Acting on your ideas

(futuristic music) - I actually have been arm wrestling recently with planning software, with task scheduler software where I've tried out a couple different task schedulers and just always finding a to-do list. I need a to-do list that does these specific things, and I keep waiting for the developers to build it out. And it's one of those kind of foundational projects that you build when you're learning programming, when you're really starting to learn programming architecture, so I've always been a little resistant. I'm like, this is a problem that's been solved a million times. But it's really freeing to be able to say, okay, these aren't doing what I want them to do, so I'm going to go ahead and code my own solution. - After working in a startup for maybe a year or so, I figured that I still am not getting what I want out of the startup, which is I want to get more involvement in more than just coding, a little bit of maybe a product. What makes a good software is not just coding, so I kind of want more exposure. So I ended up trying to do my own thing, which didn't make money or anything, but I wrote an app called Monkey Write. It's a app to teach people how to write Chinese, and I kind of have to oversee the whole process. What am I going to build? What does it do? How am I going to, of course, do the technical implementation, but also just product-wise? How do I make a good UX? How do I make it look cute so that people are attracted to it? After that I realized that I actually like being independent, but I don't really like always wanting to figure out how to make money, essentially, so then I became a freelancer where I am still doing that kind of more independent, I'm working on the app by myself sort of, but then I have a client that pays my bills. So I kind of find a good balance, and I've been doing freelancing for awhile now. - I really admire people who is in somehow search of these entrepreneurial opportunities and entrepreneurial inspirations, because that's what's been driving many of these innovations out there, especially in computer science and in technologies and information technology in general. So entrepreneurship is really critical, especially in making a difference especially in our lives. - Ideas are sometimes like raindrops. You can get way too many of them. And unfortunately you only have time to do very few of them. Pick and choose what you choose to spend your time on as wisely as you possibly can. And I still love the thing of, hey, if you don't want to finish something, don't even start it. The other thing is, just because you can't do an idea now doesn't mean you can't do this thing ever. There are times where I'll think of something that I think is a really cool idea, and I just write it down and stick it in my engineering logbook and say, hey, here's an idea, blah, blah, blah, give a quick synopsis of what I think the idea is, and then leave it alone. There are times where I come back to 'em because I still think it was a solid idea. But be very choosy and very picky and very stingy with your time. (futuristic music)