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No Fear - Failing

No Fear - Falling
I was checking my Youtube feed when this video came up, it's called "No Fear - Falling".

It features the professional climber Adam Ondra talking about how to overcome the fear of falling when you are a rock climber.

I think it's a perfect analogy for new indie hackers working on their product. Here are some quotes I found insightful:

  • "If you really want to improve as a climber you need to fall. But, there is the fear, right?"
  • "The fear of falling [...] I think is very natural for us humans. But you can overcome it. You can train it. The more you're exposed to the height, the less you're afraid and the more kind of routine it becomes"
  • "Paradoxically, if you are afraid, you can fall in an uncoordinated way. You can be injured then"
  • "My tip on how to overcome the fear of falling is: at the begining being exposed to the short falls, taking the falls and making it bigger, longer,... and the more positive experience you'll have from falling the less you'll be scared of the fall itself"

Sound familiar?

We are very afraid of our product failing, wondering how to avoid that and what would we do if that happens. Precious time we would be better off using to actually fail, stop being worried and putting our brain to better use.

I'm a very noob climber (mostly indoor, since you asked :) and a very noob indie hacker aswell. Still, I'm more afraid of failing than falling. So, I yet have to work on both.

posted to Icon for group Self Development
Self Development
on September 13, 2020
  1. 2

    Totally makes sense. This is why having a small MVP is important, I think. For psychological reasons. If you spent a year doing something and found it didn't work, you'd be devastated. But the "scar" is smaller if you've built something in a week say.

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