January: Find the pleasure in the hard things

Hello and welcome to my newsletter! I'm Fábio, and my goal is to share the things I’ve learned and continue learning in my ambitious journey. Currently, I am a Data Scientist, investor, and hobbyist app developer. I have aspirations to own a business, expand my real estate portfolio, and grow a vineyard.

While the path to these goals isn't always clear, I'm committed to the work and learning required to get there. I will also share everything along the way. For free.

I hope you find value in this newsletter and I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Each newsletter will contain:

• a brief summary of a book (I have a reading list of over 40 books to help me in my journey);

• some tool I found useful/interesting;

• some lesson I’ve learnt along the way.
  Welcome to this journey! I hope you find some value in it and would love to hear from you.

This book is a breath of fresh air in business advice literature. Authored by founders of the software company 37signals, this 200-page book cuts through conventional wisdom with practical lessons. It is not the same usual advice, such as “work hard”, “work smarter”, “build a network”. They share lessons like “don’t hire immediately. Do the work yourself first” and “don’t create a business plan” and “projections are speculation”.

• Start with your own problems when creating a company. By addressing issues you personally face, you're likely to find a wider audience with similar challenges. This approach inspired my app idea.

• Share generously. Contrary to my fear of ideas being stolen, openness can be advantageous. The authors mention chefs, who share all their secrets on TV and people still go to their restaurants. Sharing secrets and processes can enhance, rather than diminish, customer loyalty.

• Teach more than the competition. Teaching everything you know is a better way to connect with your audience. It also helps you compete with bigger companies, which tend to be more secretive. People will want to hear if you are teaching something valuable instead of just selling. This advice is what pushed me to start this newsletter sooner than planed.
  

  I highly advise you to check this book because the lessons you take from it could be entirely different from mine.

Roadmap.sh ranks as the 6th most followed project on GitHub, with frequent updates. It offers detailed roadmaps for tech roles, such as Backend developer and UI designer. Not every step of the roadmaps is necessary (from personal experience), but they are quite comprehensive. A good guideline if you would like to get a job in tech but don't know where to start. Each roadmap has links to external sources, such as Coursera/Codecademy courses. Each one tells you which steps to take and also where to take them.

When trying to be successful, we are fighting a battle where the odds are against ourselves. We evolved to look for instant gratification whenever possible. But to be successful, we need to put in hundreds of hours of repetitive work. Learning and creating something new takes time and dedication. With so many sources of instant gratification, choosing the work feels impossible. It feels reserved for those with superhuman willpower. What I learned is that the only way to win the battle is to make it fair. Instead of fighting an instant vs delayed gratification, make it instant vs instant. By finding the joy in the tedious, you can choose what type of instant gratification you prefer. For example, only after I found the pleasure in studying Python was I able to make it a long-lasting habit. I found pleasure in going to bed smarter every day and learning something new. I also enjoyed learning how to manipulate and gain insights from data. If I had to summarize my last 3 years of learning, it would be this: “find the pleasure in the work.”

If you have suggestions/critiques, feel free to reply to this email. I would also really appreciate it if you shared with friends who might find value in it. Thank you!

Fábio

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