Did You Try Your Best?

be honest

I try to ask myself a north star question at the end of each day: “Did you try your best”. Because that’s all you can really do. It’s deceptively simple and obvious, but reminding myself of it often has kept me sane. Did you try your best today?

I’ve been trying my best (most of the time at least) and it feels amazing.

I’m of the belief that work is at the center of the human experience. It’s what gives us purpose and an identity. A common rebuttal to my viewpoint is, “I’m not passionate about my job, and thus it doesn’t give me purpose”.

I’d push back and argue that your job isn’t the same as your life’s work. What is it that you do after work that nobody cares about but you? You make no money from it, people think it’s silly, but you still do it? That’s your work.

I’m blessed that I’ve had a few opportunities in my life to work on things that are all encompassing. I felt this way in college trying build back up our silly little comedy club, in grad school trying to become an internet famous comedian, and now building a consumer device.

But the truth is that it hasn’t worked out (monetarily) yet. None of my passsion projects have made me enough money to go full time on them. And that’s fine (for now). All I can do is try my best every day until it works out.

But it can be really scary. Because there is no obvious path to success and criticism is in high supply.

“Why would you even work on that? It makes much more sense to do _______ instead”

And honestly the critics do have a point. The thing you’re working on has a likelihood of failure, especially if your only goal is money. But these logicians often fail to recognize the second order impacts of working on things that you enjoy.

Maybe working on your passion will lead you to a new, better, and monetizable idea. Maybe it’ll lead you to a group of people that you can call your tribe. And maybe it will teach you the most valuable skill of them all: the ability to think clearly.

I’m currently a broke boy working on something that makes me happy– a device that helps people build their cold shower habit.

I’m spending the next few months at slam.co trying to figure out how to make some money doing this. And one thing’s for sure. I’m gonna try my fucking best. Every day. Until I have something to show for it.

If you want to support my product, you can pre-order a unit here.

I’m also looking for early fans of my device, people whose eyes light up when I show them a prototype. If you know someone that loves cold showers you should connect us.

Until next time,

Raj