{"slug": "the-trap-of-pushing-harder", "title": "The Trap of Pushing Harder", "summary": "A startup founder recounts how detaching from outcomes while maintaining full effort led to success after a failed startup and pivot to machine learning. After a Series A collapse during COVID, the founder's mobile app failed, but later acceptance of uncertainty resulted in a principal PM role.", "body_md": "Every crossroads came with the same two instructions: act now or do nothing.\n\nWhen I was younger I always reached for action. Move first, think later. But the older I got the more mentors would tell me to wait. Let things play out. It felt wrong. Doing nothing felt like losing. But I tried it and it kept working.\n\nThen I went further. Spent a month in an ashram learning to meditate. Not just sitting still. Learning to watch my mind reach for control and choosing not to grab. I brought that back to my startup.\n\nWhen our Series A fell apart during covid, our lead investor backed out at the last minute. I told myself I’d accepted it. But I hadn’t. We had no money for hardware anymore, so we pivoted to what we could still do: machine learning. We launched a mobile app and spent months obsessing over downloads, rankings, and retention curves. I was pushing, not letting go. Four months later we shut it down.\n\nNo startup. No money. What next?\n\nPeople said go back to school. People said start something new. I did all of it. Studied for the GMAT. Started a side project. Applied to jobs. My parents were stressed about the outcomes. I wasn’t. This time I actually let go. I put in the effort and let the results take care of themselves.\n\nThe side project went nowhere. But I got into a few programs and landed a job in Austin.\n\nSoon I was at UT Austin, splitting time between school and work.\n\nAfter graduation I set a goal: principal PM. I put in the hours. Took on the visible projects. Tried to operate at a level beyond the role I had.\n\nBut I detached from the outcome. My goal was to operate at a principal level, not to get the title. I did everything to position myself for it but didn’t worry about whether it arrived. Then it arrived.\n\nThe real choice was never pushing or waiting. It was whether I could give full effort without becoming owned by the result. Every time I tried to control the outcome, I lost. Every time I controlled only the input, something worked.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trap-of-pushing-harder", "canonical_source": "https://quixoticnomad.blog/the-trap-of-pushing-harder/", "published_at": "2026-06-21 16:15:20+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-21 16:34:29.693146+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["machine-learning", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["UT Austin"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trap-of-pushing-harder", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trap-of-pushing-harder.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trap-of-pushing-harder.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-trap-of-pushing-harder.jsonld"}}