On Just Doing Things

[Duck Typing, Permission Based Society, Heel Hooks, I’m Not an Engineer, BirdDog is A Real BirdDog, Talk is Cheap]

2025.05.11

XCIX

Thesis: If you want to be something that you’re not, there’s no one who will tell you that you’ve become that thing–you can just become that thing. 

[Duck Typing]

No one needs to tell you that you’re some specific things. If you just do things, then you’re that thing.

This is like the concept of duck typing in programming, where you infer what something is based on what it does:

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck.

In other words, if to be an author, you need to publish a book, and you’ve published a book, you’re an author.

If to be a painter, you need to have made 10 paintings, and you’ve made 10 paintings, you’re a painter. That doesn’t mean you’re a good painter, but it does mean you’re a painter.

Labels have no impact on reality. Either the thing is true or the thing is false.

This is amazing news, because it really does mean you can just do things. 

Reality tells you when you’re those things, not someone else. In my own life, I’ve seen myself “just become” things, like a martial artist, an engineer, a business person. I’ve also seen BirdDog “just become” a company.

The common “go to college to become a thing” mindset is quite the opposite of that. .

[Permission Based Society]

College really is the antithesis of duck typing. It’s based on this assumption that you put an unskilled child or young adult in at one end, and four years later, out the other side, like magic, there’s this skilled laborer that comes out the other side.

It has to be declared that the person is an {insert role}. They have a sort of certificate of authenticity, this degree paper, that confirms, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they really can do the thing now.

Trade schools are no different, if a little more transparent.

This certainly isn’t always bad–I do want my surgeons to have a certificate of authenticity.

But, for a lot of things, it doesn’t actually make much sense. In the real world, if you “do business,” you are a business person, regardless of whether or not someone tells you that you are. 

Sure, it’s true that I have a piece of paper that says, “Noah can do business now.”

But it’s also true that, sometimes, I walked out of the classes that were supposed to earn that piece of paper for me to take calls with our fund administrator & even outright skipped to fundraise. Meaning, I was doing business things before the degree said I could. 

More broadly, the most successful business people I know who are my age did not wait until a piece of paper said they could start. They just started. 

That’s a really important mindset shift that is the opposite of what school implies–do things a, b, and c, and then you will become X. It promotes a Permission Based Society where you need someone or an institution to give you a green light to go ahead and do things.

Reality doesn’t care about the piece of paper. Reality doesn’t even really care whether or not you yourself believe that you’re something that you are!

[Heel Hooks]

I’ve been out of jiu jitsu practice for a while and am just now getting in the habit of going regularly. So, when I was at a class yesterday, for a moment, I found myself doubting if I was a blue belt and thought I might be a white belt.

We were going over a couple of chokes I’ve always struggled with, Anaconda & D’arce. I was asking a brown belt for some help with it, and I had an iconic jiu jitsu flash of realizing just how much I didn’t know. He went very in depth into some nuance on the technique I had never conceptualized before. 

The overwhelming nature of my own ignorance made me feel like a white belt again.

Then, we switched to open mat and started rolling. A guy who was maybe half a foot taller than me & well built walked over and wanted to grapple with me. In the back of my mind, I thought I was going to get my ass kicked.

It wasn’t easy, but in our 9 minute round, I ended up subbing him twice. Once with a heel hook & once with a rear naked choke, both of which I was able to get to quite rapidly after being in disadvantageous positions (the former actually came from him misplacing his leg behind me while I was in turtle). 

Even though I felt like a white belt, I still rolled like a blue belt. I did the very Jiu Jitsu thing of beating a larger opponent by using leverage. My feelings before the roll didn’t really affect what I was capable of doing.

That’s even the philosophy my first coach had–him giving us a belt didn’t make us any better. He would give us a belt once we were performing at the level of someone with that belt. Before I got my blue belt, if I traveled to random gym, they assumed I was already a blue belt.

The promotion itself had nothing to do with the belt, and everything to do with actual performance.

[I’m Not an Engineer]

I am a self taught software engineer. 

I’ve had indispensable mentors and have read a lot about it, but I did not get a degree in software engineering, or even a minor. 

Nor did I follow the apprenticeship path of going to a company to learn that way.

When we started BirdDog, I had some overwhelming moments of doubt. 

I had never built a software product that people really used before. I had never even queried a database for god’s sake. 

The most impressive technical thing I had done was make my website during the two months leading up to the start of BirdDog, and even that more so than anything served to show me how much I didn’t know. 

But, I started doing the things a software engineer does. I coded!

And now, I’ve built a software product with paying customers that is solving real world problems and making people’s lives easier. 

If you define a software engineer as someone who can make a useful piece of software, I guess I’m a software engineer. 

Nobody told me that. As a matter of fact, I had people who told me that I’m not that. And there are some still telling me I’m not that.

But it doesn’t matter.

Because I am, by a number of definitions, a software engineer, even when I don’t think I am.

If you meet the definition of a thing, as a matter of fact, you’re that thing.

[BirdDog is A Real BirdDog]

When you start a business, it really isn’t a business right away. It’s you and one or two other people myopically focused on building a product and getting people to talk to you about it. 

At some point, the focus switches to getting someone to pay for that product. 

Then, after that, you’re trying to get more people to pay for it.

Oh, and by the way, if it’s a subscription, you’re also trying to make sure that they don’t cancel. 

Somewhere in there, it becomes a “business.” I’m not really sure when, but it happens, and you maybe don’t realize it right away, because spiritually, it’s still just you and another person myopically focused on building a product and getting people to talk to you about it.

But there are these moments that shock you and remind you, “This is a real business,” before you slip back into the build and sell mode where you ignore definitions and just do. 

One such moment happened for me when I was on a demo call last week. I quoted a Sales Director a low 5 figure price for a subscription for him & his team of 7 & he said, “yeah, that sounds reasonable.” 

That’s not what gave me the oh shit moment, though. That came when I checked out the company he said that we’re competing with for the sale. It’s a nearly 40 person team out of India that has had a fully functioning product as early as Q2 of ‘24.

In other words, Jack & I are two manning against another company the size of a platoon. It was shocking and really cool because we realized we’re competing for a sale with a “real business.” Therefore, we’re probably a “real business,” too.

[Talk is Cheap]

The drawback to living like you’re duck typing is that since nobody is telling what you are, you might forget it yourself.

It can be sort of like living from paycheck to paycheck if you’re not careful, where the paychecks are real world evidence that you are what you’ve come to believe you are.

But at some point, you can look back and, based on the long string of evidence, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are that thing. 

And, since no one gave you permission to be that thing, no one can take it away, either.

A quote from one of the best films ever made:

So, what are you waiting for?

It’s time to start doing things.

Live Deeply,