@zachpogrob
Obsession beats discipline - go all-in on your craft until you either die or get reborn.
If there is a tutorial for what you are doing, do something else.
The Reasoning
Real innovation exists beyond documented paths. If you can learn it from a YouTube tutorial, so can everyone else. Competitive advantage comes from doing what cannot be taught.
What Needs to Be True
- Tutorial-able skills become commoditized
- Novel paths provide sustainable competitive advantage
- The frontier is always beyond what tutorials can teach
Counterargument
Learning fundamentals - some tutorials teach necessary basics. Even novel work builds on tutorial-able foundations.
What Would Change This View
Seeing someone build massive competitive advantage using purely tutorial-learned skills.
Implications for Builders
Check if your startup idea can be built following a YouTube series
If yes, reconsider the differentiation
Seek the novel combination that has no tutorial
Example Application
“Building a standard CRUD app = tutorial exists = commodity. Building novel UI paradigm = no tutorial = potential moat.”
Related Knowledge
If you are not technical, do not learn AI coding - learn Figma instead.
Non-technical founders bottleneck is not coding (AI handles that) but design and product vision.
DO NOT MOVE TO AUSTIN - you will lose your friends forever.
Cities have gravity.
You do not need sleep/love/friends/fitness/happiness when you are obsessed. You do not need anything
True obsession is all-consuming.