You are responsible for your own experience.

In my short (and still going) time in entrepreneurship, I have learned this lesson many times. When I was starting this journey, I always asked other successful entrepreneurs (offline & online) about their experiences. The best advice I ever got was similar to this statement.

Soon I realized that this is true for everything in life. If my experience was similar to yours, or yours similar to mine, than what would be the fun in that? I am glad the way my life experience has been so far. It has been a challenge, fun, sad, happy, exciting, nervous, long nights, sleepless nights and much more.

In my opinion, one of the mistakes that we make as humans is to look up to someone as our “role model”. While the concept of “role model” is good, what it can potentially lead to can be dangerous.

We look at successful startups and we try to convince ourselves that we if we replicate their success story than we will be automatically end up with the same success. This isn’t true at all. Its their experience that made them what they are. You can’t replicate that. You can’t replicate the experience Bill Gates had while building Microsoft, you can replicate the experience Steve Jobs had while building Apple.

So stop trying to recreate experiences, build your own. Enjoy what life throws at you and make the best out of it.

There are a gazillion problems out there that need your skill-set, your time, your efforts and your ideas. Go out there, solve them, help others. That is what your life experience would be.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

And it’s dense, by which I mean not fluffy but packed with insight. He spent years researching and developing this book, and his own struggle is woven into it. Indeed, it’s not about formulas and answers, but about the struggle itself.

One observation set me back. There are lots of people who wanted to do one thing but then got “practical” and did something else “first.” The idea was that they’d be successful and sock away money doing the practical thing, and after that they could go back to the thing they loved. Bronson was sure that, among the hundreds of people that he interviewed, someone would actually have been successful with this strategy. It sounds so reasonable, after all.

But he encountered exactly zero people who pulled it off. Everyone who tried got sucked into the “practical” career and were never able to extract themselves from it. Too comfortable, too many expectations from friends and family, too easy just to keep doing what you’re doing.

Although we admire when someone can do something unique and creative, society is set up to resist such attempts. Your parents, with all the love and best intentions, will urge you to do something that “makes a good living.” Your friends and coworkers resist behaviors that might take you away from them, and will tell you stories of how this or that person tried and failed. And hardest of all, when you are ready to make your leap of faith, the temptations appear; the tremendous opportunities that for some reason only come out of the woodwork when you are ready to walk out the door.

There’s a quote that appears again and again in various forms: “close one door, another opens.” It seems like magical thinking until you see it happen. And it only happens when you don’t leave the door partially open, but instead firmly close it. For some reason, being certain that you’re ready to move on does cause some kind of magic to happen, and I don’t know why.

This doesn’t mean it will be easy. But your struggles will be towards happiness rather than trying to avoid some litany of unpleasant things as most people do — and most people (over 80% in this country, it appears) are unhappy in their careers. And knowing that you are moving towards something that you love (even if you don’t yet know what it is) seems more likely to make you happy than just marking time in a job, waiting for something to happen so you can start doing what you really want.

So from today I have decided to use a new approach. I am going to spend an hour a day on a task that is of my personal choice. It can be going to gym or sketching out an idea or just working on some side project. Whatever it is, I am going to spend an hour a day on it.

I believe that this approach will help me focus on finishing off my personal task list, as well us get me refreshed for the rest of the day.

Think about it, an hour a day = 365 hours per year. And I am pretty sure I can do great things in 365hours.

When I was young, I was told to wait for the perfect time to start having fun, and concentrate completely on my studies. I was told that this is the most important part of my life and once I graduate, with that shiny degree I would be able to do whatever I wish.

Once graduated, I was told to grab a job – start saving and once I have saved enough, paid my dues to the society I would be free to do whatever I wish.

And so on, I wonder when this cycle of advice will end and when will I be able to do “whatever” I wish?
The common theme across all the advice that I received was to meet a certain personal set of conditions before I can make the next move in my life. Now think about all the advices you received, the choices you made and realize that those were nothing but excuses. Blaming some outside force that we can’t control, creating obstacles that aren’t actually there. Soon I realized that this becomes a never ending trap. All sort of thoughts start to come to our mind. “I can’t pursue this dream unless I leave my job and I can’t leave my job since I need to pay bills”.

Another scenario is when we start thinking that we have thousand of problems in our life. We start to rant about anything that’s causing us to stress and fail to do anything to correct it. We get overwhelmed by our thoughts and eventually just give up.

The problem is that perfect time doesn’t exist. It’s illusive. It’s misleading. You will end up waiting for it all your life.

There will never be a perfect time to pursue your dreams, to do something valuable, to make a difference. No matter when you make these choices, there will always be a risk factor.

So my only advice to myself and people around me is to stop waiting. Create change in your life; create change in other people’s life. There is no such thing as “perfection” and there certainly isn’t any perfect time.

Very interesting and thought provoking. So what does this mean to us entrepreneurs who are trying to put a solution in front of our customers. If you are making a new social network, does it fall under the same problem? Too many choices for the end user and they might not be satisfied with your product.

I think it is important to consider this question when developing your product. Will your customers be able to identify it as something different, something new? Are you making just another ______ (whatever that is)? or are you creating a whole new product that will make your customers say “Gee I never thought I needed this solution until I saw this..”

It is very easy to fall into this trap. Don’t go for the generic stuff, create a brand. Make yourself unique.

When you start with your little dream to create something super-amazing, you need to remember that nobody really cares about your idea or startup. You need to give them enough reasons to really believe in what you are doing is worth caring about.

This is hardwork, but then again, who said there is no hardwork in creating a startup? That’s the fun of startup life.

One such great technology is powered by PakTranslations.com – To see how awesome the technology is you can see the urdu version of Mazaydar.com!

So what’s this blog post all about? While I love their technology, one thing that bothered me was their UI. I think they can make the site and technology a great hit if can make users life easier. They already have a great way to do it but its sorta hidden.

So I spent about an hour or so last night, while I couldn’t sleep and came up with this small mock layout.

Some thoughts behind the layout:

1. My goal was to keep the focus on the cool technology. I certainly didn’t spend too much time on the logo, which can certainly use some work

2. The “Instant Translation” is a nifty feature. Users need to know that they can place http://www.paktranslations.com/? infront of any url to get it translated.

3. Bookmarklets are also awesome, I have been using them and they are just simply great to translate anything instantly.

I think the whole website is an amazing idea, a much needed innovation coming out of Pakistan. I am sure as they progress the technology will just keep getting better and better. But I also strongly believe that a good technology which isnt’ accessible is not worth much. People need to be able to use the technology easily to be able to provide feedback that is needed.

Note: The design is totally opensource for PakTranslations team to adapt.

We encourage all of you to contribute with whatever you can. If you are a twitter user please remember to tag  any IDP related tweet with either #IDP, #SWAT or #helpIDP and our system will aggregate that automatically.

Also, we want to do something to raise funds quickly, so we are offering 5 banner spots on the following sites for 1 year for free for anyone who donates a sizable amount to any recognized charity organization who is helping out in SWAT relief effort.

You will be able to put your banner on helpIDPs.com and Mazaydar.com for 1 year.

Let us help those in need. Let’s spread the word via all the social networks that we can think of.