Values

9 lines · 8 traits

First things first

Nothing starts by itself

What it costs

03
Big pain, big gain.
04
Every day you spend poor is a day you'll spend rich. To grow, you have to suffer. Uncommon among the uncommon.
05
Days off? One day, but not today. Taking one is choosing to be a spectator of your own life instead of a player. On your worst day you still have to perform at your best, because the competition is you at your best.

Who you're actually racing

06
Every second you waste is a second someone else uses to catch up. But don't lie to yourself: this isn't against them. It's a race against you.
07
Don't let your mind and emotions control your body. You're not tired. Your mind just tells your body that it feels tired.

What you owe

08
You were given time and focus as a talent. The more you fuck around, the more you find out.
Matthew 25:14-30, the Parable of the Talents — “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.”
09
Success is never owned. It is only rented, and rent is due every day.

* the one that matters most

How I'm wired

01
Nobody assigns me the hours. There's no grade for what I ship at 11pm and I'd do it whether or not anyone paid me, which is the only reason I got good enough for anyone to pay me.
“Nobody tells me to build at 11pm and there's no grade for it.”
02
I don't read a rejection as final. I got turned down for something I wanted, replied asking what it would take, and got the meeting instead. A no is usually a capacity problem or a missing piece, and both of those are questions someone can actually answer.
“I didn't think it was a no forever. I asked what it would take.”
03
My biggest failure was choosing the comfortable work and calling it strategy. I can see that pattern while it's happening now. When I catch myself starting a new project instead of promoting the last one, I stop and ask what I'm avoiding.
“Preparing felt like progress, so I chose the comfortable work and called it strategy.”
04
I'd rather say the real number than the impressive one. If a tool has one user, I say one user. Everything on this site is checkable, and the things that are shipped but not marketed yet are labelled as shipped but not marketed yet.
“Age is the first thing people bring up and the last thing they mention after we start.”

How I work

05
A year ago I couldn't write a line of code. Since then: native iOS in Swift, a Python library on PyPI, CLI tools on npm, servers I run myself. Nobody taught me any of it. The gap between not knowing something and shipping with it is the thing I've spent the most time shortening.
“Hard doesn't mean unreachable. It means it takes longer and most people quit.”
06
I don't want the wrapper version. I went back and learned machine learning from the fundamentals because I got tired of shipping AI on top of models I couldn't explain.
“I never run a line of code I can't explain.”
07
My production infrastructure is two secondhand machines in my room. I had no cloud budget, so I learned deployment and networking by breaking them at 2am with nobody to escalate to.
“The homelab is where I learn without a bill attached.”
08
I'll give you the real timeline instead of the one you want to hear. It costs me the occasional project. It's cheaper than the alternative.
“I'd rather you have the option than the dependency.”