4 things that this year have made me improve the most

Last post of the year: 2016 is going to end and here comes the time we make a balance of the past year. For me 2016 has been crazy, like every year for every startupper: you have lots of stress, lots of things to do, lots of problems and an emotional rollercoaster that never ends. We of Immotionar had made lots of steps further in our vision for providing full body virtual reality: our suite has come out in private beta in July, then went public last month. We made our first event. We developed Hit Motion, the first cross platform full body VR and had reviews even in Chinese!

But the most important thing is that I personally made lots of steps further in becoming a better person, a better startupper, a better developer. I could write lots of words about what I learned and give you advices and I surely will do it, but not now. I think you just want to briefly read this post and then start the New year’s eve party 🙂 … so I’ll just give you some 4 short hints!

First hint is: make something that will squeeze you like a lemon. You can read lots of books, articles, etc… but it is real life that makes you evolve. Put yourself in a situation where you find yourself kilometers away from your comfort zone and where you can’t escape. For me this situation has been the European Innovation Academy: a startup accelerator where for 3 weeks we got lots of lessons to attend and a great amount of exercises to do…. and everything was in English language. There our business idea has been destroyed 3 times, I got lot of bad feedbacks on my public speaking ability, we got insulted by investors, we were forced to do spamming for marketing and so on (and in the meanwhile my friend were in vacations!). 3 weeks have been like 3 years. A pain each day… but, as I jokingly say everytime that I talk about the EIA “It was so hard, that either I suicided or my brain learned how to handle stressful situations 🙂” and the second thing was the one that happened. Now I know better how to handle problems (as I described here); furthermore I’ve got new friends and I’ve learnt really a lot there: now I’m better in public speaking, better in marketing, better in business vision. I would advice everyone to attend the EIA program. Do something really hard: you’ll learn really a lot.

Second hint is: fuck motivation. One of the most important reading of this year is this one that a redditor adviced me to read (actually that guy adviced me to read also another super article) Take your time to read it. It will show you why motivation is almost useless and everything you need is discipline. You can’t work only if you feel motivated, you have to work anyway. That’s how it works: just sit on your PC and write code. No excuses, no everything. Ah, so you don’t feel like doing it? It’s ok, do it anyway :). This is the only path if you want to obtain something in life… if you don’t work every day to follow your dreams, no one will do that for you.

Third hint is: life is unfair and you have value only if you are useful. Deal with it. This super-famous article will show you why you have to change your mindset and become more practical in evaluating your value as other people find you useful. The video it suggests is one of the most beautiful motivational videos. Close! Close! Close!

Lat hint is: set priorities. You can’t do everything that you want to do… there’s simply not enough time and enough energy. So decide what are the few main priorities for you and assign your resources (time, money, energy) to them. If, completed them, you have still something, you can do non-prior stuff. All most successful people do like this. Trying to realize 10 projects is the path to fail in everyone. Just do one.

And that’s it… just 4 pills that helped me in this 2016 and hope will help you to start your 2017 with the right foot. If you have other advices that helped you during this year, feel free to share them in the comments to help the other readers!

I wish you a wonderful year! 🙂 🙂 🙂