Category Archives: _Essay πŸ“

Nonfiction writing, usually nontechnical.

What you should know before taking your gap year (and lessons from mine)

or alternatively:

I took a year off from my tech career and now I won’t shut up about copywriting.


It was probably going to hurt my career. I was fine with that.

The plan was clichΓ©: quit my job, sell my stuff, spend nine months in Southeast Asia. Produce electronic music, read, and maybe code a little. Then find another tech job and pick up where I left off.

Fast forward twelve months. I haven’t set foot on a plane, I created a software product for DJs, and I’ve developed an obsession with copywriting and digital marketing. What happened?

In this post, I’ll share how, despite all expectations, my gap year catapulted my career into a far more exciting trajectory. I’ll debunk two myths society tells us about gap years and share a framework you can use to generate your own life-changing insights, whether you can take a year or a week off. Lastly, I’ll share advice for taking a gap year of your own.

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How to pick a market that will make you money

As a founder, picking your market is the most important decision you’ll make. It will impact every aspect of your journey, from product development to sales, and ultimately determine how profitable you’ll be. A good market compensates for poor execution on your part, while even the best execution will struggle with a bad one.

So what goes into a good market?

The key attributes are:

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Taking a gap year and working at a fast food restaurant

Most people thought I was crazy for doing this, but I spent the last few months of my gap year working as a short order cook at a family-owned fast-food restaurant. Here’s a short reflection on 2 things I learned from the experience as it pertains to my gap year. If you’re a programmer you’d probably be more interested in this post instead. Of course, I learned much more than this, but the rest is basic food service industry lessons that would be cringy to write about, so I’ll keep it to myself.

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3 Key Habits I Used to Learn Chinese

After failing three times, on my third try learning Chinese I actually became conversational. Here’s what I did, which is generally applicable to any language:

  1. I used Duolingo for 30 minutes every day for over a year.
  2. I went to Chinese language exchanges twice a month, for a year and a half.
  3. I used Hellotalk to find a great language partner to chat and do video calls with. I also used it to crowd source corrections for my bad Chinese.

That’s it! The key is consistent effort over a long time (2 years), mixing solo practice and real conversation.

Other tips:

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