I think we should dedicate part of our time to helping others, and we can do that in many different ways. In fact, the more we know how to help others, in whatever sense, the better things will likely go for us and the better we may feel about ourselves. At least that is how I see it.
There are many ways to do that, as many as you can imagine: collaborating, writing posts on your own blog, participating in collaborative and selfless projects on GitHub, offering mentorship, or even writing books when you believe you have something to contribute to your community.
I also think this: if something worked for me, why not share it so others can benefit?
That is why I founded Hub de Libros, so that all those authors who write can have easy access to the world of publishing and spread their work across almost the entire planet without the obstacles I faced (and overcame painfully through a lot of trial and error) since 2012. I know many people give up along the way, which means that valuable information and knowledge may remain forgotten at the bottom of a drawer, or because they still believe that to tell something and package it in a book format, they need the permission of a traditional publisher (as Julia Cameron would say), in the age of technology and disruptive models such as Uber, Etsy, Airbnb, and many others.
In the same way, describing at a technical level how I have approached such an ambitious and complex software project as Hub de Libros has led me to work on the last few months on The Art of the Digital Entrepreneur, my new book with which I hope to help and encourage this community related to technology and eager to undertake or launch new projects.
It seems we live in a dynamic in which everyone is too busy, from the moment we get up until we go to bed.
But I ask myself this: busy with what?
For me, the first measure of success is to stay occupied, at least most of the time, in the things that interest us and in the direction of our long-term goals, while also maintaining a balanced life in all its areas.
However, over the years, having crossed paths with CEOs, CTOs, managers, and many other developers, I have discovered that being busy is too often confused with working productively, and from there it is only a step to a life full of stress and without a clear way to improve.
In other words, it is not about working more hours, but about working better.
Developing a project like Hub de Libros (and others before it, along with those in which I participate now) also involves a certain way of focusing work and even maintaining certain personal development skills.
That is why in The Art of the Digital Entrepreneur I not only describe the most relevant technical aspects of some of my ongoing projects, but also all those techniques and skills that have helped me to concentrate on a job for so many hours and for many months while balancing it with the rest of my responsibilities: from kaizen to microtasks, the importance of achieving concentration, flow, and even how to manage doubts, and a long etcetera.
Inevitably, this new book therefore has a somewhat personal and intimate character, which I do not mind sharing because I believe its content may be very useful to many people who want to move forward with their projects or who want to undertake with the greatest likelihood of success. At the same time, I have taken the liberty of describing technical aspects (very technical, in fact) alongside personal development tools, because ultimately, no matter how good a technician you are, or how good the idea you want to implement is, if you do not master these latter personal strategies, the path will be much harder, if not abandoned right after the first steps.
I have given up on some occasions, failed in others, but I have also had success in many projects. Now I understand that the first thing is just a source of learning to continue moving forward.
The Art of the Digital Entrepreneur is prologued by none other than José Murillo, a colleague during some years of my first work stage, who later worked for Microsoft for more than fifteen years and who has been CEO of his own company for the last two years (Smart IoT Labs).
I do not know whether the startup movement and everything related to entrepreneurship (so fashionable lately) will or will not be the heart of the new economy we are heading toward, but I am sure of one thing: those of us who work with technology have it easier to launch projects than those who work in other sectors.
In The Art of the Digital Entrepreneur I describe how I approached Hub de Libros and how the evolution of a project is planned using the lean methodology, along with the most important and paradigmatic elements that a software project must meet if it is going to change continuously and from the beginning we do not even know how that evolution will be, among many other topics.
I trust that this new work I have carried out with so much enthusiasm (and effort), and which is one of the first titles published by my own editorial platform, will be as useful or more useful than my previous books.