Caterina Fake of Flickr fame muses that working hard is overated. A lot of her early start-up time was unproductive and spent ‘freaking out’ in other words:

  • panicking
  • working on things just to be seen to be busy
  • not knowing what we were doing
  • fearing failure
  • worrying about things we needn’t have worried about
  • thinking about fund raising rather than product building
  • building too many features
  • getting distracted by competitors
  • being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn’t

In her news start-up Hunch Caterina is focusing more on doing the right things:

  • paying attention to what is going on in the world
  • spotting patterns
  • seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be
  • being able to read what people want
  • putting yourself in the right place at the right time

Her advice reminds me of the work by the social psychologist Carol Dweck’s on mindsets and the difference between fixed and growth mindsets and the importance of never stopping learning.


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Doing the right thing

By Philip

Posted on October 15, 2009 to Start-up, Team, Uncategorized. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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