For almost a year I’ve been helping social media curation tool Storify as a software engineer with their Node.js apps, Backbone.js front-end development as well as supporting Storify API, implementing Twitter API v1.1 intergration, writing blog posts and answering Storify API questions. We had some great moments and a few weeks ago I summed them up in a post.
Tag: startuplife
Startup Life Balance and My Mexican Vacation
Over the past eight months, I’ve been juggling extremely demanding startup work at Storify, exceptionally fulfilling teaching assignments at Hack Reactor, General Assembly and Marakana, and writing my books and webapplog posts. By applying Yerkes–Dodson law, stress helped me to boost my productivity and I was happier than ever. However, in the last few weeks I slightly overestimated my capacity to endure the fast-paced startup life. Happily, I was able to take two weeks off and to spend them in Los Cabos, Baja California, Mexico.
A passive quiet leisure time seemed like a great way to reflect, and to fill up my mental tanks for the future. I opted for Los Cabos due to its proximity to the Bay Area, convenience and friendliness of the local people. Indeed, there are plenty of English-speaking staff and my favorite chain stores, like Starbucks, Ruth’s Steakhouse, OXXO, Mega, Walmart and of course (not so favorite but still familiar) McDonald’s, and Burger King.
By the end of the vacation, I’d read a few good books and stumbled upon some amazingly fantastic podcasts about entrepreneurship:
- Civilization: The West and the Rest
- Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
- The Money Pillow Podcast
- Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast
I also started reading Smashing Node.js. It’s a very approachable beginner’s Node.js book. Nevertheless, I found there some gems such as answers to why we do things the way we do them at Storify, because the tech stack described in the book and JavaScript patterns are astonishingly similar to the ones that we have.
At the end of the break, I learned an important lesson that we need to be more realistic about our present (but unrealistic about our future), and step aside for a bit to take a look at a bigger picture. In addition, I pledged to myself to prioritize my life and the side-projects I undertake.