So these days, what I’m thinking about is the scene from the Matrix, where Neo says “I know Kung Fu.”

Remember that scene?

Just with the push of the button he downloads information into his brain. Expedited information transfer.

One aspect of skill learning that is often overlooked (at least in the tutelage I’ve received) is the mental aspect.

The thought loops.

I feel like the biggest shortcut to growth is allowing another person access to our thought loops – the voice in our heads – because it’s something that we take to be the very most personal thing about is.

If we do not have control over that, then who are we?

I suppose it’s what Eckhart Tolle’s been yammering on about.

Anyway, by seizing control of our thought loops (in the context of skill execution) maybe we can jump to the mental game of someone who is way more skilled than us –

Let’s use basketball as an example.

If you want to teach me Bball, you can have me do dribbling exercises.
You can have me shoot layups or three-pointers.

But very rarely will you try to get directly inside my mind, say “During the course of the game, when you are in this position, [THIS] should be going through your head”

Where “THIS” means… oh, I don’t know, “Stare the opponent down; be mindful of the guy on the perimeter; ….”. See, I don’t know because I’m not an expert basketball player.

But there are experts and they do know.

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Contrast these ideas to the state of “no-mind”. Aren’t experts known for their ability to not have thoughts running through their head because they’re “in the zone”?

Yes, maybe their thought processes occasionally find themselves fully integrated when we reach a flow state.

But the vast majority of the time, they are not in flow state, and their thought processes are both and explicit and can hopefully be exposed.

*

I welcome your thoughts.

Hi, I’m Zack. I’ve already had some business successes and programming successes, including having a Facebook application get acquired and having my startup AwesomenessReminders get coverage in Time Magazine and grow rapidly. Now I’m looking for a partner to take it to the next level with.

You:

–Can code in at least two of PHP, Ruby, Python, Lisp. Ideally some front-end design experience too.

–LOVE startups and ready to go full-time if we can get a project that’s promising.

–Have enough money that you can go full-time from day one on an equity project.

–Biased towards action. I feel like people not taking action is a source of huge friction and you can get so much accomplished if you decide to just ACT.

–Willingness to do business development preferred – programming is awesome, but we need to build a company too.

Me:

23 years old, a graduate of University of Chicago. Been making money online since high school and I love startups and building things. I’m a self-taught programmer and have been coding for over 10 years.

Meeting Matthew Lesko, the "Free Government Money" guy, at SXSW

Some things I’ve done:

–When in college I dropped out of school my spring quarter. Applied to YCombinator, I was rejected, ended up building a Facebook application that got acquired in July 2007.

–Created CompassionPit.com: it’s growing! 160k-200k visits over past 30 days. Written in Node.js though I didn’t write it myself. Slowly growing, lots of enthusiastic fans.

–Invented AwesomenessReminders.com. Profitable, coverage by TIME.com, etc. Backend is PHP.

–A lot of my projects play on the theme of positivity, simply a heuristic I learned from Steve Pavlina for coming up with business models/ideas

Skills I have:

–Programming: I’m competent in PHP, JavaScript, python, ActionScript. I can work my way around a linux server and read manpages but I’m not super great at it. I would prefer to collab with someone who has a little more experience or is a little more talented at coding than I am. For example, if we wanted to scale a python app through a messaging system, you might have some familiarity with that.

–Marketing: I’ve built a bunch of stuff that has gotten traction.

–Connections: I’m connected to a number of wealthy people in Silicon Valley who are interested in technology, so we’ve got a starting point if we want to raise money.

For fun:

I like playing basketball, listening to music, and reading a lot. I blog about books at ZacharyBurt.com. I believe deeply in “work hard, play hard”.

If you think we might be a good fit, please send me an email.

In an ideal world, we’d get an office and work 12 hours a day on our stuff, 6 days a week.

I’m ready for this — are you?

P.S. Thanks to Sebastian Marshall for reading a draft of this and making valuable and helpful suggestions, including to be less prolix.