The winding climb of making something that matters to you and the world

By @readwithai - Creating tools for reading and agency with Obsidian. Sharing my work and thoughts along the way.

So what I am doing here will not exactly be a direct path. Reality is not direct. I want to make things that I consider valuable, that others value, that others are willing to pay money for, and that change the world in a way that I want to, and that I have control over what I do, and in a way I consider moral, while espousing the values that I value and want to exist in the world

That is perhaps a tall order so one can expect some “pivoting”. Additionally, along the way I will have to not be seduced by other gods. It is can be terribly easy to replace what you are trying to do with another goals.

False Gods

Mammon The needs of Entrepreneurship are read. And much that people have to write about it is true. You need to provide value, you need to demonstrate value, you need to be done, you need to interact with the psychology of people’s problems and solve them. You need to respect what people care about, and sometimes people care about things that you don’t like status, and control, and making money.

But this should be secondary to making the thing that you want to make. And you need to accept some trade offs. Sometimes you don’t need to help people do things that you don’t like even if they will pay you for it.

Attention Perhaps a subclass of Mammon, but if you want people to use them you need to get their attention. Much marketing is manipulative and immoral. But my hope is that it possible to get attention in a way that is not manipulative, that is not insincer and that makes people happy.

Technical competence Perhaps it is telling that I don’t have the same moral distaste for this that I do for “attention” and “mammon” - indicating that this is a personal vice. Technical competence is a valuable thing. For employees in business it is often all they seek.

Creating Ideas Ideas are valuable, I like ideas. People in academia pruduce and sell good ideas. But I am not selling ideas here. I want to make things that people use that pepole are valuable. Along the way there will be lots of ideas, and Iwill share them because that is a good thing to do and that is how people to get to know you and care about what you have to say.

Building for myself It is highly tempting to make tools for yourself. In a sense, if you using something at least you have one user who you know about. I dislike much of the low value, non-technical, “simplest use only” dross that the “software that delights because I want to follow a bandwagon” crowd produces. But at some level tools are for other people and you have to respect what they want to do. Not everyone, but some people.

Social conformity Groups of people want to do things, they want to make you do things. The things they want you to do can often replace the thing that you should do.

There are others…

Rock climbing

Part of what I am going to have to do here is a degree of “rock climbing”. A sequence of goals that provide me with the resources I need attention, motivation and income stream to continue development while not become divorced from the goal you want to achieve.

In this form of “multi-dimensional rock climb” every step you take is a trade off between diluting what you want to do and potentially being a more direct path to your requirements.