Self-Doubt & The Desire to Predict The Future

Everyone has self-doubt but we have something better, Hope.

Recently I announced my plans to start a new company in public. MicroStartup will be my holding company that will focus on building, nurturing, and acquiring multiple startups. Some will be product-focused, and some will be service-focused. I am very excited about this project and looking forward to the next few years of building it from scratch. But…

If some of you think that I am 100% confident of building this into a billion-dollar brand, you are mistaken. Yes, I have some experience, I have some branding, but nothing is 100% certain. I honestly don’t know if everything will unfold as I expect. But there is nothing I can do about it right now.

The only thing I can do is get started. And this is one project that I am ready to see through. It doesn’t matter if it takes a few years, decades, or half a century. I am determined to keep moving forward. Some days will be slow, some days will be fast, but I will keep moving forward.

I do sometimes think “Oh man, what kind of commitment I have given to my audience, now I have to build it.” When you work a lot and feel burnt out, there is a desire to retire. However, I discovered that the desire to retire is not because I want to laze around all day and do nothing, but because it is difficult to handle the uncertainty of the future.

I have had the habit of abandoning projects in the past and people who have been following me would know about it. I have only abandoned it when I felt that a certain project doesn’t have a future. But MicroStartup is a project I cannot afford to abandon. And the good part is that it is not a specific project. It’s a holding company in which we will do multiple projects and if something doesn’t get any traction, we will focus our energies more on the projects that are getting traction. I will be sharing all the experiments in public so that you can learn from me.

Let the Future be Possible but not Certain

We have the tendency to want to predict the future. To know what exactly is going to happen. That’s one of the reasons astrology has so much market demand, though science has proven that you cannot predict the future.

As a thought experiment let’s say we can predict the future with 100% accuracy. If every event in the future is known perfectly, in every detail, almost as if it were a memory, then it will only happen when it is a memory which means that it is now in the past. So, do not try to “remember the future”. The only thing that makes the future, a future is that it is uncertain.

Going from uncertainty to certainty is the excitement and the journey. If you are dating someone and you don’t know if the other person will be your future spouse, that’s when it is exciting. When everything is decided, once you are married, the excitement goes away (and comfort sets in).

I don’t know if MicroStartup will become something very big or not. I don’t know if I am 100% capable of building it. But there is hope. And this uncertainty is what makes the days interesting.

There will be small battles won and small battles lost along the way. The long-term goal is to not quit because this is an infinite game. There is no single point of success. But there is a single point of failure. You fail when you quit and when you quit, it’s all done.

One Day at a Time

Whatever past experience that we have, it’s just a memory. Whatever future hopes we have, it’s just an imagination. All we have is today. And the only way to thrive as an entrepreneur is to focus on the day.

If yesterday was not perfect, make today perfect. If the first half of today was not perfect, make the rest of the day perfect. If today is over and it was not perfect, then make tomorrow perfect.

What do I mean by a perfect day? A perfect day is a day where you are productive, and get some good work done. Had the willpower to resist addictions and distractions. You don’t feel guilty about the day.

We might imagine happiness comes from food, alcohol, hanging out with friends, and watching a movie. But the reality is that they are the paths of least resistance. If you go on the path of least resistance, you won’t be happy at the end of the day.

Try pushing yourself for the entire day, be productive, work out, read a book, and meditate, you will see that the satisfaction that you get about the day before you hit the bed will be better than “doing fun things” throughout the day.

You cannot become a successful startup founder unless you fix yourself first. One thing that I want to show the world through my MicroStartup project is that it is never about the idea, it is about execution. Anyone can be productive and disciplined. Everything will fall into place if you just perfect your day.