Hi there, I now have a new blog at http://markbao.com/.
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—Mark
Hi there, I now have a new blog at http://markbao.com/.
Please update your RSS subscriptions to http://feeds.markbao.com/feed/.
Thanks!
—Mark
I hear about the idea of ‘choosing to be happy’ frequently. When we talk about improving our lives during our short existence, it’s oft-repeated advice.
Here’s the idea: when you’re not happy, or when you’re not satisfied, or even when you’re depressed, you can make the decision to be happy instead. You have the choice to be happy or sad – and, given the fact that you only have limited time on Earth, which one do you want to pick? Happy, of course.
So, ‘always choose to be happy.’
I find this approach to be extremely ineffective. Although it’s nice to acknowledge that you always have the choice to be happy or not when dealing with a situation, I think that there is less value in simply ‘choosing to be happy’ and more value in choosing to be unhappy and doing something about it.
In my personal life, changes have often stemmed from my unhappiness with something and making a decision to change it. I’ve made positive changes because I chose to be unhappy (or even angry) about something that needed to change.
I feel like the idea of ‘choosing to be happy’ is simply a temporary escape, a band-aid that treats the surface, but not the root cause. It solves the symptom of unhappiness, but not the problem itself. That mindset robs us of the anger and impetus we need to make a change and attack the root of the problem.
For example, you might not be happy because you’re out of shape, which is making dating difficult. In that instance, you can choose to reject being unhappy and be happy instead, which allows you to relax and feel not so bad about the problems you’re facing.
But what does that change? What progress have you made? In this instance, choosing to be happy is only a temporary solution to the symptom, not the actual root cause, of your unhappiness. Here, choosing to be happy only solves, “I’m unhappy because I’m overweightâ€, the symptom, not “I’m overweight, and need to start exercising and eating betterâ€, the problem.
Being unhappy is difficult, and it’s far from satisfying. However, I think some of the most important developments in your life can come from being unhappy and choosing to do something about it. Choosing to do something about the root cause of your unhappiness isn’t the same as choosing to solve the symptom of unhappiness itself. Lasting happiness comes from understanding that root cause and making something happen, not from numbing the resulting unhappiness by ignoring it.
Conquering the root causes of unhappiness is very difficult to do, because it requires so much willpower, and the alternative options – wallowing in sadness, or choosing to be happy for the short-term and treating the symptom – are so much easier to do (and are so much more tempting) than working to cure the true underlying issue.
But choosing to be unhappy and doing something about it is the only way that you will solve the actual problem. It’s the only way you can make progress in your life, by solving the real problems that are holding you back.
QUESTIONTIME!
Off of the coattails of the Delicious shutdown scare, bookmarking service Pinboard, who had the idea of adding a one-time charge to their bookmarking service, has gained a good amount of users—paying users, at that. The payment model, $0.001 * number of users, is apparently del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter’s idea. I worked out how much they made:
Bing’s web cache shows the price being at (least, since we don’t know when Bing took the cache) 6.87 yesterday (http://cl.ly/0A1N0K0C2Q2W2H0U3h43) and now it is at 8.35. That is a difference of 1.48, indicating a gain of (at least) 1,480 customers. Every user x signing up past the point that the cache was taken generates (6.87 + 0.001x). Thanks to Gauss, we can find the total revenue using (6.87+8.35)(1480/2), and we can calculate roughly that Pinboard made something on the order of $11k yesterday, and probably a bit more since they probably round up instead of charging tenths of cents. Sweet! (comment link) (calc)
$11k for having a good service and charging for it. Web startups, take note. Succinctly summed up with Pinboard’s tweet to Xmarks, a bookmark sync service with 2 million users that was about to shut down:
@xmarks the model that has worked well for us is ‘charge people money for a useful product or service’
Y Combinator‘s Startup School 2009 was an incredible learning experience for new and experienced entrepreneurs alike. There are ten talks. Here are their key points.
Below are some key points about his talk, but there are a lot more great soundbites in his transcript of What Startups Are Really Like.
Check out this writeup on VentureBeat too.
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