Undoing your future
It’s almost dark. Another drive to Mississauga; 20 minutes and I will come back empty. I avoid doing the math since I’m probably losing money on this trip. It happens a lot lately.
Maybe I’m thinking too small about my big role as an Uber driver. I’m just a small ant on a learning curve about the platform economy and transportation logistics. I need more data to define optimal locations for optimal hours around GTA in order to reach my daily target. While I like driving and meeting new people, if I don’t make money, I might as well get a 9 to 5 job.
I’m getting back to the topic of ideas to implement, personal projects or startups because this is my inner battlefield. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about SaaS functionalities as I also wake up to read negative feedback I received from friends about my project. It keeps me sane and motivated.
Thinking small and thinking too much costs a lot. The list of past failures from which you really learn something is really short. The easy way out is to classify every mistake you made as a learning process. It is not. The mistake took its toll as a mistake does, but you didn’t come out the other way any wiser.
It’s funny how small ideas require the same amount of work or more than a big idea. It makes the size irrelevant since the work needs to be put in any way. The requirements for a new business, no matter if you call it a start-up or just a business are quite similar. The idea in itself doesn’t matter for you. It’s mine. Your small idea doesn’t matter for me either. What’s important is if you believe in it and if you think big about it. Do you place your small idea inside the big picture of your next few years, chose the activities you do, and direct all your resources towards making it happen?
I’m going to tell you what I tell myself every morning when I don’t want to leave my bed scared of the future 24 hours. Frighten of my own doubts and thinking process. Terrified of what was planned to happen that day and it might not, from writing code to ad campaign results.
Stop procrastinating. Time passes anyway. You might as well look back a year from now and feel good that you tried and fail instead of just looking back and seeing yourself not doing things. Undoing your future.
Short disclaimer: The Journal of an Uber Driver is a work of fiction.
Long disclaimer: The literary exercise to define a nowadays character for a novel led me to create these 25 blog posts. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any opinion expressed about Uber should not be interpreted as having a negative connotation. I admire the company as an incumbent of the platform economy and I am a registered Uber driver for research purposes.