Make The Stuff You Wish Existed
There’s an old saying in Hollywood: “Write the movie you want to see.” When I’m thinking about what to work on next, that’s where I start.
Making anything great is hard. And it takes a long time. My wife and I spend about two to three years writing and rewriting a movie script.
That turns out to be upwards of 4% of my life on one script. If I’m spending that much time, I better want to see the movie!
The same goes for the comedy sketches we are producing. The idea has to make us laugh first before we consider putting in the time and energy to write, shoot, edit, and release it into the world.
This doesn’t just apply to media. Maybe there’s a product or service you wish existed. Or a business you would buy from if only they were selling the solution to a specific problem you have.
So, build it yourself. Scratch your own itch. Be your first consumer, first customer, first reader, or first viewer. Bring the things you want to see to life.
Because if you’re working on something and don’t care whether it exists or not, you’re working on the wrong thing.
And you’re wasting the most precious thing you have: time.
Everything Has An Opportunity Cost. Find The Project That Needs You Most.
Our time on earth is limited. I was shocked that just three years on a project accounts for over 4% of my life.
But it gets worse. I’m in my mid-30s, so when I take into consideration the years I’ve already lived…
three years is almost 8% of the time I have left!
So yeah, our time is precious and finite.
And when you decide to work on one thing, it means you’re not working on something else. Something that may be better suited to your skill set and specific knowledge.
If I’m writing one script, it means I’m not writing another. If we’re shooting one sketch, it means we’re not shooting another.
Everything is a trade-off, also known as an opportunity cost: the loss of potential gain from other options when you commit to one.
There’s a cost to committing, so the project better light you up.
This became clear to me only after I quit my job to work for myself.
When you’re going through the motions at a job you don’t love - with someone else telling you what to do - you can’t choose what to work on. You’re kind of numb to the whole process. At least I was.
But once I left that job, I took some time to get in tune with my instincts. I started looking for that feeling of excitement and I began to notice which ideas lit me up and which didn’t. Try to tune into that feel for yourself.
As Naval Ravikant says: "Your goal in life is to find out the people who need you the most, to find out the business that needs you the most, to find the project and the art that needs you the most. There is something out there just for you.”
Once you find it and build it, it’s time to ship it out into the world with as much leverage as possible.
Add Free Leverage To Whatever You Build.
I didn’t choose to write stage plays. I didn’t choose to create clay art. There’s nothing wrong with these things, but they don’t have leverage built into their DNA.
I’m attracted to movies because they use all three kinds of leverage:
Money - Hollywood has built a moat around $100 million+ movies
Labor - You’ve seen the credits roll on a movie… look how many people it takes!
Media & Code - crucial because movies can scale for free.
You only need to produce the movie once, and then you can scale it to every theater and home in the country for almost nothing. That’s the power of zero marginal cost of reproduction.
The same goes for the sketches Tara and I are producing. Sure, we could put the sketches up on a stage for an audience (and maybe one day we will), but we’d be missing out on the free leverage that media gives you.
I didn’t make these decisions by accident. I chose a career path with a ton of leverage built in.
How are you thinking about adding leverage to what you’re building? If it’s not immediately obvious, give it some thought.
It’s worth figuring out how to apply as much free leverage as possible so that whatever you build goes into the world and works for you after you’re finished working on it.
Start now.