Only after doing 500+ daygame sets, did I realize how badly I was weaseling in business. If I was as motivated in cold calling prospects as cold approaching students, I’d be set for life. In addition, after reading both Nick Krauser’s and John Bodi’s memoirs, did I realize how Gamma I was1 at work:

  • God complex: everyone in this office is a retard except me.
  • I work better alone (because I don’t want to face the reality that some colleagues are smarter and/or more skilled than me).
  • Avoidance: mastering Vim, niche Linux distributions, configuring my tiling window manager, etc. In other words, escaping into elitism instead of doing the important hard work in front of me.
  • Ignoring market needs: employers/clients should just hire me so I can enjoy myself exercising my technical skills on their dime.
  • Build it and they will come: great employers/clients will automatically somehow find me and reach out.

Daygame is the first time in my life I had to face unfiltered feedback from an actual marketplace: girls clearly signalling they wouldn’t fuck me. I learned that “Improving myself” doesn’t mean anything if you don’t actually put yourself out there. Becoming good does not feel good or rewarding: it’s intense drilling of a hard technical skill set over and over again.

I now see how much I’ve been weaseling out of important work and wasting my time in pointless tinkering to make me feel good about myself.

Applied to business (digital transformation / IT), the market doesn’t care about what skills I possess or how smart I think I am. Clients want to know if I have a solution to their problem. Clearly explaining my business proposition (i.e. marketing) is something I suck at.

The answer therefore is not to “improve my skills” or “find clients that get me”. It’s to get better at marketing: get out there and talk to more people, then do the work they need, regardless of how I feel about it.

  1. Or still am. ↩︎