Wanting is free

I finished my first month in San Francisco.

We work across three time zones now. Three agendas, three sets of meetings, three sets of things going wrong and going right, all inside the same day. Someone is always starting their morning while someone else is closing their evening.

And underneath it, the uncertainty. Not one big uncertainty. Dozens of small ones, every day.

In startups everyone talks about resilience. Getting hit and standing back up. That's true and I'm not going to argue with it.

Then there's the other thing people say, which is that it comes down to how badly you want it. I used to think that was the real question. I don't anymore.

Because wanting is free.

Everybody wants it

I've never met a person who didn't want something. Nobody says they don't want a better company, better work, a better life. Wanting costs nothing, so everyone has plenty of it.

Which means the wanting tells you nothing. It isn't evidence. It's a claim.

The only evidence is the price. What you actually gave up, and when.

In my work I have a rule about numbers. A number you agreed before the work started is a measurement. A number you built afterwards is a story. I think the same thing is true of people.

Wanting is the story you tell afterwards. The price is the measurement.

I don't believe in discipline

People sometimes tell me I'm the most disciplined person they've met. I understand why it looks that way from outside, but it's a misread.

Here's the evidence against my own discipline. I read somewhere between 20 and 60 books a year. Look at those two numbers. They're nowhere near each other. That isn't what a disciplined reader's shelf looks like.

It's what it looks like when someone pays full price for one thing at a time. Whatever I'm chasing gets everything, and the rest waits. Some years reading is what I'm paying for. Some years it isn't.

So when people ask where I find motivation, the question surprises me. Motivation isn't a resource I go looking for. It's a symptom. If I have to go searching for it, that usually means I haven't agreed to the price yet.

Earn it first

I was 7 when I asked my father for a PlayStation 2.

We were doing well then. He could have bought it that afternoon without thinking about it. Instead he took me to Aksaray, the textile trading district of Istanbul, and put me to work.

He was a well known tradesman there. Most people in that district had no idea I was his son. I found it hard. I worked for months, and I met more people in those months than in the whole rest of my childhood.

Then one day he took my hand, walked me to the bank in Sirkeci, and bought the PlayStation. And he said one sentence to me.

If you want something in life, you have to earn it first.

I want to tell you the rest of it, because leaving it out would make this essay dishonest.

Later his health failed. His closest friend, who was also his business partner, cheated him. He lost everything.

So I know the other half of this. Paying the price does not guarantee you get the thing. My father paid every price there was, and it was taken from him anyway.

I've been working since that day. Not because paying guarantees anything. Because it's the only part of this I control.

What I paid

Since I was a child I've done what I wanted. I know how that sounds. Let me say what I mean.

I wanted to support my family. So I sold at open air markets at least two days a week to pay for my exam course, and in my last year I moved to open high school to make the time. Nobody made me do any of that. It was the price, and I paid it.

I want to be useful to people. I'm still paying for that one.

I want to read more, travel more, see more, and understand people better. I give things up for it, and I'm aware of exactly what.

Where's discipline in any of it? I have no idea. I've never needed discipline for something I'd already agreed to pay for.

Every want has a price list

Most people have never looked at theirs.

They know what they want. They've never sat down and worked out what it costs, which is the part that decides everything. Because once you write down the price, you find out something uncomfortable: you can only afford one or two at a time.

Time is the obvious currency and it isn't the real one. The real one is attention. The part of you that can carry a hard problem for months without putting it down. That runs out long before the hours do, and most people budget the hours and forget the rest.

So the question isn't only what you want. It's what you're willing to stop paying for.

"I really want it, but"

Any sentence that starts that way means the same thing. I want it at a discount.

The chain of external reasons. The obstacles. The things that aren't possible right now. What all of it is doing is negotiating the price down.

I want to be careful here, because I'm not saying the obstacles are fake. I have all of them. I solve a pile of them every day, and nothing in my life has ever gone smoothly. I don't know anyone building something for whom it has. You're always looking for a way to make something happen that isn't happening on its own. That's most of the job.

But I've noticed something, in myself and in the people around me. When the price is already agreed, I don't spend much time on the external factors. I spend it on the next payment. And the moment I catch myself building the case for why something isn't working, I'm usually looking at an invoice I don't want to pay.

That isn't a rule. It's a tell. And it's worth learning to see in yourself.

Three questions

This piece isn't about how to find what you want. I don't know how to teach that, and I'm suspicious of people who say they do.

It's three questions.

What do you want?

What does it cost?

And have you paid it yet, or are you still asking for a discount?

Sit with the last one longer than is comfortable. That's where the answer is.

I'm writing this on very little sleep, in a city I moved to a month ago, with more uncertainty than I've had in years. Three time zones, and something unresolved in all of them.

Somebody will read that and call it a hard month. It isn't. It's the invoice for the thing I want, and I agreed to it before I came.