My ideal income-generating model is a patronage model, where I don’t need to do a lot of entrepreneurial stuff. I am simply paid to do what I do. In modern times, it is even possible to be paid for my marginal production, not big production. The reason why I say this is because, entrepreneurship and art may have contradicting goals.

I am an intellectual first before an entrepreneur. My primary goal is to produce insights. Insights come slower. On the other hand, entrepreneurs need growth faster. That is why I don’t want to start an entrepreneurial venture immediately.

For this, one can use Patreon. However, one should be careful that one turns into a traditional content creator who always asks, “What will I write for my audience?” This leads to poorer insights caused by short-term-ism, conservativism, publication bias, and harmful over-claiming.

My practice is thinking, generating insights. I want to stay there at least for now. I know that if I want to make this sustainable, I need to integrate an income-generating aspect to it.

To do

  • Flesh out notes into more individual ones.

References

Matuschak, A. 2020. Reflections on 2020 as an independent researcher. https://andymatuschak.org/2020/