A person I’ve known for years recently told me he’s tired of his 9-5 job and asked how I decide which projects to pursue and how I know if they’ll be successful, because he wants a real change in his life.
I think I’m one of the lucky ones who found work that truly brings joy. My relatives often joke that I never stop working. Every free moment, I’m either improving something I’ve already built or prototyping the next project. Some days I’m juggling half a dozen projects at once. Remember the popular saying?
Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Mark Twain
As long as I can remember, I’ve always been involved in building different projects or joining ventures. Most of them either failed or took years of hard work without yielding any results – this includes business ventures, SaaS, mobile apps. All of them were driven by personal interest. If an idea grabs me, I don’t overthink – I just go and see what happens.
That’s how Piano Companion was born. Same with KidTeller. I recall the first meeting with EconomyBookings founders where I immediately spotted an opportunity. I didn’t have experience with car renting, but I decided to work hard on the frontend and backend to build the first MVP that could handle thousands of requests. I just wanted to see where it would lead me. You need to love what you do. Love experimenting. Love collaborating with people. Be open to negative feedback. And of course, be ready to fail. The path is often more important than the destination.
I remember Paul Graham’s post How to Do Great Work. He says you should pick what to work on using two real criteria:
- Aptitude – what you’re naturally good at
- Deep interest – what you’d do even if no one cared
When you follow what genuinely excites you, you naturally move toward work with long-term potential. If something keeps pulling you back again and again, that’s a signal worth listening to.
Once you find your area, go deep. Learn until you reach the edge where answers stop being obvious. That’s where the fun begins. And where real opportunities live.
Successful projects don’t start big or are destined to be successful. Piano Companion wasn’t planned in advance; it was built over a weekend. KidTeller started as just an interesting idea I wanted to explore. I kept coming back to it again and again (it was like an itch in your brain – you had to do it). Both first versions were pretty ugly and mostly unusable, but they helped me gauge interest from people.
At the end of last year, I received print book orders for KidTeller, but because of some serious bugs, people couldn’t finish their books. I ended up spending several days working from morning until 2 a.m. to fix everything as quickly as possible, in order to help them out. It was both stressful and exciting at the same time, with the pressure of getting the books sent out before Christmas and witnessing the growing interest in the project.
Without curiosity, would it be possible? I doubt I would’ve done it. Motivation comes and goes, but curiosity stays. And with discipline, even small daily progress beats short bursts of inspiration. You keep grinding – one page/one bug/one feature/one experiment. Day by day. That’s how big things are built.
I think people often misunderstand failed projects. They are not wasted years. They teach faster than success. Every wrong turn sharpens your intuition. Think of it as an upgrade. I even wrote about failures in my blog post about stoicism – people discussed these ideas 2,000 years ago.
Looking back, none of my best projects were planned. They happened because I followed my interest, stayed curious, and kept building. If I had waited for perfect conditions, none of them would exist.
You just need enough curiosity to start – a pinch of courage, a piece of discipline, and a Stoicism book to help you when it gets hard… really hard.