Join the Engineering Leisure Class

The RMS lifestyle - get a $1m grant or two, then work for free!

> We’re used to thinking of leisure in the narrow sense of “use of free time for enjoyment,” but leisure can be more meaningful if we focus instead on its broader definition as “opportunity afforded by free time to do something.”

Stop coupling "enjoyment" with "non-productive".

How many kids do you have, Chris? :-)

I did this. I advise against this.

I had money saved up, and for visa reasons had to spend a year outside the USA. Seemed like a perfect time to indulge in some risky ideas, especially those which were a little idealistic.

It ended up being incredibly depressing and I got very little done.

It's hard enough to build a product when you're in a startup or a smart team. In my opinion it's nearly impossible if you're going it alone. And unless some of your friends have an exactly coincidental amount of leisure time or extra energy, you probably won't make progress.

It's especially bad if you're taking on something that you think is good for the world, because now you have extra pressure, but no extra motivation.

Plus, things that are good for the world tend to be products, and not just tools. Those are harder.

I know you, the reader reading this, are exempt from this, and you're an island of personal productivity that needs no human inputs. That's how I used to think, too. Or at least, I told myself that I was more capable than others who said the same thing and who similarly failed.

The main problem is that you think you're freeing yourself from distraction and you're just going to have 100% of time to work on something. But in the process you might also free yourself from people to tell you you are overbuilding, from customers to tell you you're doing it wrong, from the social interactions that make the day brighter. And you might feel the urge to keep it all behind the curtain until The Great Unveiling. This has the effect of making all your small progresses, in the meantime, feel useless. Success recedes further and further away, and human emotional feedback loops don't usually work in those situations.

So I suggest if you're going to use your money and time this way:

- Take on something small. REALLY small. Then cut it to 10% of that size. Then release it. Iterate if it seems to be working out and building a community.

or:

- Be very young and with enough privilege to not have to worry about debt. You have leisure time, few expenses or commitments, and extra energy, and so does almost everyone you know.

or:

- Make sure others are invested in your success and have a commitment to it that's at least in the same order of magnitude as your own. A funded startup is a wonderful way of focusing commitment like this, and ensuring that you have to talk to people all the time. But there are other models.

One kid is on the way -- and yes, I have no idea how children are going to affect our lives! I've considered going in two totally different directions: I might go for a high-paying full-time job so that my wife and I can pay for a nanny and all those other modern affluent child-raising tools, or I might try to go full-bore stay-at-home Dad changing diapers and raising the kids to grow their own food in the backyard and make their own clothes. More likely I'll muddle somewhere in between, but I want to go into it with as many options as possible, and a clear idea of what we want for ourselves and our kids.