Up earlier than usual on a Sunday morning to breakfast early before a 10km run later today, I listened to an interview of Seth Godin on William Channer’s wonderful dormroomtycoon podcast. As I kill some time before the race, I am putting some thoughts that have been swimming in my head for the past several weeks on paper.

Seth Godin harped on the fact that most people are held back by fear, fear of failing. The online world is teeming with people  looking for success, be it in the form of a startup business, a successful blog or a large Twitter following. And they are all searching for a roadmap to success. Some of these people are marketers. Some of them are designers and developers, like myself. And there’s a “roadmap” trend recently for us too.

Baaah - sheep!
Channer asked if there is a trend of publishing books and doing startups. It reminded me of the recent proliferation of books from many successful designers and developers, especially titles from independent publishers Five Simple Steps and A Book Apart, both of which are side businesses of Mark Boulton Design and Happy Cog respectively. Books by startup founders include Getting Real - the smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application from Jason and David of 37 Signals.**

I own several of these books so I guess I am one of these sheep, right?

Yes and no. Of course, I hope to learn from their experiences and one day succeed too. I hope I am not a sheep because I understand that it was their path to success and not mine. Especially after listening to Godin’s interview, I realize I spend too much time and money buying and reading these books and not enough time creating something - designing and building a web app. But a sheep I shall remain until I go out and build something and start something for myself.

The first step out of the sheeps’ pen was participating in 10K Apart. Even though my entry, a responsive robot calculator, did not receive any recognitions - by some definitions a failure - I have learned from the experience. Although Godin says my idea failed, not me, I will disagree here and say that I did indeed fail. I failed to dedicate the time to build it right instead of rushing to finish code in a small hotel room in Stockholm hours before the deadline. I failed to recognize that I bit off much more than I could chew in code, having never built anything responsive before, let alone a javascript based app.

[Many hours later]

Running Circles Around a Roadmap
I ran a 10km race today. It was my third such race and after last year’s disaster my goal was a modest 1 hour 10 minutes. In the nervous excitement before the race I forgot to use my inhaler but finished in 1:02:59. And I’m still giddy! It reminded me of a line from another book Running for Mortals: 

The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start. 

How true! And not just for running. I’ve learned from past races and with training am now aiming to do a halfmarathon next year, despite my asthma. I think I will get there eventually, but at my own pace and with my own plan. There are many roadmaps to becoming a runner and completing races, including the 10% rule, which is now going out the window. And before a race, custom is to carbo-load by eating tons of pasta the night before, which supposedly gives you extra energy boost the next day. Well, that didn’t work for me. Ultimately I’m getting to know my own limits, pace, etc. and am making my own roadmap to a halfmarathon.

So really, a web app? A startup? Should be a piece of cake in comparison, no? We’ll see, but at least when it comes to trying, taking those first steps, it’s gotta be easier than running with asthma. And I’ll be making my own roadmap.

** Before anyone misinterprets my opinions as criticism of the above mentioned books and intentions of their respective authors and publishers, I am a fan of these books. I would not have bought them otherwise. I also recommend that you read them too. But DO something afterwards - immediately. If it is a book on design, go design something even if it is just a clone of an example from the book. Only then will you know if you’ve actually learned anything. Maybe there is a trend of books like these. Maybe there isn’t. But I imagine Seth Godin will say it doesn’t matter. Just don’t blame them for your own lack of success.