well: my ex-bandmates, of course, some worse than others. There came a point where I could not idly stand by while they manipulated and harmed unknowing people day after day. Not all of it was terrible but it really adds up after a while.

So I decided to leave the band, and the night before the last show on a tour, I let everyone in the band know exactly what I thought of them; and after I left, I told all of their friends and some fans who wanted to know why I left what they had been doing to people.

There was no fear of retaliation. And to this day, a year and a half later, no attempt at retaliation has been made.

I'm not aggressive, but I am dominant. Aggressiveness, sociopathy, and dominance do not go hand in hand.

My old band has accomplished nothing since I left, and I bet they've learned a little something from the experience. We may not be able to lynch sociopaths anymore, but we can sure teach them lessons if we use our brains and refuse to put up with it. Calling them out on any and every occasion is probably the best thing one can do.

This whole SOPA thing - or variations thereof - will only be small hiccup in the grand scheme of things. The advancement of technology and its ensuing freedom will trump any current setbacks. When the older generations move on and those who have grown up with the power of technology at their fingertips are in power, who have relatively open minds and understand the freedoms that technology provides, I think we'll really see some accelerated progression in both tech and overall quality of life for everyone.

We should definitely continue to try to pave the way for future generations and reduce these setbacks, but I believe the fact still remains that freedom through technology is inevitable. It may take another couple of centuries of dealing with ignorant politicians, general closed-mindedness, and corporation unwillingness to innovate and change with the times... but we'll get there. I just wish we could live to see it.

I'm afraid future generations won't appreciate it like we would.

I've been grouped with people who always try to find a reason for something not to work. Their worldview seems very limited in that they never push the status quo; they don't seem to look very far into the future and they can't seem to recognize what's possible with some hard work. Maybe they are afraid to step outside of their comfort zone. They would probably call themselves realists. Coincidentally enough, through my personal experience, I've found that these types of people tend to be "control freaks". (Sorry for lack of a better word.) There's definitely some correlation between trying to control situations and only attempting what is a sure thing.

I've also been grouped with people who, like me, are constantly trying to do things differently for the better. For every idea, they try to figure out how and why it will work, if it isn't immediately obvious; but if they don't also take time to determine whether or not it is the best solution, it could be detrimental in the long run. This is where the qualities of each person within the group becomes important. Not everyone can find the balance between dreams and reality; more often than not people lean towards one side so they need to be paired with someone on the other.

Too many realists in a group and you'll see little to no innovation. Too many dreamers in a group and you may never see the project's completion. Although I personally would put my money on the latter any day.

But if one person can find that balance by themselves, I think that's when creativity (and sometimes productivity) exceeds that of a group.

I do wish the test drive worked though. It'd be great to be able to really test it out in its original form!

PG, if you don't mind me asking a couple of questions (or point me to the answers if they are already available elsewhere)... how many man hours do you think went into the project (MVP and maintenance)? And how did you come to start developing it? Was it an original idea at the time or were you aware of other online store builders and decided you could do a better job? When did it all start?

And I'm reminded of times in the past where I've unintentionally solved a problem in software engineering through a ridiculously complicated method where there was actually a much simpler solution unapparent to me. At the time, it wasn't funny; but looking back now, it certainly is.

I wonder how many times it took him to get it to work right, especially with the hamster likely being the most unpredictable component of the system.

http://loggur.com

I mean I guess it looks good. I just wish "designers" would try something else for a change. It gets kind of old. Trying something else and making it look good (and function well), in my eyes, is what separates a great designer from the good.

When the majority of the human population understands technology and its ever-changing limits, the fear and stigma towards artificial intelligence comparable to our own will subside and only then will sentient robots be accepted.

It's human nature to fear the unknown. It's gotten us to where we are today. But I think there comes a point in our timeline where we overcome all fear with our ability to understand and predict. Ironically enough, this will probably require the advancement of (and potentially cooperation with) A.I.

I've been thinking about finding a nearby place to swim regularly but the only place nearby is the YMCA, and from what I recall as a kid, the pool isn't exactly clean.

As for yoga, I've done P90X a couple of times and for those that don't know, according to Tony Horton, yoga's an essential part of working out. But something about it never really sat right with me, and reading the other comments here has helped me pinpoint why. When I would do yoga, the first few times I'd make it through the entire hour and a half (first 45 minutes were various Ashtanga Vinyasa sequences; last 45 minutes were balances/stretches) and the last half always made me really uncomfortable. I told myself it would get better once I got used to it, but after a few weeks it didn't get any less uncomfortable so I just stopped doing the stretches/balances; and if anything, I'd bet this this actually helped with my overall fitness. When I was balancing on my neck/shoulders and putting my legs behind me, I remember thinking every time, "How can this possibly be good for me?" Lo and behold, I wasn't alone. These days when I do yoga, I just do my own thing (whatever feels natural) and it seems to work pretty well because I usually have sweat dripping off of me by the end.

Listen to your body, folks!

And just out of curiosity, how old are you?

I've recognized the effects this has on my own brain, and you're absolutely right (for me, at least). And it makes me wonder about the origins of this particular chemical pattern, and how it came to be.

Perhaps it's some kind of evolutionary mechanism: back in the hunter/gatherer days, when food was scarce, those who had the particular genome to trigger the production of just the right set of chemicals for brain plasticity on an empty stomach were better able to form the neural pathways required for hunting and gathering food, thus able to survive.

Very insightful. That’s why the true entrepreneurs are considered crazy.

Like other entrepreneurs, I've always thought outside the box with pretty much everything... always questioning the why, the how, and what can be done to make improvements. Or sometimes I even gravitate towards seemingly outlandish ideas about the nature of the universe... things like that.

I can't count the number of times people have either looked at me like I'm crazy or just blatantly said, "Dude, you're insane." And it's hard to respond with something like, "Don't you notice that pattern throughout history? Every true innovator was considered crazy in their time!" without seeming like an egotistical prick, so I just respond instead with something like, "Yeah you're probably right." Even so, I've convinced myself that a large ego might even be required to believe that you can do something great enough to change the world for the better. And at this moment, I wonder, why is it that we're raised to believe that a large ego is a bad thing? Surely, tying ones ego to productive aspects of life can't be a bad thing as long as it is in moderation and no others are harmed in the process.

But anyway, thanks fellow hackers and entrepreneurs for helping me feel like I'm not so alone in my "craziness" after all!

But in all seriousness, I'm curious as to how/why you and the grandparent think that funding his or another comic's next venture would be more beneficial to the world as whole than donating it to charity. To have an opportunity to improve the lives of thousands, possibly millions, but ignore it and focus on yourself is extremely selfish; and I hope there aren't many people out there who would do such a thing.

You might argue that his investments in future ventures might return more money to donate than he originally would have, but that would be assuming that Louis CK doesn't already have the finances for that; and I assure you, he either does or he can obtain it with minimal effort.

I should note that a number of things are currently disabled on the site (like the mobile version and invite referrals), but the current information on the site should give an idea where Loggur's headed. A few things are disabled because just last week I decided to convert the entire backend to Node, mainly for Socket.io... because the idea is to let users edit and use apps together in real time... probably using a turn-based system or variations thereof. I was going to wait until after beta release to do this but decided it would probably save a lot of time and effort in the long run to knock it out while the code base is relatively small.

And I actually just now (re)hacked together the invitation system right after I saw your comment. Gotta seize the opportunity, even if it only means another 5-10 sign-ups! The plan was to wait until after the app builder is complete and use Loggur to build Loggur (i.e., recreate the majority of the current site), as it wouldn't take long at all; but the opportunity came up to do a shameless plug.

And I thought I was done coding for the day!

Edit: Never mind. I filled out another one to send to my dog (lol) and got the message: "Santa can't call that number right now because Dudley is probably sleeping. Please try again after 8am in their time zone." I guess I'll leave the original tab open for a few hours.

For what it's worth, I don't live in California (yet) and I don't presently use any social networks.

Edit: Wait I think I get what you're saying. I had just assumed the GP had no boss so it didn't make any sense.

I'm not claiming that my startup in particular will be it, but something like it. Just saying this probably puts me in the category of "just another young whipper snapper who aspires to be the next Zuck"... but I have no desire to do anything like Facebook or Google or intentionally copy any particular model. I just want to do what works (well).

Loggur is clearly an infant at this point and I'm sure the initial impression given by its current presentation of the idea doesn't exactly scream "innovation" or "the next big thing"... but bear with me. I'm starting off relatively simple and will iterate as I get feedback (as is expected of any startup) but the general end result, as I envision it, will essentially be an extremely wide variety of user-editable tools specific to each user and/or community, from communication to productivity and automation - or both. I realize that the current presentation is pretty vague, but that will change after iteration and solid examples. The current descriptions are based on an alpha version which I put together earlier this year to prove the concept.