http://dantawfik.com/craftsmanship-the-alternative-to-the-four-hour-work-week-mindset-1

What is missed in all of this is the mindset of craftsmanship; that one’s expertise and deliberate focus on one’s craft is actually the primary driver for success and not some crapshoot of a series of hacks.

What happens on the periphery — whether it be the towel slapping we see on Twitter from tech celebrities or headline gossip out of TechCrunch — is not actually meaningful as a foundation of a business or a profession. Neither are the number of coffee meetings you have scheduled or the amount of networking meetings you attend. These things are tertiary at best, and at worst, just plain old distractions.

To be successful over the course of a career requires the application and accumulation of expertise. This assumes that for any given undertaking you either provide expertise or you are just a bystander. It’s the experts that are the drivers—an expertise that is gained from a curiosity, and a mindset of treating one’s craft very seriously.

You have to take an interest in these domains because there is no one else to fill these roles in your early stage company

You’re not simply working on the idea in front of you, you’re building the knowledge to succeed at your next projects as well.

Startup graveyards are full of visionaries without expertise or the proper skills to execute, for no other reason than ideas are not self executing, but are rather made into being by intense engagement by skilled operators.

If you are to optimize for anything, optimize for the long term. Use the challenges of your business today to build mastery in your craft. There is no guarantee that any one venture will succeed, but that mastery will bend luck in your favor over the long course of your career.

