Schlep

I read a lot on the internet, and am always open to new and interesting blogs. One blog in particular has had a profound impact on my life and is one that I constantly am thinking about. That blog is Schlep Blindness by Paul Graham, one of the co-founders of Y Combinator.

That blog in particular is impactful for startup founders and general entrepreneurs alike, and is one that I think most people should read. However, it impacts people differently based on where they are at in their life. I went through YC last summer, which is also the time that the noted blog above landed on my desk. Naturally, this is impactful. I’m a startup founder working on some problem, it is a good fit!

As time has passed however, I come back to that blog mentally, often, and think about the general idea of schlep, which simply means “a tedious or difficult journey” and wonder more about my own origins of it. Me? I spent a lot of time in my youth playing too many video games. Many of those being MMORPGs, which are actually filled with schlep problems! MMOs can really be viewed as a sliding scale of schlep problems, some reserved for only the most insane.

MMOs are filled with quests, and at some point, many introduced the concept of a daily quest. This is a quest you log in to do every day for gold, rewards, achievements, whatever. It is literally a grind. Games such as RuneScape are just one massive grind after the next. It’s hardly masked as a game so much as a clicking simulator. Yet people love it (myself included..why?)

Why are people drawn to these insane schlep problems in video games? Different people to varying degrees of course, but when you read about the guy that leveled to the max level in World of Warcraft only killing low-leveled boars to mimic the wow episode of South Park, you have to wonder, why? This energy could be harnessed for other, more productive things. People are entitled to their free time of course, and there isn’t anything wrong with leisure. But it does get my mind thinking.

Ok, rant aside, what am I trying to say?

What I’m getting at is the Schlep blog had a profound impact on me and it clicked into place a realization that playing a lot of video games in my youth, particularly in MMOs, was exposing me to schlep-type problems. Problems where you know the path is going to be long and hard, but you do it anyways. Why? Maybe some award at the end, or just to say that you did it. If there is any type of reward at the end of the tunnel, there will be at least one person out there that will see it through. Maybe even if there isn’t a reward too! I’m not saying that I’m now some schlep wizard and I have 0 schlep blindness, moreso the fact that this has been a part of my life for a long time, and is a general one that I think has had an effect on how I view hard problems in my professional as well as personal life.

If nothing else, I place a suggestion out there for the reader to ingest Paul’s blog and see how it impacts you.

If there are any blogs out there that you’ve read and want others to see, send it my way.