The amazing adventures of Doug Hughes

Posts tagged ‘ADHD’

All Hat, No Cattle

I think I’ve finally made an important mental leap, as far as business and startups are concerned.  It’s not just the idea I need, it’s the execution of the idea.  So far, with the exception of Alagad, my execution on my various ideas has been less than stellar.

What brought this realization on was a post I saw on Reddit the other day.  This image was posted to /r/entrepreneur:

Ideas are just a multiplier of execution 2009-07-28 It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. Explanation: AWFUL IDEA = -1 WEAK IDEA = 1 SO-SO IDEA = 5 GOOD IDEA = 10 GREAT IDEA = 15 BRILLIANT IDEA = 20 NO EXECUTION = $1 WEAK EXECUTION = $1000 SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000 GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000 GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000 BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000 To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until I see their execution.

This screencap was taken from Derek Sivers blog. Why the poster posted an image and not a link to the blog, I don’t know.

I’ve ranted in the past about how many brilliant ideas I have.  And, in all seriousness, I do think some of them are pretty good.  But it would seem that my execution has been pretty weak.  Truth be told, I already knew this, but this image really crystalized the idea for me.

In fact, I don’t even technically run my own company, Alagad, any more.  Randy Miller, my father in law, took over as CEO about a year ago.  I still drive the company’s concepts and technical direction.  But, when it comes down to making sure we get stuff done that we need to, I’ve handed that off to Randy. For Randy, this must be like herding cats.

To a degree, I think the fact that Alagad grew to what it was at its’ peak (13 people and 7 figures of income) was almost luck and perseverance more than a good execution.  I had the passion for what we were doing, but I pretty much was clueless on how to generate leads and make sales.  To a degree, I think that’s because Alagad has always tried to be everything to everyone.  I’d say “If it can be done on the internet, we can do it.”  True though this may be, it’s not the easiest thing to sell.

So, with all these ideas I’ve worked on over the years (TaskForce, urate.it, Supporting.us, Respondin.gs, CouponHor.se, and many, many, more), I’ve failed to get anywhere because my execution sucks.  That a fun realization to have, isn’t it?  (No.)

I was talking with my psychiatrist the other day about ADHD, which I’ve recently learned I have.  I was lamenting how many half finished projects I have.  I’ll be working on one of my ideas diligently, and then suddenly come up with some brilliant new idea that I’m totally incapable of ignoring.  It’s so easy for me to get knocked off track and feel like my latest idea cannot be ignored!  It’ll be quicker, easier, bigger, and when it’s done, it will finance all these other ideas I want to do!

This is actually why I started ProjectSpark! last week.  I’m really hoping to find some people who can help me overcome some of my weaknesses, such as execution.  Because, frankly, I don’t want to flop around like a fish out of water forever.

For those who don’t know, ADHD is essentially an impairment of working memory.  What that means is I don’t have as much storage as other people do in the part of my brain where I work with information.  So, when I come up with an exciting new idea I essentially can’t remember why my previous ideas shouldn’t be immediately usurped.  I’m always seeing the world from a new perspective.  This might also explain why I can’t remember names to save my frickin’ life.

To help overcome this, my psychiatrist assigned some homework to me.  She wants me to create a flow chart of my decision making process.  Basically, I need to draw up how I decide what I should be doing at any given time, and where that will lead me.  The idea being that I can constantly refer back to this flowchart to go through a decision making process that doesn’t change every time I make a choice.  This should help me prioritize my work and keep my eye on the prize.  Frankly, I have no idea how the hell to do this.  I’m going to draw something up and probably share it here.  And then later I’ll revise it with her assistance.  I see the value in this, but I’ve got no idea how to do it.

So, now I know I need to improve my execution.  (Not that kind, sorry to disappoint.)  Figuring out how is the next big challenge.  Any ideas?

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Clawing My Way Out of The Metaphorical Grave

When I started my blog I was at a low point.  As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m afflicted with ADD and depression.  And, I have seasonal depression on top of it all. I don’t remember my SAD being so bad the last few years, but this year has been murder.

Perhaps this is because over the summer I felt pretty good and decided that perhaps I didn’t need to be on meds any more.  I had been taking a cocktail of Dextroamphetamine, Zoloft and Wellbutrin.  Oddly, I felt fine.  So, clearly I didn’t need that stuff any more and tapered off it.

I felt fine for the next few months, though looking back on it now I can see that I wasn’t doing well at all.  My ADD, which I had only discovered the year, before came back with a vengeance (not that it ever really went away).  I pretty much did as little work (that I was supposed to be doing) as possible.  I spent much of my time working on various side projects and sleeping in the middle of the day.  Don’t get me wrong, I still got things done for clients, but it was as infrequently as possible.  In fact, I hired a contractor to do much of my billable work for me.

The side projects I’ve worked on are actually pretty cool, but I haven’t finished any of them yet.  I’ve followed my traditional pattern where I start something, get it pretty far, and then drop it when it gets tedious or I get another brilliant idea that just can’t wait.

So, here I am, not really making money and not really getting any of my personal projects done – certainly not to a point where I could make money off of them. As you can imagine, this is rather stressful and depressing.  Any logical and reasonable person would, perhaps, redouble efforts to do billable work and/or maybe buckle down and get one of these side projects to a point where they could start making money.

I. Just. Couldn’t. Do. It.

And then winter came in and smacked me upside the head.

I was at a real low point a few weeks ago.  Laying in bed, curled up in a fetal position, nearly in tears.  It’s really hard to explain this to people not afflicted with depression.  There’s just a weight hanging on your soul.  It’s hard to move.  It’s hard to think.  It’s almost hard to breath.  And you can’t stop it.

Actually, that’s wrong.  You can manage depression, but it requires you to do something.  And then to not stop doing it.  For example, (real) exercise is a great way to improve depression.  Eating better will help too.  Vitamin D and getting outside in the sun can make huge differences as well.  Let’s face it, anytime we successfully make changes to better our health, we feel better.  But you have to keep doing it.  And even those without depression will attest that making these types of positive changes in your like, and keeping them going, is nye on impossible.  And failure just adds to feelings of worthlessness and apathy.

I spent the last couple months trying like hell to make some of these changes.  I stopped eating intentionally sweet food and lost 20+ pounds from that alone.  I also built a desk for my treadmill where I can walk and work.  (I’m typing this blog entry on it right now!) I find I can often walk for 90 minutes and get work done at the same time.  These things helped to a degree, but it wasn’t enough to pull me out of the depression.

And then I hit my low.  I was feeling so worthless that I would often fantasize of dying.  I would imagine getting cancer and wasting away.  Or getting run over by a bus.  Or, well, just getting so damned low that I just shut down and fell over dead.  Psychologists call these passive suicidal thoughts.  I wouldn’t have jumped in front of the proverbial bus, but I might not have jumped out of the way.

Additionally, I had been hiding the true depths of how I was feeling from my wonderful, loving, wife.  But she knew. I suppose it’s simular to what Paul Simon sang in his song, Graceland:

And she said losing love [depression]
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you’re blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow

I decided at that moment I really, really, had to get back on my meds.  My wife happens to take Zoloft as well and so I started using some of her pills while I waited for an appointment with my psychiatrist.  I also took my last few remaining Dextroamphetamine pills.  I started walking and working on the treadmill every single day (except yesterday when I was doing some heavy lifting work outside).

So now I’m on Zoloft and Ritalin and a couple of weeks have passed. I feel human again.  I feel like I have a big part of my brain back that had been missing in action for quite a while. And, I have a little bit of perspective on what I did to myself over the last half year.  It’s not perfect, but I swear to myself that I’m never again going to let myself get the way I was just a couple of weeks ago.

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So…. What Now? -or- KickStarting Myself

One of the main reasons I rebooted this blog was to help me work out what I should be doing with myself.  I have a lot of individual goals, but no specific strategy on how to accomplish them.  Right now I’m flailing around randomly, doing a bit here and a bit there, but not making much progress in any direction.

This morning I sat here at my desk for thirty minutes and have nothing to show for it.  Well, maybe that’s not entirely fair.  I did take time to read WordPress’ suggestions on how to focus my blog.  I figured there would be something relevant to me, since focusing on any one thing is next to impossible for me.  Their solution?  Make a set of mind maps that progressively focus you on what you’re interested in and want blog about.  Did I do the exercise?  Nope.  I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I want to do on this blog.  That said, I did sit here for 30 minutes before deciding to write about.

Around new years my wife made me sit down and make a combined list of some of our goals for the next year.  The goals fell into three distinct categories: Things to do around the house (make a tree house, shed, etc), travel (go to Alaska), and starting at least two new businesses.  The latter is where I’ll focus for the remainder of this article.

I really like being my own boss.  It gives me the flexibility to work when and how I need to, with a few reasonable limitations.  However, I’ve not been happy with the work I’ve been doing recently I and I feel that I need to move on to something else.  This has become increasingly urgent to me.  Most people who work with me would probably tell you that I have a panoply of ideas that I’ve worked on.  I can think of at least eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve potentially viable ideas off the top of my head.  I’ve already started work on five of them.

My biggest problem here is distractibility and self doubt.  I have at least two projects that are half done because I moved on to other projects that seemed that much more exciting, interesting and promising.  And sometimes a project falls under the weight of self doubt.

Another major challenge is that I’m primarily a technical person.  I understand programming.  So, I naturally gravitate towards technical problems.  I draw mockups, write programs, make web pages, etc, for these ideas.  But when it comes to the tedious or unfamiliar work, I fall down.  For example, I’m not a marketing person.  I really only have the faintest ideas on how to promote and sell most of these projects I’m working on.  Why bother building something new if no one will ever see or use it?  As an example, I released Pan Slam, an very simple iOS app last week. I’ve only sold 18 copies (mostly to friends) so far, which makes me wonder why bothered at all.  If I knew better ways to promote it, I think I would.  But it would be nice to work with someone else who knew what they were doing in this area and enjoyed doing it.

I’ve come up with a long-shot solution to these problems.  There is an awesome website called KickStarter.  KickStarter describes themselves as, “the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects.”  Essentially, the way it works is that if I want to raise funds for a project I can create a proposal to explain the idea, make supporting videos, and then essentially beg the KickStarter community, my friends, followers, and family for a specific amount of money for my project.  If I raise the money I get it all, if I fail I get nothing at all.

I have yet to submit any KickStarter proposals, but I did support KickSat, which was successfully funded!

There are a few things I like about KickStarter.  I love the all or nothing approach.  If the my project is not supported then perhaps it’s not destined to be.  However, if I succeed, then I have funds to pay for the parts of the project that I can’t do (well) myself.  Essentially, KickStarter has the potential to tell me if I really have a good idea and give me the resources to accomplish it if I do.

My latest idea is to throw ideas at KickStarter,  one at a time, until one actually succeeds.  I plan to become a guru of writing proposals and making videos to talk about my ideas!

So, I herby publicly state my goal:  I will publish 12 KickStarter projects in the next 13 months, one a month, starting 30 days from now, until all 12 have failed or one has been funded successfully!  I will have my first KickStarter proposal submitted by February 16th!  Now to decide which one to do…

I’ll update the blog here as I decide which project I’m doing and as I learn more about working with KickStarter.

 

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