@brandonwilson wrote about this chapter in Seth Godin’s book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. Reproducing in whole below because it’s just too good and on point for my work, and the whole indie makers movement:

Chapter 84: Bicycle Problems

I’m having trouble learning to ride a bike.

How long have you practiced?

About fifteen minutes.

It might take a lot longer than that. It might take months.

I want to learn to ride a bike, but I don’t want to fall, even once.

Not even once?

I need to be able to ride a bike blindfolded.

Have you ever seen anyone do that?

No, but that’s what my inner muse is telling me I’m supposed to do.

Oh.

I want to win a bike race on a unicycle.

You can’t.

Don’t tell me that this person is the only one who can find a huge audience for this particular sort of bike-riding trick.

They might be.

But that’s my authentic bike-riding mission. To win prizes by defeating all comers on a unicycle.

There’s no promise that the world cares about your mission.

His starting few lines could have very well been written for me. How long have you practised? It might take longer than that. It might take months. That’s alarmingly accurate of my #decodingcoding journey. I’m feeling impatient recently about my progress. But like he said, patience. 

The rest of it was also so on point because you can probably see that discussion play out on every forum or Twitter thread about indie makers and bootstrap startups. Go ultra niche, they say. Offer some unique that your competitors don’t, they advised. Change the world, follow your passion, stick to your mission, they shout. 

BUT there’s no promise that anyone would care about your mission. Seriously.

There’s no single silver bullet, but a confluence of factors that will bring success. Product-founder fit isn’t enough. You got to have product-market fit too. Passion and mission are great things to have which I wouldn’t recommend otherwise, but just that alone isn’t enough. It’s idealistic at best, naive at worst. The reality of the market has a very humbling way of grounding anyone with those just those tendencies. I love how the author elaborated on this concept via the unicycle story. Makes it all the more salient, and comical.

Patience, but no promises.