It’s about being, not having
Since I was 14, I was determined to be a great singer. But my pitch was bad, my tone was bad, and everyone said I was just not a singer.
For 11 years, I took voice lessons, and practiced at least an hour a day. I was always the lead singer of my band, doing a few shows a week, getting as much real-world experience as possible. The whole time, people kept telling me I was just not a singer — that I should give it up and find a real singer.
When I was 25, I recorded my first album. My mentor heard it and said, “Derek, you’re just not a singer. You really need to stop trying. Admit you’re a songwriter, and find a real singer.” But I was unfazed. I knew I just had more work to do.
At 28, I started noticing that my voice was getting good! I recorded a few new songs, and for the first time, I really liked the vocals!
At 29, I had done it. After 15 years of practice, and about a thousand live shows, I was finally a very good singer, at least by my own standards. (Someone who heard me for the first time then said, “Singing is a gift you’re either born with or you’re not. You’re lucky. You were born with it!”)
Point is: It’s not that I wanted to get it done and have good vocals. It’s that I wanted to be a great singer.
Same with being a producer: I wanted to record my album myself, to learn recording-studio engineering and production, because I thought that would be a really rewarding and empowering thing to know how to do — like building your own house.
Friends and mentors said that was ridiculous, that I should just hire a great engineer, producer, and studio. Doing everything myself might take years, whereas I could have it all done in a few weeks if I just hired someone good.
I took the few years to learn it myself, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. For the next few years, I did all the production and engineering on a few friends’ albums, too. Now it’s something I know how to do, and it feels great.
Same with being a programmer: When I started CD Baby, I knew only some basic HTML, no programming. But as the site grew, basic HTML wouldn’t do it anymore. My tech friends told me I had to make a server-side database-driven automated system.
Since I couldn’t afford to hire a programmer, that meant I had to learn it myself. I went to the bookstore and got a book on PHP and MySQL programming. It was the slow road, but I loved it! Like being in the recording studio, it was wonderful to learn how to make the technology do what I wanted and not be a mystery. And it was nice to be self-sufficient.
As the company grew, everyone was surprised that I still did all the programming myself. But for an online business, outsourcing the programming would be like a band outsourcing the songwriting!
This wasn’t just my business — this was my creation! This wasn’t like mowing lawns — this was like writing songs!
In the last few years, my employees were mad that new features were not being added as fast as they wanted, because I insisted on doing all the programming myself. They said we were losing millions of dollars in business because we didn’t have certain features.
But that was OK with me. I loved the process. I was happy.
When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won’t understand. They’ll assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way.
But that’s forgetting about the joy of learning and doing.
Yes, it may take longer. Yes, it may be inefficient. Yes, it may even cost you millions of dollars in lost opportunities because your business is growing slower because you’re insisting on doing something yourself.
But the whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! That’s it!
You might get bigger faster and make millions if you outsourced everything to the experts. But what’s the point of getting bigger and making millions? To be happy, right?
In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have.
To have something (a finished recording, a business, or millions of dollars) is the means, not the end.
To be something (a good singer, a skilled entrepreneur, or just plain happy) is the real point.
When you sign up to run a marathon, you don’t want a taxi to take you to the finish line.
I would add that it's also a joy to SAY to yourself that you are being something. This is partly why evening classes give certificates to take home, and judo gives coloured belts.
I add this comment because family therapist Virginia Satir once observed that many families never celebrate anything... including accomplishments. Every once in a while I list the things I can now do, things society won't give me any certificate for, but that I deserve to feel good about... but are easy to forget.
Examples? There is an expressway through my city that many locals avoid from year to year. I no longer white knuckle it. I can drive a stick shift, ( I am self taught) a skill that is rare in North America. After I painstakingly worked through two books of composition exercises I went wow! I can sling words! But it is so easy to forget having those skills and that joy. Now I can say (besides other stuff) I am a manual shift driver and a wordsmith. Hurray!
Inspiring and thought provoking
My first read, I love this - so empowering n refreshing! My second read, still love it AND (or but :D) perhaps we can still learn new skills and make use of it to something else with our own pace and “delegate” what urgent and necessary to others who could get it done more effectively this time. In the case of specific new feature requests, isn’t it for the benefit of the customers (which then result in business profit) and outsourcing the coding might be an option to serve them better?
I've given this thought a lot of time over the last 2 months.
I have a good business that I have fallen out of love with and I've been able to identify that it's because I gave up the things I actually like doing.
So now I'm back to programming rather then trying to be "big big big".
You're a mentor of mine Derek, thank you for all of your help over the years.
This sentiment is the opposite of popular "80/20" thinking, which is the notion that you should focus what you're great at and ignore all the rest. (The book Who Not How is an extension of this.)
Except it's also not the opposite, because if your goals are learning and development and a sense of mastery, then those goals are your "vital few."
I think some people are happier with having the thing rather than doing it, so Derek's lifestyle won't make sense to them.
(The folks over at "Sparketype" contrast the enjoyment of doing a thing with the enjoyment of having a thing. According to their classification system, different people prefer a different mix.)
Or maybe it's a matter of trade-offs: you want to do make some things yourself and enjoy the satisfaction of mastery ...
... but for other things, like, say repairing your car, you care a bit more about the utility of the finished product than the utility of diving into an auto manual yourself, *even if* you'd find satisfaction getting your hands dirty. There are only so many hours in the day, neh?
But there are other people -- like myself, I suspect and perhaps J M above -- who are attracted to Derek's way of living but have convinced themselves that the *right* thing to do is specialize and so achieve *big* goals.
I've driven myself crazy at times obsessing over "What's my 80/20? I should be focusing only on what I'm great at!" Misery.
I too am a songwriter and I suck at recording my songs. I've resisted the urge to learn more about recording in part because the *smart* thing to do is to find someone really good at it. And that might be the way to go, because I'm not sure if it will be personally worth the time.
But in general, the more I'm able to do, the better I feel about myself.
I really needed to read this tonight. Thank you!
Profound and refreshing.
At its essence - it seems a recommendation for more of an internal focus on the mental state you want to spend your time in, rather than chasing a finish line which ultimately is probably derived from more of an external focus on how you may be perceived. Optimizing for what you think vs. what you think they think.
How much of happiness is from feeling like you identify with the person you want to be vs. feeling more agency over what you get to think about? Or are these effectively one and the same?
If your experience is the cumulative collection of thoughts you have throughout life - are you essentially solving for maximizing the cumulative time you get to spend thinking about what you consider to be most meaningful?
I really like this piece.
I notice it was written before the explosion in AI today.
I imagine that this still strongly resonates for you, that you may even wish to double down and say that with everything going on with AI right now, it's more important than ever before.
I wonder if we need to sort all the things in our lives into 2 (or more?) buckets:
1. The ones for which this still holds true
2. The ones for which we need to put this feeling aside and give it to the agent.
Or was that always implied - that this approach is for things that you feel really strongly about?
Dear Derek
I’ve read your posts periodically over the last - at a guess - 20+ years
I think this is the best thing you wrote - that I have read .
“But the whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! That’s it!”
I like that .
Regards pauldor
WoW! This is a masterpiece for the new AI era!
I loved creating products for Apple platforms on my own. Over the last few months, since January actually, I started integrating AI into my process, and then it turned into vibe coding some of my work.
And I loved it at first. It was amazing what I could do with it, etc. But in the end, I did not really enjoy the release of a new major version of one of my products. The product is great, and I love the features I vibe coded, but at the end of the day, I wasn't involved in the full process of creating it...
Then, since mid-July, I've started creating my own things again. I ask AI about certain things I don't know (like I used to read Stack Overflow in the past), and then I implement them myself, with my hand and my reflexion. And it's great! I love that!
Even better, with a small model like Luna on low effort, it can reply very quickly, in about 5 seconds, so I don't lose my flow state.
It's great to read this again, along with your post about No AI. It makes me feel like, "I'm not alone." Thanks for writing these things. It feels like we need them.
I feel like I'm the anti-thesis of this post. Firing up gazillion Codex threads and CLIs to get it all done. I know - to what end?! Make a few thousand dollars more.
I wish I had your understanding, Derek!