Even if you get the blueprint of how to build a product from scratch.

You will not really build it.

Why?

Because, you either have been jumping ideas or you have no passion about it.

Here's my learnings on how passion really works.

I built so many products in the past 13 years, either it was just an instant idea.

Which is like, I was using a product, I thought, "Ah! this sucks, I can make it better."

or it's like "Oh man! I couldn't find a product to solve this problem."

It wasn't even a hobby, it's just something that triggered with frustration or for no reason, but it really didn't matter to me very much.

I found this passion thing after so many years. It's not passion alone can make things happen, expertise related to it and the incentives it can bring also matters.

Let me give you an example.

I'm a person who loves dreaming, I mean lucid dreaming, I also believe in astral projection, because I personally did some experiments to figure out that it just works (worked at least for me). If you allow me to talk about it, I can talk for hours.

Yeah, talking hours about something shows that you're passionate about it.

At the beginning of my career, just less than a month inside this new unknown SEO expert / Junior Programmer job that I got, I just installed an opensource forum called simplemachinesforum, launched a community, did SEO, pulled people from other communities into mine by providing value and valuing their feelings & personal experiences. (forumforastral.com)

I helped a lot of people decode their dreams, help them have lucid dreams, etc., All because, I loved every single thing about it.

The incentives? dopamine, many users joined, built a community from from 1 to 10k, community was running even without me, and I'm happy that I was helping people, that's more than money to me.

Life took over and I let the community slowly die. That's okay.

Soon after this, I built hell lot of products (unnecessary ones), launched it, got users, but kept on moving (call idea hopping). But, it wasn't something that hurt me in anyways. But, I learnt a lot of tech by building those products. I figured out what am I good at, what kind of product that I can easily build.

You see the pattern? I built so many products that I wasn't passionate about, or it wasn't something of my expertise, or it didn't provide the incentives. I liked it, I know many things about it, but I don't feel like talking hours about it.

I was able to learn more and make progress with the ones that I could stick longer, the things that I could talk longer. Because, it's something that excites me a lot.

I am good at building communities, write stories, build feeds, and crawl the internet. I built few products on each separately, but with mevin, I am combining all those expertise into one single product. It's like going all in with all my years of experience. Can you give that to someone as a blueprint to build? Probably not.

And, I can talk about this problem for hours, I am passionate about it and also willing to solve the problems that I think is "worth" solving, it's not just an idea to solve. The incentives for me are already good.

So, I feel that: Passion, Incentives, and Expertise are the 3 most important thing that I finally think would *lead* me to the road to success, maybe there are more, but will figure that out when I consciously encounter those.

Remember that consistency and motivation matters, but without the above, it's hard to keep oneself motivated in solving a problem, without motivation one cannot be consistent for a long time.