Right game

As indie dad, I really STRUGGLE with the hard trade-off between spending more time with my young kid and family versus grinding on my startup.

But @naval’s answer gives me some hope…

Tl;dr - it’s about getting smarter and choosing the right game to play in.

There is a trade-off and I’m sad to tell you that it’s a non-linear trade-off. The more time and effort you invest into wealth creation, the more returns you’re going to get. And it’s non-linear, so someone who puts in 80 hours a week is going to do way better than someone who has 40 hours a week, more than twice as well, probably 4, 5, 10 times as well. It could be the difference between success and failure. So there are no shortcuts here and by taking on a young family and by wanting to spend time with them, you are absolutely making a hard trade-off. I’m not going to take that away or pretend like it doesn’t matter.

However, wealth creation is mostly a byproduct of knowledge creation, of creativity. So this is also hard to do, but I would say get smarter. So how do you get smarter? Surround yourself with smart people, read the right books, have the right ideas, have the right memetics. Anyone who’s started a tech or entrepreneurial company will tell you that the most important choice they made was what to work on and who to work with. Working hard was also important. It’s a leg of the stool, one of the three legs of the stool, but it is not in and of itself enough. The corner grocery store owner is working just as hard as a tech entrepreneur. It’s just a question of what knowledge they have and what they chose to work on. So one way to shortcut the whole system of having to work hard is by increasing your knowledge, which means listening to the right people, reading the right books, surrounding yourself with the right people, entering the right industry. So I would say if you can’t work harder, think harder.

I like his point. “If I can’t work harder” is so true because between consulting, indie hacking, care responsibilities for a kid, keeping marriage alive, household chores, spending time with my elderly parents, I literally have NO TIME. I don’t even have any leisure time now, no hobbies, hardly any self care, no days off. My only leisure now is spending time with my family, mostly on weekends. So there’s no more space to squeeze in more work.

Only choice is to work smarter.

Choosing the right game, finding the right product, the right business, that works for me and my circumstances will be key. Everyone wants to find the right product but the main difference here is what’s right for me and me alone. So it differs from person to person. I would need something that doesn’t require me to have to spend crazy hours working or maintaining/supporting on it for sure… Or require tech that is beyond me or tech stacks I’m unfamiliar with.

And being able to find the right game mean being immersed in the right environment where I can get inputs and inspiration needed for it. Right inputs means right people, right place, right books, right media sources. I think Twitter does that for me. Being in indie Telegram chat groups too. Yet it’s not always external. It’s also how I observe life, see patterns and sense opportunities and ideas.

It’s also not about over-thinking, procrastination or being too smart. That tends to backfire. I think being a little ‘dumb’ and just doing and trying things to see what sticks is also more helpful than smarts.

This race can’t be won by brute force, by throwing time, money, effort or brainpower at it.

It has to be won by street smarts.