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The Rise of Personal Infrastructure (Redux)
“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!” Jay-Z famously raps on the Diamonds remix. There’s a lot of chatter at Twitter about individual people (“creators”) scaling up million dollar businesses. I thought Elaine Pofeldt did it first, but apparently micro ISVs have been around. Either way, this is a growing possibility for more people because of a combination of technology and skills that these people use:
Most of us spend our time in our work; we’re laboring and toiling away to get our tasks done, either for ourselves, for our clients, or for our employers. But every hour we spend in our personal infrastructure will enable us to do things more efficiently or effectively; if we write, then our infrastructure enables us to put ideas together faster. If we need support, we can reach out to people. If we need to print an iPhone dongle, we can use a 3D printer.
With each hour we spend working on our work — working on our personal infrastructure, we’re potentially saving dozens, hundreds, or thousands of hours on future labor.
For years, I just kept it moving without much organization — I was in the work, but had absolutely no personal infrastructure. There’s a fair chance I was the most disorganized writer at Lifehacker. (The Shop Talk column is one of my inspirations for this blog.)
