Yes, I guess I didn’t go into this so much in the project post-mortem. But in short:
The actual work that needed doing was not work that I was very good at or enjoyed. There was a lot of synoptic research and networking.
There was a very high level of uncertainty about what we were doing. I think I deal fairly well with medium-level uncertainty, but much less well with high-level uncertainty.
Much of this could have been overcome, but I think I fundamentally lacked the non-instrumental desire to become the kind of person who was good at the project; and the instrumental need wasn’t motivating enough. In practice this manifested as a lack of grit—if I had kept at it and pushed harder, maybe the project would have got further… but I don’t think I actually wanted to be in that position either!
if I had kept at it and pushed harder, maybe the project would have got further… but I don’t think I actually wanted to be in that position either!
I think this is a problem with for-profit startups as well. Most of the time they fail. But sometimes they succeed (in the sense of “not failing” rather than breakout success which is far rarer), and in that case you’re stuck with the thing to see it through to an exit.
Yes, I guess I didn’t go into this so much in the project post-mortem. But in short:
The actual work that needed doing was not work that I was very good at or enjoyed. There was a lot of synoptic research and networking.
There was a very high level of uncertainty about what we were doing. I think I deal fairly well with medium-level uncertainty, but much less well with high-level uncertainty.
Much of this could have been overcome, but I think I fundamentally lacked the non-instrumental desire to become the kind of person who was good at the project; and the instrumental need wasn’t motivating enough. In practice this manifested as a lack of grit—if I had kept at it and pushed harder, maybe the project would have got further… but I don’t think I actually wanted to be in that position either!
I think this is a problem with for-profit startups as well. Most of the time they fail. But sometimes they succeed (in the sense of “not failing” rather than breakout success which is far rarer), and in that case you’re stuck with the thing to see it through to an exit.