Build your project graveyard
Edition #075
Hey friends, happy Sunday — I hope you've had a fantastic week!
No updates this week as I've been busy working away on CreatorStory, YouTube video and client work so let's get straight into the Filter!
One Lesson
Build your project graveyard
Creators and entrepreneurs should have 1 goal: to keep playing the game.
See we all want instant success and ideally we don’t want to work too hard for it. We see others building successful companies and living lifestyles we dream about.
But we’re reluctant to fail, especially in public.
Taking risks is demonised by society but by ‘playing it safe’ you never really begin playing.
As Derek Sivers says “The most valuable real estate in the world is the graveyard. There lie millions of half-written books, ideas never launched, and talents never developed. Most people die with everything still inside of them.”
To avoid taking your talents to the graveyard you need to build your own project graveyard.
Your project graveyard is the list of projects that you built, learned from, but ultimately stopped working on because they didn’t quite work.
All successful creators and entrepreneurs have a project graveyard but you typically don’t notice because of survivorship bias.
People don’t talk about everything that failed because, well it failed. Instead they focus on the things that are working, making it look like everyone else is instantly successful.
But take Pieter Levels for example, he currently does over $2m+ in revenue per year as a solo founder with a few contractors. If you follow Pieter on Twitter you’d see how well his companies like Nomadlist, Remoteok and Rebase are doing but you wouldn’t see the 70 other projects in his project graveyard because they have been laid to rest.
Your project graveyard is a badge of honour, it’s the school of entrepreneurship, where you learn the skills to make the next project a success.
Here’s my project graveyard, what does yours look like?
Two Ideas
I.
Anticipated emotions guide your decision-making.
With every decision, you anticipate the pain or pleasure that might happen as a result.
Bad decisions usually hijack your anticipated emotions because they have short feedback loops.
Eat the cookie → Instant dopamine hit
II.
Self-control is easy when you avoid environments that require it.
Three Favourite Finds
Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction: I didn’t realise how important dopamine is to our lives, it determines things like our mood, motivation and movement. In this podcast Andrew Huberman explains how we can use dopamine to our advantage to feel and perform better in our daily lives.
Create for Just One Hour Each Day : Everyone would benefit from finding 1 hour a day to create things. This post shares some interesting ways to make creativity a habit that sticks.
“If you spend just one hour creating something, you’re ahead of most people out there. In a world where the current of consumption is all-consuming, even a bit of creative friction goes a long way.”
The Definition of Success Is Autonomy: I must have shared this article 3+ times now because I keep coming back to it. Autonomy is success, the ability to choose what you do, when you do it and for how long is all you need to live a ‘successful’ life.
End note
The Sunday Filter relies on word of mouth to reach more people, if you’re enjoying the newsletter I’d really appreciate you sending it to a friend or sharing on Twitter.
Have a fantastic week!
- Stephen