#42 - That's the Best I Can Do

It’s my 28th birthday, and I feel lost.

Up until three weeks ago, I was in Boston, juggling my startup around the edges of my schedule, while holding down a full-time job at Boston Dynamics and trying to maintain a healthy relationship with my girlfriend.

Now I’m in Vancouver, full-time on my startup alongside my cofounders, and my partner’s in LA. My daily schedule is wide-open with few distractions. You'd think I'd be pumping out new features and fixes daily.

But strangely, I feel less momentum on my startup here than I did back in Boston. I'm not moving the ball forward nearly as fast as I'd hoped.

Honestly, I've put very little of this newfound time into the startup itself. Instead, most of the incremental time has gone towards upgrading my Shopify app and doubling down on writing and filming content.

And I'm not even sure why I’m doing those other things. All I know is, I always do this. When I find extra time, I immediately spread it thin across multiple projects instead of doubling down on the one or two things that really matter.

So this morning, on my 28th, I went to a cafe to figure things out.

Sitting here, fidgeting with my coffee cup, I recalled something from The Right Call—a book by sports journalist Sally Jenkins.

I couldn't dig up the exact quote, but I found an interview with her from the Washington Post where she made the same powerful point:

[People are] afraid to say, "That's the best I can do."

And it's an inhibitor, that instinct to say, "I'm going to hold back a little bit because I don't want to disappoint myself, and I don't want to have to say, oh, I failed." And I think the great ones, that's the real separator there.

Champions are willing to break their own hearts. They really are, and that's the best that I can describe it.

You know, I see so many people who feign nonchalance about something, and I certainly did that earlier in my career, because if you feel like, well, I don't care that much about this, then you don't have to disappoint yourself, and you don't disappoint other people…

But if you go about it with… "unembarrassed intensity," if you commit to doing that, you can really surprise yourself.

— Sally Jenkins

I don't pick stocks. All my money is in index funds. I always diversify.

And while diversification might be smart for money, it’s terrible for time.

I need to stop hedging my bets and fully commit to my startup. No matter what happens over these next few months, I want to look back at this summer and know without hesitation:

“That was the best I could do.”

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See you next week — Rayhan