Stop following the same people
Disclaimer: I know I risk projecting a pedantic image with the following words (also, the language doesn't help) but I only want to share my point of view on the way too many of us (and too often) just stay inside our own bubble without even thinking twice about it.
So, I decided to stop paying attention to people like me.
And who am I? A regular programmer in the first world who is doing ok in our privileged, 9-5, industry. I even go to some tech talks and meet-ups now and then!
I think I should start following interesting people. People that are producing content, sharing interesting articles that empower critical thinking and get the best out of me. Even better if I have to stand some criticism.
Why follow the Nth development-related few-hundred-thousand-followers account? People I mentioned above are producing much more interesting content (and probably some of them would RT that popular account sometime anyway).
I don't want articles about how good E Corp's IoT consultancy services are. That's propaganda they trust his employees will spread, not what makes me a better engineer.
I don't want to read an article about how the newsletters are here to stay (again). Instead, I want to read from those authors when they explain why they are starting that newsletter in the first place. Why in Substack or why they made it from scratch.
I don't want to read an article about the latest fancy JS framework (this one was easy, right?). Instead, I want to read about the indie hacker that is open sourcing that piece of code that turned out so much handy from his latest weekend project.
I don't want to read about the new unicorn in the sky. Instead, I want to read about people failing night by night. Until they don't.
I want to listen to makers, not marketers.
Pd. I feel like I have to clarify; This text doesn't aim to judge (not that anyone would care, anyway) the different ways of living people have. Just trying to share a thought and draw some attention on alternative ways of using the tools we have at hand.
Agree 100%
It wasn't until this year that I consciously started seeking out makers instead of all the junk I previously followed and tbh it was one of the best decisions ever.
At first it was surprisingly difficult the find them. It's like you get trapped in your own little bubble on the internet.
Eventually I randomly found the indie hackers podcast and that was really the starting point. Since then I've listened to, read about, and even met some great makers. It's been an amazing year already :)
Here's a few off my favourites off the top my head and their podcasts, blogs or products:
I've actually been thinking about publishing and growing this list online somewhere.
It’s a shameless plug, but I just started a newsletter called One to Better onetobetter.com where I write about the projects I’m making every month. I build one project and launch it monthly as part of the LaunchMBA.co group I joined. I also breakdown what I learned. You’re comments resonated with me and I agree. Cheers, Thomas ✌️
My boyfriend and I found the same problem, that's why we're now building a community of "starters" at monthlystart.com
As we're building it, you may see the website is not 100% ready, but we value the process of creation and making it public before is a typical shiny website.
We love to talk about real things, and giving real people from our experience in the tech industry.
Our objective is to share real personal projects (with its failures).
We are noobs at this but you can find us on our twitter accounts. Our DMs are always open to talk!!
👉 @teodora_dobre
👉 @rescodeio
Thanks for sharing.
"Our objective is to share real personal projects (with its failures)." I think this is very important indeed!
Yeaah, we want real things! Not everybody makes $100k on revenue the first month...