You may be my Facebook friend but you'll never see a huge portion of what I want to post on Facebook. In the past month, I have increasingly found myself posting something and deleting it...merely seconds later. Because of the ease of posting stuff on fb, there is an element of pleasure that comes with posting something. But more and more often, after I've posted, I run the post through my set of filters and delete it.

What changed? I am the same guy who launched ClassHunt in the douchiest way possible. Back then, I wasn't seriously pursuing a startup. Now I am.

Recently I've been meeting a lot more business-y folks for possible partnerships. These are people that run serious businesses. Many of these people are my facebook friends or have associates that are friends. That's that. The other side of the equation is my activity on facebook. As someone who has been on it since early days when it was just for college folks, it became synonymous with random musings and rants about college life. A big part of what I posted were often inside jokes with longtime friends that may be crass in nature. Problem is, people I meet for business have a different sort of relationship with me. They probably won't get most of my jokes. And even worse, you can reach some pretty outlandish(and inaccurate) conclusions about me from my posts without the context.

At the moment, I'm kinda torn. Facebook was a great place to empty your brain. It's not so much anymore. It's not worth losing a business deal or two because of my urge to post all the dumb thoughts in my brain onto my profile.

In case you find that your wall post from my profile has disappeared, you know why;)

Most of the world operates on a 24-hr clock. I don't. The 9-5 lifestyle makes a clear distinction between work and fun. You work all day, then have fun rest of the day. The 9-5 lifestyle fails for me because I cannot magically switch modes depending on the hour of the day without serious spillage of the mental tension from work into fun. 

I live my life an obsession at a time. When I'm working on my startup, it is what I dream all day and night. Does this mean I don't do anything other than my startup? Not exactly. I do work on things other than my company--such as going to class. But even then, I am rarely able to give more than 20-30% mental attention to anything other than my work. This is not something about startups and me. It's how I operate in general. And since I live my life around obsessions, I spend majority of the 24hrs of each day either working on or dreaming about what I'm obsessed about.

All this is so different from the lifestyle I see around me. There are moments I totally envy the 9-5ers. It seems nice to be able to focus on something totally different than an obsession at the tick of the clock. At the same time, this is how I work and I want to milk it for all its worth because tomorrow I might be obsessed about something not-so-productive. The only way I can survive the unproductive-obsession-phases in my life is by getting the most out of my productive obsessions.

I don't operate on a 24-hour clock. I can go a year--even four--working my ass off. And then three months or six months of doing nothing. That's more like my clock.

You're walking down the street. You see these boxes on the sidewalk. What's your perceived value of them? Very little.

How do I know? I'm an AT&T customer and my coverage is absolute crap.  Now I have Verizon to keep reminding me how it doesn't have to be this way. 

AT&T's response is interesting--and quite predictable: they'r suing Verizon. Should that fail, I have an idea for AT&T: fix your damn network.

I had an important meeting couple weeks ago with someone I'd never met before. As part of my preparations, I called up a few people that knew the individual I was meeting. In all, I rang three phones. Two said something along the lines of "he can be a douche." One said something like "he's pretty laid back."

The next day we meet. Turns out the guy is totally laid back and awesome. 

My first reaction would be to call up the other two guys and be like "wth were you talking about?". I could do that. But it would be foolish. Lesson 1: one person can be many different things to many different people in many different situations.

In fact, when I recieved conflicting reports about the guy, I had zero confusion. Instead, I tried to understand where each were coming from. Lesson 2: the context of how they formed that view of the guy is more important than the view itself! 

And finally, lesson #3: just because the dude wasn't a douche to me in our first meeting does not exclude him from being a douche in the second or the third or the nth meeting. 

When dealing with people, get a general idea of how they operate. And then avoid making huge assumptions about their behavior. So when you have made few assumptions, you'll have fewer expectations...and when you have fewer expectations, you're on path to be happier:)

Around March, I was meeting my friend Andy at Starbucks. I told Andy about ClassHunt and how I wanted to extend it into grade distributions. At the time, I did not know how to acquire the data I needed. Andy was pessimistic about the general logistics of the idea, especially at scale. I was equally uncertain nonetheless curious enough to give it a stab. Yet, for weeks I had done nothing to move forward with acquiring the data. I had some idea about where to start. But...I did not really do anything. I couldn't. I felt paralyzed of sorts. I was in a rut. Recognizing this, Andy picked up the phone and called the UNC registrar. Minutes later a question that had haunted me for weeks--literally--was answered. I was also out of my rut!

I met Jordan at an entrepreneurship event less than a month ago. At the time, Blinkness had just launched on buncha campuses and was showing good traction. My focus was shifting to building revenue. I had a few ideas that involved selling ads directly to businesses. Jordan volunteered to do it on commission-basis--and even more so as a learning experience. Excited, we decided to meet for lunch. Then another lunch. And then another. The third time around, we were about to start our discussion when Jordan says "hey wanna just make a few calls?". I was royally surprised for good! It's not often that I meet people wanting to just jump into action even before me, especially for something related to my venture.

Soon Jordan and I leave the noisy campus cafeteria for a quiet room in the library. Here it gets better: as Jordan is about to call, I am still not sure what the heck he is going to say. And from my past experience, I felt that if I didn't know what he was going to say, I can hardly expect him to know. So I opened up Word and started to write a super rough script. Only a few words into it, Jordan goes "hey i'm good. i got this!". We didn't close a sale that evening..but hell did Jordan help me break through a major rut.

I have a special place for people like Andy and Jordan. There are many people who can give you advice during a rut. Thing about majority of ruts is that at its source, you are avoiding something very small and in doing so, turning it into a huge mountain in your mind. It is usually a phone call I'm avoiding or an hour of research I can't get myself to do for whatever reason. In these situations, it is incredibly useful to have someone who doesn't just spit out advice but actually steps in and just does the little piece of action for you effectively pulling you out of your rut. To them, I'll always be grateful!

Click here to download:

Paper Chasin - Lil Roach.mp3 (4142 KB)

Lil Roach is good or what..

Last night I ran into a blog post by the founder of HotOrNot from couple years ago:

I think about happiness a lot, and more specifically, how to manage my own.

I came up with a formula, which i'm sure millions of others have thought of too, and it's perhaps wrong, but.. i find having a simple model enables me to manipulate my life to maximize happiness.

Happiness = Reality - Expectations

It's a lot easier to manipulate your expectations than reality. So basically for everything I do, I try to expect it to fail and result in disaster. Sometimes it does, at which point reality matches expecations and i'm feeling neutral about it. If I succeed, then it is more of an unexpected pleasure and I am happy. Of course I'm human and my expectations get raised a lot, which leads to unhappiness... but I try to keep it in check as much as possible.

Set the bar low, you'll win every time.

My experience tells that James Hong is spot on! I have failed so much in past, I have a built-in pessimism about even the most promising of ideas in my head. Of course, you are walking a delicate line because too much pessimism will make you go home. But too little can also have the same impact.

I like to think that I am as pessimistic about every idea as I am optimistic. How's that for a paradox?

Yesterday, I was talking to my friend Corey. He transfered to Carolina last year from community college and is one helluva motivated and skilled guy.

Somewhere during our conversation, we started talking about college life and our morphed view of the world. For starters, as we finish each semester and get closer to graduation, we feel a little more "accomplished." But there is a critical flipside to this feeling of accomplishment: as we feel more accomplished, we rule out doing certain things because they are below us.

Like many things I have blogged about before, I am as guilty of this as any student! It is when I enter my startup mode that this trait magically disappears and I enter my humble and hustle mode(depending on how you look at it). I don't consider anything below me--not because I am super human, but because I am living and dreaming the bigger picture all day.

Here's the thing: my friend Corey could not exactly relate to this idea of having something below you. I have had some friends shy away from doing what Corey is doing. It is not the most fun thing in the world but it's hella rewarding and far, far from the worst job in the world. When I told Corey this, he told me how this is nothing compared some of the other things he has had to do in life. Corey's worked his way up from flipping burgers to selling CDs to going to community college to making it to one of the best schools. As he put it "man if someone thinks this is hard, they aint flipped burgers".

Working his way up has given Corey a lot more realistic view of life.