“[..]. Working on a project of your own is as different from ordinary work as skating is from working. It’s more fun, but also much more productive.”
“There is something special about working on a project of your own. I wouldn’t say exactly that you’re happier. A better word would be excited, or engaged. [..]”
“You have moments of happiness when things work out, but they don’t last long, because then you’re in the next problem. So why do it at all? Because to the kind of people who like working this way, nothing else feels as right. You feel as if you’re an animal in its natural habitat, doing what you were meant to do — not always happy, maybe, but awake and alive.”
“So where exactly is the edge of projects of one’s own? [..]. There turn out to be two senses in which work can be one’s own: 1) that you’re doing it voluntarily, rather than merely because someone told you to, and 2) that you’re doing it by yourself.”
“[..] it’s a mistake to insist dogmatically on “work/life balance”. Indeed, the mere expression “work/life” embodies a mistake: it assumes work and life are distinct. For those to whom the word “work” automatically implies the dutiful plodding kind, they are. But for the skaters, the relationship between work and life would be better represented by a dash than a slash. I wouldn’t wan to work on anything that I didn’t want to take over my life.”
“[..]. For a project to feel like your own you must have sufficient autonomy. You can’t be working to order, or slowed down by bureaucracy.”
“One way to ensure autonomy is not to have a boss at all. There are two ways to do that: to be the boss yourself, and to work on projects outside work. Though they’re at opposite ends of the scale financially, startups and open source projects have a lot in common, including the fact that they’re often run by skaters. And indeed, there’s a wormhole from one end of the scale to the other: one of the best ways to discover startup ideas is to work on a project just for fun.”
“If your projects are the kind that make money, it’s easy to work on them. It’s harder when they’re not. And the hardest part, usually, is morale. That’s where adults have it harder than kids. Kids just plunge in and build their treehouse without worrying about whether they’re wasting their time, or how it compares to other treehouses. And frankly we could learn a lot from kids here. The high standards most grownups have fro “real” work do not always serve us well.”
“The most important phase in a project of one’s own is at the beginning: when you go from thinking it might be cool to do x to actually doing x. And at that point high standards are not merely useless but positively harmful. There are a few people who start too many new project, but for more, I suspect, who are deterred by fear of failure from starting projects that would have succeeded if they had.”
“Ideally we can have the best of both worlds (adults and kids work mindsets): to be deliberate in choosing to work on projects of our own, and carelessly confident in starting new ones.”
En este ensayo, Paul Graham reflexiona sobre los beneficios que tiene trabajar en proyectos propios. Compara la emoción de los niños cuando se embarcan en un proyecto que les interesa demasiado: no les preocupa estar perdiendo el tiempo ni comparan su trabajo con el de otros; lo único que quieren es trabajar en ello. Así mismo les sucede a aquellos adultos que trabajan en algo propio: para ellos, la idea de un balance entre vida y trabajo no existe, pues aquello en lo que trabajan hace parte de su vida. Las únicas personas que buscan ese balance son aquellas que hacen algo que no les interesa y trabajan por obligación.
También menciona que las dos características que hacen que sintamos que un proyecto es propio son: 1) lo debemos hacer por voluntad propia, no porque alguien nos lo pida, y 2) lo hacemos por nuestra propia cuenta. Resalta también la utilidad que puede tener este tipo de proyectos, pues varias de las ideas importantes que han tenido un impacto significativo en el mundo han surgido de ellos; es decir, de personas que han trabajado en sus propios proyectos, muchas veces de forma desinteresada, solo por gusto y satisfacción personal.
Siento que este ensayo es más una invitación a tener un proyecto propio y a llevarlo a cabo de forma infantil: sin comparar ni esperar grandes resultados, meramente por el gusto de hacerlo. Asimismo, siembra la idea de dedicarnos a proyectos de este tipo como carrera profesional: trabajar para ganar dinero solo en proyectos que nos importen realmente, donde la idea de separar la vida del trabajo no tenga cabida porque ese proyecto hace parte de nuestra vida.