How I bought a wi-fi scale, quit my job and started living

Stop fucking procrastinating and do some fucking work!

This is not what I heard from my boss (although sometimes I deserved such treatment), but the name of one of the hundreds of books in the Amazon catalog dedicated to the fight against procrastination.







There are so many books and articles on the fight against procrastination that the authors no longer know how to attract attention. And reading such literature in itself has become a form of procrastination. I experienced it all on myself. Some two years ago I was no different from thousands, if not millions of other unfortunates, who unsuccessfully try to get rid of the head disease by applying a plantain leaf to the scrotum.

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I was the same guy who, once again skipping the deadline for the preparation of the report, saved the bookmark another article on how to stop postponing things for later.

None of these articles for some reason did not help.







No, they had a lot of practical advice, and some of them even had a temporary therapeutic effect on me, but sooner or later everything returned to normal. And the problem was solved much easier. It was necessary not to look for the best cure for procrastination, but simply to exclude the conditions for its appearance. To understand this, it took me a couple of years, as well as a small supply of decisiveness and scales with a wi-fi module.

Vacation is key

Two years ago, I worked in the Russian office of Panasonic. And in general I liked it. Anyway, I thought so. (I thought I simply did not know how to deal with procrastination). I have always loved electronics, and I was pleased to realize myself as part of a large company that produces cool appliances. Even if I did not develop iron, but was engaged in its Internet promotion. True, even doing sometimes something cool, I constantly had to spend time on some nonsense.

I participated in formal meetings, prepared meaningless reports and attended some events resembling the CPSU congresses.

Moreover, I often had to execute orders that, in my opinion, were fundamentally incorrect and did not cost a single minute of time spent on them. I convinced myself that there is always some kind of routine, and the world is not perfect - you just have to learn how to cope with all this. But in fact, only deeper elm in the quagmire of procrastination.



At some point it came to the fact that the main event of my life was a vacation. At first I was preparing for it for a long time, thinking through my ideal trip in details. And then he made out the photos and recalled the best moments - until he switched to preparing a new trip.



So, probably, I continued to suffer, if I didn’t come across a network on the Withings body scale one day - scales, which send statistics to the Internet themselves, using a wi-fi connection.







It seemed to me that it is very cool and comfortable. You do not need to enter data manually to collect statistics - after all, most people who promise to do this for themselves, quit in a week or two. I ordered scales for myself and even gave a reality show on my blog about how I lose weight. As a result, dropped fifteen kilograms. So began my acquaintance with the world "Internet of Things". Soon I got hooked on Kickstarter and began to finance projects there, investing one hundred or two hundred dollars in new developments, still not knowing that I had entered the road that would lead me through the looking glass.

Lonely heroes

By that time, having worked at Panasonic for more than 5 years and having studied the company's work from the inside, I already understood that such famous corporations are practically incapable of creating innovative products.



Big companies are extremely conservative. They do not create new markets, but enter them when others have already broken the path for them (there are exceptions to the general rule, but only a few of them). Panasonic spends a lot of money on research. But almost all of them are aimed at improving the existing products - to increase the clarity of the image in the TV panel or lower the cost of any razor. At the same time, the lone heroes from Kickstarter tried to do something truly innovative, worthwhile and useful, which indeed could change people's lives. This world really fascinated me, even though a fifth of the teams I funded failed, without releasing the promised product, while others produced a product that did not live up to expectations.

The creators of the innovation dock promised that the iPhone installed in it could be taken with one hand - and the dock would not budge. But he, bastard, still jumps.

Despite the setbacks, studying “Kickstarter” began to bring me even more pleasure than thinking through the perfect vacation.



But I did not think that this passion would help change my life until I saw the project of the Mio ALPHA heart rate monitor .







Its creators promised to develop a watch that allows you to measure the pulse, not bothering with the sensor tightening under the shirt. Just put on your hand - and run. Then it dawned on me: such a thing could have a good market in Russia. After all, running is in fashion and the number of runners is growing rapidly. You can earn! And without thinking twice, I made my first serious investment in a new life and invested ten thousand dollars in a heart rate monitor.

Group of crazy

I was the first at Kickstarter to invest such a large amount in Mio Alpha. And startup founder Liz Dickinson immediately wrote an enthusiastic letter to me - thanks, they say, that he believed in us.





Yes please! I participated in the creation of a cool product, and this allowed me to come to terms with reality when I sat at Panasonic at the next pointless meeting on the security protocols of sites.



Soon, the idea to open my online store selling gadgets from the Internet of Things world took hold of me. The product is non-mass, which means that large electronics networks will not sell them. And if they try, they will not be able to sell it correctly, because for them it will be exotic. Competition from retailers like Le Futur didn’t scare me either. They appeared before Kikstarter, and in my opinion, their business model is outdated, if it ever was ever relevant. But at the same time, I no longer had any doubts that the “Internet of things” would become a big topic in the coming years. There will be a huge new market, and the one who takes part in its creation, one way or another will be on horseback.



I sagitated a group of the same crazy, and together we launched Madrobots.ru , an online store of gadgets that change our ideas about what devices can do if you connect them to the Internet.

The first year the store was our secret job. In the afternoon we carried our corporate watch. Evenings and weekends were given to their business.

And once I noticed a strange thing.



When it came to Madrobots, without any secrets of “fighting procrastination,” I did everything that was necessary. I was happy to perform even tasks that at work brought me melancholy. I didn’t have to force myself to do anything. On the contrary, sometimes I had to force myself not to do it. To relax, spend time with your family or watch a movie. Such a problem as procrastination, no longer existed for me - unless of course you call procrastination the desire to postpone rest for later.

Statement on the table

The final of the story was predetermined: I put the statement on the table.



Now Madrobots is my job. And in this work, I do not postpone matters until later and do not force myself to do something. I just do.



And every day I want to do more and more. I do not need an alarm clock to wake up (although, of course, I always have a Pebble on my hand). But better than any alarm clock, I’m awakened by the joy of anticipation - there are so many tasks ahead that I so want to solve. Among them there are interesting, quite a few and rather routine ones, but I perform them with the same joy. Because there is an interesting goal - and no one bothers me to try to achieve it. It all depends on me, on my partners and colleagues with whom I work. We believe that in Russia you can not only sell smart gadgets, but also create them. And we have a plan for how to do this. And we in Madrobots have already begun to implement it (about which I will tell, probably, in another post).



In the end, I realized that the only way to fight procrastination is to find a cause that truly entices you. If it seems to you that you love your job and have chosen the right job, but you still have to struggle with procrastination, then something is fundamentally wrong.







Probably, the problem is in unbearable conditions in your office - the boss, the idiot, the intrigues of colleagues, the bureaucratic routine, the lack of daylight or the uncomfortable working chair. Or maybe you are just fooling yourself, and you don’t really want to do what you do.



In this sense, procrastination is not an enemy, as I once thought, but a friend.



This is such an invaluable and real friend who tells you the unpleasant truth: “Boy, you are at a dead end - and it’s time to look for a way out if you don’t want to live here until the end of your days.”



Stop fucking procrastinating. Just change your life.

Bonus A five-minute video on how to overcome procrastination: