October 2019
Beginner
400 pages
7h 56m
English
Content preview from The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
June 2Castles in the Air
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau—Walden (1854)
Ideas are great, but ideas without execution are of little value. Or as the often misattributed quote goes, “Vision without execution is just hallucination.”
Of course, the flip side of this can be just as devastating—all action without a plan.
But which is really better? If you have a great idea that you don't act upon you have little to show, but if you race ahead and take action without a plan at least perhaps something gets done.
Thoreau pleaded that we should live our lives today, have our adventures now, live in our castles in the air as a way to live as ourselves today rather than waiting to build the proper foundation so we can then live as we are meant to.
No one can map out a guaranteed plan of success, so in a way we are all guessing anyway. As Thoreau went on to suggest:
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Meet with success and then do the practical thing—build a foundation under it.
Challenge Question
- What are you missing by choosing to focus on the foundation for your vision?
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.