Applying Entrepreneurship To Everyday Life Through The Lean Startup Loop

I think entrepreneurship is going to change the world.

And it is not only because we have these revolutionary products coming out. For me that is just a start.

Entrepreneurship deals with how to develop ideas and turn them into products. And for me this is a philosophy which can be applied to different aspects of your life.

After all, we are influenced by a lot by cultural and social ideas that help us formulate the kind of person we are today.

But maybe some of these ideas or current habits are not adding to overall good in the society or not contributing to your individual happiness.

In schools we are taught how to do a specific job but not the method to discover a better way to do the job.

Rather than expecting the conventional as true, wouldn’t it be awesome if we pick it up as a MVP, iterate on it, and do A/B tests on it. Just imagine how fast will this accelerate the transformations of our cultural values, social values and our work .

This is how we absorb ideas most of the time.

1. We get in touch with an idea from an outside source. If it is in sync with all the different ideas we have absorbed before this and there is very little friction, we accept it. If it is not in tune with our past notions, we could be found just arguing with the idea all together.

2. After this we either reject the idea altogether or we start investing in the idea, and the more we invest, the more we polarise ourselves towards contradicting ideas.

Rather than taking this approach why don’t we take the ideas on a spin through a lean startup loop.

When it comes to you as a person, it is implement rather than build.

The basic concept is to try out different ideas and approaches and evaluate their results and then iterate on them based on personal results.

So, here is how it should work.

Stage 1 – Idea

Ideas come in all different shapes and sizes. But, let’s broadly categorise them in the following categories.

1. Spiritual – Ideas that aim at making you more happy in life. Even religion is supposed to make you more happy and fulfilled in life. So all religious ideas also fall under this category.
2. Productivity Ideas
3. Ideas for work/life – How you should work in everyday. Find something you love.
4. World View – How we interact with others and the views you hold about others in the world.

Stage 2 – Evaluation

Create a implementation plan.

Doesn’t matter what the idea is about, create a proper experiment to absorb the idea in your life for a certain amount of time. For example:-

1. Will wake up at 8 a.m to give the day a early start for 2 months
2. Will meditate half an hour for 2 months
3. Will go to the gym everyday for 2 months

Your experiment should be long enough so that you can see its proper impact because initially you won’t be able to evaluate it because there is going to be too much friction from your brain.

Stage 3 – Measure the result

See if the experiment made you more happy, productive, passionate, and compassionate.

And depending on the result make changes to the approach build upon your experiments and keep on going.

Keep on taking your old habits, old ideas, new ideas and new habits. Through this loop.

Make incremental decisions. Evaluate how an idea effects before your accept or reject it.

When you finally end up with a solution, publish your advice. This is the whole point. Whatever you discover don’t keep that to yourself. That will make it stale. Share it with others and see how it works. What are their views on it. See how other people iterate on your advice. This is how the new stuff keeps on happening.

We sometimes stick with the first thing we learn and never iterate or question them. And this ain’t right.

Become an entrepreneur in every day life and that’s how we are going to change the world

P.S.– I am working on a Wikipedia like project, where people get together to collect the top ten resources to solve a particular problem. Here is a board we are curating on how to improve your inner self, please drop your recommendations. Follow me on medium/twitter @pavtiwana

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