I need to stop doing this

I do not plan to start another startup. It feels uncomfortable to say that.

This is a post about not spending your time on the wrong things.

Here's what happened. I spent an hour listing out everything I care about:

• human connection,
• self-education,
• wealth,

and so on. In the process, I surprised myself: there's a much better way to achieve all my goals than starting another startup.

So I'm publicly sharing my framework to help others come to similar realizations: What should you really be working on?

Perhaps you'll conclude that you should pursue startups. They're wonderful, but know why you're doing them.

Or perhaps—like me—you'll realize you've chased an outdated dream that made more sense in the past. That's the tragedy: I could have done this exercise three years ago and saved precious time. We all could, but we universally lack the discipline to halt our inertia to ask, Should I still be doing what I'm doing?

It hurts to ask this. But it changes your approach to everything.

The afternoon that changed my trajectory

To design my framework, I took pen to paper and listed all the values I cared about. My goal was to articulate how I subconsciously assess the value of a project.

These are the values I identified:

• Knowledge — Do you become more knowledgeable and skilled from it?
• Adventure — Do you accrue novel, memorable experiences?
• ‍Fame — Do you build an audience you can later leverage?
• ‍Power — Do you acquire resources and connections?
• Money — Do you increase your financial wealth?