What Aikido taught me about app development and business

Many have applied aikido principles to their startups. When the original idea isn't being accepted by the target audience, one should pivot. This is identical to doing a tenkan in aikido. Also, knowing when to enter a market is the iriminage of the startup world.

After working months on some code, it often feels painful similar to how nikkyo and sankyo are painful. Pair programming is like uke and nage squaring off, one attacking new features while the other defends against bugs.

Sometimes you feel like you're on your knees and you can't continue, and that's right when your competition decides to attack from their standing position in a wonderful display of business hanmi handachi. When your workers form a union and strike, this is startup atemi.

A large part of aikido is redirecting someone else's strength rather than expending your own energy. Similarly, startup founders are redirecting the VC's wallet rather than expending their own capital. They also leverage Apache's strength to do a 301 redirect to another URL.

Sorry, I've studied aikido and love it but too often I find these aikido comparisons to be trite and lacking substance.

Being a active participant of 'Karate' I would also like to add some points 1. Confidence: Karate or any form of martial art bestows you with confidence, not just optimism that you can achieve what you desire and work towards it, but also the zeal and belief within oneself to achieve your goal. 2. Patience is a virtue, you need it when you are writing huge lengths of code and you need it utmost when you are in a ring waiting for the opponent to strike so that you can counterattack. 3. Resilience : Be it any app developer, businessman or any profession, you learn resilience from martial art which you can use anywhere you go or in anything you do.