Category Archives: _Essay ๐Ÿ“

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 wonโ€™t shut up about copywriting.


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

The plan was clichรฉ: 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 havenโ€™t set foot on a plane, I created a software product for DJs, and Iโ€™ve developed an obsession with copywriting and digital marketing. What happened?

In this post, Iโ€™ll share how, despite all expectations, my gap year catapulted my career into a far more exciting trajectory. Iโ€™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, Iโ€™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 youโ€™ll make. It will impact every aspect of your journey, from product development to sales, and ultimately determine how profitable youโ€™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. Hereโ€™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.

Thatโ€™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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