Being an Analyst made becoming an Indie Hacker 10x harder

Just listened to @Courtland on the podcast “Making $280k in Four Weeks with Traf” and really struck by how he applied the 80/20 rule to being an individual contributor. I had never considered how my past jobs as an analyst and other individual contributor gave me the freedom to, and even get encouraged me to obsess and be perfectionist about my small domain. E.g. As a Pricing Analyst I could fixate on the effects of a specific campaign where the Buyer wore so many other hats.

That backgrounds haunts me as I try to think of the enormous responsibilities of attempting to understand what is needed for my app that utilizes 3D rendering from a phone for healthcare. I have long assumed that my assumption that I need to become a domain-expert on what I’m trying to do resulted from a culture of anxious, perfectionist timidity over making a mistake, that I adopted after years of hen pecking abusive bosses, but this point helped me see a whole other experience caused that. I view as normal not having to make massive compromises by overseeing so many different subjects I can’t wait to get good at.

Courtland’s point really helped me realize that have to practice pushing back on this voice that wants me to tunnel down into F-stop settings, or learning Swift coding, or my many weeks in Balsamiq on user interface design, and instead push myself to focus on imperfect decisions and even compromises that move towards a minimum viable product.