Hyenas are known to eat bone. The bearded vulture is the only known bird that eats bone marrow, and cracks open bones by dropping them on rocks from a great height.
1,005 karma · joined June 11, 2008
Contact: paulm at mgn dot tc
I find 40 hours a week to be tolerable if I'm working remotely. Unfortunately I have a 2.5 hour commute for my current gig, and it's sucking up all my personal time.
Be experienced enough to know enough people in your field. Find a contact channel and ask someone you respect. If that fails, ask someone you've already known and respected for a long time. If you can't or won't do that, then you should go it alone. You don't need mentors to succeed.
I find that I know enough people after working for more than a decade that my mentors have become the people I already ask for advice, so making it official was a minor step.
To address your specific requests:
1. Knowing yourself well enough means knowing your blind spots. Anything you dismiss without question is a blind spot. Have mentors who cover them. I have robust conversations with all my mentors, and they always give me pause for thought.
2. Asking for time means you need to focus on what you're asking of them. Mentors are there to advise, not make the decisions for you, or finance your endeavour (unless they already do). Ask politely and they'll say yes.
3. Well-framed questions help, but I find that I won't know the questions to ask until I've experienced something unexpected. Also, sometimes I find some of the best conversations come out of asking open-ended questions. I think there's a time for both.
As to my situation: I've asked mentorship from people younger and older. I've asked friends and acquaintances; some I know well, some I don't. However, they are all willing to be honest. It's necessary that we disagree on some things.
My blind spots are things such as raising money vs. bootstrapping (bootstrapping all the way!); revenue from products and services vs. revenue through finance or advertising (I believe revenue should come from creating material value, not increasing it through financial vehicles); cryptocurrency as a business model (I find few projects are genuinely useful). If the opposite of my belief happens to be useful, then it helps to have someone who understands it.
I've been contracting at a startup for a year, and seen all this happen during my tenure. We've managed to strip most of the deadwood now, but I'm unsure whether it was done in time. It'll be a pity if the company folds, because they have some quite cool tech.
Everytime I see something like this, I'm glad I chose the life of a contractor.
Is threading such a big deal that people can't live without it? I honestly never found it useful.
NB. Correct me if I'm mistaken, I have little knowledge in this area.