Past away quotes

Sorry this is long. T and I (18f). S (18mtf).
Backstory:
So I have these two “friends”. Or Had or whatever. I met one back in middle school and the other 1-2 years ago my junior year of high school after I had switched to an alternative school from my regular school. Things were pretty good. I didn’t talk much to the girl I knew since middle school (let’s call her S) because we were in different classes and we havent really spoken since middle school but we were friendly. Whenever we saw each other in the hall or at lunch we would say hi or whatever. The other girl (lets call her T) I talked to the most out of everyone. I was with her pretty much every day during school. I am not the type of person to answer text messages or phone calls or hang out outside of school/work which I guess has always been a problem. For her not for me. Maybe it’s the aquarius in me that wants to be left alone 90% of the time lol. I would hang out with her outside of school sometimes because I wasn’t working much other than a part time job a couple hours after school so I had a little time.
On to the story:
I graduated back in September. T and S got a lot closer after I graduated. I started working full time and didn’t have time or desire to go out whenever anymore. I also really didn’t want to hang out with her either for lots of reasons but mostly because she just was worried about different things. I wanted to graduate as quickly as possible so I can start working full time until I could start EMT school. She was worried about whatever girl she was fighting that week and her ex boyfriends or whatever. And a bunch of other things that annoyed me about her. I didn’t care and I wasn’t worried about those kinds of things anymore. So we didn’t really talk much anymore. She would text me A LOT. I would answer once in a while. It went on like that for months. Last week I had texted her that maybe we could got out to an 18+ club on Friday since she had been wanting to go out. Club’s don’t seem like my type of seem but she likes parties so I figured i’d go and try it out since we just turned 18. S was going to come along as well. Then last Thursday was when things blew up I guess. It was about 11 PM and a show I watch every Thursday at 10 just ended and I was taking a shower to go to sleep because I was tired. Then T and S start blowing me up i’m talking 3-4 phone calls from each of them. I didn’t answer at first because I was going to sleep. Then S texted me talking about she and T got into an argument and T sped off and she heard a crash from her house and thinks she got into a car accident. So I called T. She didn’t answer the first two times. I figured she was talking to an officer or something. The third time she answered and I heard sirens in the background and she told me she got into an accident. I asked if she was okay told her to drop her location and told her I was coming to pick her up and take her home because it was 11:30 at night and the part of town where they stay isn’t exactly the safest. When I got there I didn’t see her and started to call her. She wasn’t answering. I didn’t see any police cars or any crashed cars and I called her maybe 4 times and she wasn’t answering and she had turned off her location and I was just driving around aimlessly and stupidly. So at this point I was thinking this was a set up and I was annoyed and started heading back to my house. Right as I was leaving she finally called me back and said the police cars and tow truck already left and she was waiting for me at their neighborhood park. I told her I just drove past there and I didn’t see her and she said she was walking around looking for me. I was annoyed still and just told her to go back to the park and meet me there. So I finally get to the park and call her. She says she’s sitting on the baby swing and her leg is stuck and wants me to go get her. (I didn’t think this was weird because T is like insanely skinny so she usually fits in baby swings no problem.) I told her no because I was already annoyed and really didn’t want to get out of the car in the part of town we were in and said just pull your leg out and get in the car. She said she can’t and insisted she really was stuck so I got out of the car to help her. As I walked into the park all of a sudden both T and S jumped out the corner at me. Obviously it scared me since it was already at this point midnight and again the part of town we were in. At this point I was mad and just walked away from them got into my car and drove off. They tried to ask me to take S home but I just left. The next morning (the day we were supposed to go to the club) T texted me and asked if we were still going to the club that night. I told her no I didn’t want to go anywhere with them anymore. She said I was “green” (I don’t really know what that means honestly Im assuming it means wrong?? Damn am i getting old? lol) for not coming since it was my idea. I was still mad and didn’t answer. A little later she texted me again and said “alright bet bro im done ✌️ “ again dont know what this meant and honestly didnt care I didn’t answer that text either. S then texted me a while after that and was basically begging me to come with them. I told her no I needed some space from them after last night what you guys did was crazy. Who lies about being in a car accident that’s some crazy shit and wasting my gas and time like that. She went on about how it was just a joke and they didn’t mean to upset me and apologized. I accepted and told her she knows I love her and is just upset right now. She then apologized again and said she hopes I change my mind about that night I liked the message and just left it at that. Throughout the day S kept calling me and I didn’t answer not because of what happened but because I was going pet store to pet store with my sister because we were looking for a puppy. She then texted me again around 6 pm and said she really needed to know if i was coming that night so she could send an uber to my house of not. I told her “no I already told T i’m not coming but you have fun 💙” she replied thank you and that was that. I then got a message from S saying “ T wants to know if you want us to wait for you or meet us there” I was confused because I had JUST told her I wasn’t coming so I just replied to my own message where I said I wasn’t coming with the point fingers emoji at the message. That was the last I talked to them. Im pretty sure T and I aren’t friends anymore which i’m fine with honestly. I am a little sad about S. We haven’t been close since middle school but she’s always been so sweet and adorable but it is what it is I guess.
What do you guys think? Was I wrong?

This is a long post so I understand if nobody wants to read it. But I think this is why the guards are doing so good
Looking at the numbers from the lineup and the whole roster in general the run production and wins kinda look abnormal to what we would expect. I think that has to do with a somewhat old school approach to he lineup/roster.

1. leadoff guy high BA high OBP consistent with good base running/speed
   
2. Not good enough to be 3 hole but most balanced hitter overall with good base running/speed fairly consistent
   
3. Best hitter.
   
4. Cleanup. Power focused not a great BA but still ok
   
5. Second cleanup not good enough to be the 4 but still lots of power and slightly more focused on contact than the 4 hole.
   
6. Balanced hitter not quite good enough to be a 2 hole
   
7. Defense oriented but still has a mostly balanced approach can be streaky
   
8. Also defense oriented but can drive the ball with good power also can be streaky
   
9. Second leadoff everything you look for in a leadoff hitter but isn’t as good as the leadoff
   

All hitters limit strikeouts and focus on their job in every situation with solid defense.
6-9 can possibly be speed threats
BENCH- Backups/platoons/pinch hitters/pinch runners.

 SP- not great but will keep the team in the game. RP- Elite if you have a lead, you will win. 

It’s a bit of an old school construction that I think most teams are getting father away from. I’m not saying this is the mold you have to follow, but more of a general idea. I do not think that this is the only way a team can score either. I just think it’s more effective and efficient. A lot of people will say “you only have Josh and Jose” the whole purpose of this lineup style is to maximize the production of you best hitters thus being more efficient in scoring runs.
The issue with past years is we have never really had a true 4-5 hitter but now we have Naylor and Fry almost fitting that mold perfectly
Some things to note were 4th in runs per game and yes we are top 10 in HR and HR per game but we only have 2 more HR than league average and we’re on track to hit 8 more home runs over the season than the team in 15th in HR per game. about a quarter of our home runs are from our 4 hole which is how it should be. Because of this I feel that we get more out of our home runs because of the fact that it isn’t our full focus causing a decrease in solo shots compared to other teams.
If this is the case can you imagine the production we would get it our 7-9 actually start doing something.
This is the lineup I want/am talking about 1. Kwan LF 2. Gimenez 2B 3. Ramírez 3B 4. Naylor 1B 5. Fry DH 6. Brennan RF 7. Freeman CF 8. Naylor C 9. Rocchio SS

hey all! im a 20 year old female and i’ve fallen on hard times. i moved away from my toxic household in 2021 to college and over the past 2 years things have been rough. i got an off campus apartment and was working, but jobs where i live don’t pay anything. (in a small town in alabama) i got behind on bills, i got behind on tuition, and now im just stuck. this was my last semester in college because i couldn’t pay tuition, and i can’t enroll in next semester until it is paid off. i use a friends car, i live at a friends house, and i don’t even have $2 in my account. i have 3 cats that i can no longer afford but initially had them for support. i’ve been praying so hard the last couple of months and i’ve tried reaching out, i have no family what do ever that will even give me a text back. anything is literally appreciated. i have not been fully evicted yet, but i received an email saying that it would come to it, and i already know that i can’t afford it so im just waiting for the time. if you guys could help me in some way, whether it’s food, gas, bills, ANYTHING, this is my last resort. i will be more than grateful!! if you can help with anything at all, i can send proof of everything , message me if you need cash tags or paypal info and i can send everything over. i’m not trying to get over on anyone, just looking for help ❤️

Not sure if this is allowed here, if not I apologize I'll accept the consequences. I was recommended this sub from another sub I frequent. Idk how to even start. I'm sorry I came to this sub with this. Life's been super impossibly rough lately. The past couple of years since COVID have been incredibly tough for me. I'm 29 years old turning 30 in a couple days, and have been taking care of my disabled father on my own since I was 11. I've been severely depressed for many years, which has caused me to lose all my relationships with friends and family. It seems like everyone I know or meet ends up distancing themselves from me due to my constant unintended negativity. Unfortunately, this only put me in a worse mental state, costing me multiple jobs and putting me in financial ruin.
I've tried so hard to take care of my sick father and do everything I can to live a normal life, but my mental health is terrible, and regrettably, it has completely ruined my life. I have no friends left, and my family relationships have soured as well. I blame myself entirely for being in this situation. To make matters worse, the one friend I had left, who had been my rock and my brother for over 15 years, passed away at the age of 30 about a month ago, leaving me utterly shattered. I fell into such a deep depression that I started experiencing stress-induced seizures and constant panic attacks, leading to the loss of my job. Now, I can't even afford to eat. For the past 2 weeks or so, my diet has consisted of nothing but water and sliced bread. I had to send my father to live with his sister in another state because I couldn't afford to care for him properly especially with my light being cut at the moment... I owe my aunt money for taking care of him, but I have zero dollars to my name, and currently have no way of making money. Only money I get is from donating plasma twice a week when able and even that's not nearly enough. Especially since I'm not always able to donate.
I've applied at every conceivable location in a 45-mile radius, hoping to get an email for an interview, but have had no luck at all. My phone has been disconnected, making it impossible to receive calls about potential job opportunities. I can't afford gas to travel to job locations even if I had a way to get there. I cannot walk to any of these locations, as where I live, the closest store or any type of place to work is over 10 miles away. Most employers also require online applications, which still necessitate a call back for an interview, a call I cannot receive. My electricity is currently cut off as well for the past 7-8 days in the Florida heat. Can't cook anything even if I had it because no power. Can't spend money I don't have to buy anything to eat. Had to toss the food that was in the fridge/freezer. At this point, I don't know what else to do. The bit of money I have I need to save because I need this light turned on before anything and I'm almost there. Been needing just $100 more but I haven't been able to get it since last week and unfortunately got differed from plasma donations and can't get that money either.
I've reached out to family, but they have all turned me away. I have no friends to ask for help. No bank is willing to give me a loan, and even Amscot has declined due to my lack of employment. I've been trying so hard in life. Just for it to beat the shit out of me at every chance. I'm just beyond my breaking point and have absolutely no one to talk to or speak to about anything. Sorry again delete if not allowed. Thank you to anyone for taking the time to read my message. I hope you have a pleasant day or night. Ps. Felt that I should add in I will never ever ever even think about making myself take a permanent nap. I'm not that. Just needee to vent and talk somewhere I felt safe. Also before anyone says "how are you on Reddit without a phone and electricity". Charge my phone in the car and my elderly neighbors let me connect to their Wi-Fi since they don't even really use it often.

Apologies in advance for this somber post. I wanted to share my experience in our wedding planning, and in life really, in case it helps anyone else here too. Next weekend my husband and I are having our destination wedding/vow renewal with our closest friends, family, and a sprinkling of acquaintances. I already know it’s going to be the wedding of my dreams with the dress, the venue, the food, and those most special to me being there, safe and sound. About six months ago however, my kitty Max was diagnosed with both kidney disease and liver cancer. He’s been my guy for the past 15 years, and for those 15 years he’s slept next to my head at night, waited for me at the door, played fetch with corks and talked to me when I had a tough day. Currently he’s sitting on his floor scratcher, staring towards the patio door. I don’t think he’s looking at anything in the backyard, moreso he’s managing the discomfort and pain that his daily dose of chicken-flavored Buprenorphine should help alleviate. He has good days and bad, and sometimes he sleeps all day, other times (like this morning) he wakes me up for food and medicine at 4:30am. I never ever mind. This Wednesday we have a friend coming over to watch our house and the pets before we board our flight early Thursday, and will only be gone six days. He will have someone here 24/7 to feed him, give him medicine, anything and everything I can think to do short of physically being here… I lost my other kitty Lola last October and experienced first hand the very moment we knew it was time to help her go. My Lola, my little miss, passed away in my arms. Max is not there yet, but he’s close, and we joke (we have to) that the moment we get on the plane is the moment he decides to croak. I’m genuinely so scared I won’t be there in case it is his time to go, and for what, ultimately a party about ourselves. There has been more than one moment where I thought we should put him to sleep before the trip, and my husband helped me see that right now it would be more selfish on my part than a gift to Max. He still plays a little, still purrs, still talks to us in his older cragly tone. My husband will be the designated contact during our week up north so if something does happen to Max, he will keep it secret from me until we are on our way home. There is absolutely no world or dimension in which I could keep it together if bubs passed away without me. The whole point of this story though is to explain… this is all just a part of life. I can’t cancel these year-long plans based on an unknown, and we of course didn’t know he would be this sick right now. I am taking early morning walks everyday and drinking lots (and lots and lots) of water to keep my body in check. I’m eating smaller meals and taking vitamins/fiber to ease my stomach and headaches. I have lists to check to help prep for the trip there and the wedding itself and each completed check gets a tiny victory dance in my head. I’m not a religious person at all, but I am speaking prayers to myself and to Max, telling him to go if he has to, and to please forgive me if I am not there to keep him warm when he does. My friends and family are aware of the situation and my best friend, my maid of honor, will help keep me grounded in remembering the ultimate reason why we were doing this in the first place: we are worth celebrating our 15 years of love and the life we made together. I will be open to the love and compliments they give, I will be focused and present in the moment to hold a decent conversation, I will make sure to show gratitude for everyone there. Bubby would want me to. If you’re still reading this, thank you. Know that time does not stop for you, or for me, and all we can do is make the best of what we are given and make peace with the choices we decide to make. Know you’re not alone in the stresses of wedding planning (just had to double check some florist stuff that is making me nervous) and that being stressed itself is also okay. Maybe age really helps all of this (35F) so those of you getting married younger may feel differently, but to give this post an end, I hope you all feel some peace of mind that you’re not alone and have a beautiful time on your special day.

im now in this super awkward phase with a guy. we used to be so close where we text every single day and talked about everything under the sun. we were constantly in this grey area where we were more than friends but not gf bf. as school got busy or we just have nothing more to talk about, we drifted eventually to the point where we don't talk anymore. there wasn't any fights or arguments when things ended between us. we're in the same school and i bump into him once in a while. on days i don't see him i miss him so much but when i see him i panic and hurriedly walked away. sometimes i stopped to see if he does initiate a convo but he either walked away awkwardly or stayed on the spot (waiting for me to initiate a convo?). i feel so lost and contradicted. my brain tells me to move on but my heart just couldn't, trying to hold on a little longer ans hoping that one day we can go back to how we were like before. this has been going on for a year and whenever i feel like i've almost moved on from him, i get a relapse and couldn't stop thinking about him and reminiscing our past. i feel a need to talk to someone but my friends are all attached and i don't wish to disturb them. but i'm not comfortable sharing this with my family either. what do i do? do i need to see a psychologist?

Delete if not allowed, looking for some male perspective if anyone is willing to weigh in.
I’m a 35F dating 35M for 9 months. Normal, calm relationship all things considered, as we get along quite well. Worth mentioning, though, that at 2 months and 4 months he briefly pulled back a little because he got panicked about his budding feelings (his words). When he did it at the 4 month mark he went quiet for about a week. No issues like that the past 4 months. Most I would expect to not hear from him is 1 day; totally fine, he likes his space and respecting that has never been an issue.
Last week, we had a really nice day where he talked a bit more than usual about his feelings and what he sees in our future. I was of course quite happy to hear it. Normal communication the few days following that. I last saw him on Tuesday and he seemed stressed. Asked if it was work(“yes”) and if we are okay, to which he said we are great; kissed goodbye and headed home, business as usual. Didn’t hear from him the rest of that night, talked briefly over text the next day. Didn’t think anything of it.
However, he now has not read my texts in 72 hours and I haven’t heard from him either. 3 days is out of character. He’s online, so I know he’s safe. I sent maybe two texts in the last 72 hours that were normal (“how’s your day?” And “wanna hang out tonight?”) but I’ve sent nothing since Friday night as I don’t want to be a pest…but I also don’t want him to think I don’t care he’s not talking to me. My concern is the feelings talk got him “panicked” like it did in the past and he’s pulling away. I just don’t want to say or do anything to upset him.
TL;DR - if there was no fighting but you’re clearly not reading someone’s texts or replying, would you want to be left alone or for the person to ask what’s going on?

I and my girlfriend have been together for about 18 months. I knew from the start that she had high standards for effort from me, and slowly but surely I've felt as though I've bettered myself to meet those standards. We've had a great time with each other and took the plunge and moved in together two months ago.
We both have demanding jobs that take up a lot of our time. On top of this she teaches an exercise class and trains 4x per week. By virtue of having a bit more free time, I am doing the cooking, laundry and other household chores. I don't mind doing this, but I don't feel like it's being appreciated. There is a laser focus on the things I do wrong or inadequately.
Our sex life has fallen off a cliff since she moved in. I have jokingly suggested that it is because I am behaving like a housewife and doing everything she says, and that she wouldn't see me as a man as a result. I am starting to believe that this is actually true.
After a few drinks on a trip a few weeks ago, we had an honest chat about why we haven't been having as much sex lately. Without going into detail, she basically confirmed what I was worried about. She feels like she can walk all over me and is much less attracted to me because of that.
I try to be as open as possible with her, and have told her straight that I am no longer just going to say 'yes' to everything she asks of me or apologise when I feel like I'm in the right. This has caused us to butt heads over stupid things. Last night I was struggling to stay awake as we watched a TV show together and I denied that I was falling asleep. This very much annoyed her, but my view was that it isn't a big deal. This spiralled into a big fight and I left the room, when in the past I would normally have just told her she was right and apologised for sleeping. After the dust settled I said to her that if we have kids in the future, we need to act like a team and not get at each others' throats over pointless things like this.
I love her but I'm starting to resent giving up my hobbies and seeing my friends a lot less in order to keep up with all the housework as well as organising regular dates for us to go on. If she was appreciative and happy and we were still having sex, I would be fine, but we aren't. I feel like I'm making her life a misery, she is definitely in a bad mood more often than a good one. Any time I've raised my concerns that she might not be happy in the relationship she brushes it off as me being silly.
She knows I'm a simple person and am at my happiest when we're not arguing and she's being nice with me, but lately those moments feel rarer and rarer.
Any advice as to how to fix things would be very appreciated. When everything is rosy we get on really well and have a great laugh together. I want to stay with her but I feel like it's slipping away. Specifically I would like help on a) how to stand my ground without it causing ceaseless fighting b) how to make her more appreciative for the housework I'm doing and c) how to improve her mood generally
Thank you!

We have three little kids. Lots of transitions, moved across the country, new job, then career ended, trying to hold it together.
Oldest turns 5 in a couple of weeks. We potty trained him in February, he seemed to be fine, then drove 500 miles away for Easter, stayed with friends, he got a stomach bug, lots of #2 accidents, I didn't understand and wasn't patient with him. He's been having accidents (#2 only) since then, and in the past few days he refuses to talk about it.
Meanwhile I thought the other two (girl turns three in December, boy turns four in August) should be potty trained so I kept them home from daycare and began potty training on Thursday, using Brandi Brucks' three day thing. Now we're on day four. Yesterday gave up on the two year old who understood when she needed to go #1 but had fits. She hadn't gone #2 since Wednesday. Put her back in diapers and now she is still freaking out about having to poop.
Three year old boy still struggling- refusing to go to potty, accidents. He has some success.
I hardly know what to do and am about to pull out what little hair I have left.
Not looking for critiques of what I've done wrong but of what I should do now. Thanks very much.

I've been wondering not only how it was possible for a self-targeting negator like Sean to affect other people, but also how could the external-targeting ones Bunny and Yusai be affecting themselves.
I'm glad this was finally addressed in this chapter.

My boyfriend and I have been dating for over a year, and have been living together for six months. Our relationship has been very committed, serious, and happy, but we do have differences in personality and sometimes they clash. Last night, we got into a fight. It was nothing major and no words that couldn't be taken back were exchanged, but I got frustrated enough that I yelled at my boyfriend. I very rarely yell for any reason, and could feel myself boiling over into frustration. My boyfriend as well seemed upset and began to ignore my attempts to talk it out which made me even angrier, so in order to get some space from him I messaged a friend (m23), N, to ask if he would drive me down the street for a bit in exchange for some late night munchies.
I have known N for almost three years and he is one of few friends I've been able to make as an adult. He is also dating my best friend of almost five years (m22), H. I originally messaged H with this same request, but H was feeling very sick. N is a chronic night owl and lives less than three minutes away, so he said he was up for it and arrived within ten minutes of me asking.
I was gone for no longer than twenty five minutes, and almost 80% of that time I spent talking to my boyfriend over text. Sometimes when we argue, we get to the issue better over writing, because we aren't trying to talk over each other and we can think out our words better. The only thing N and I did was drive down the street (about three blocks), get fast food from the drive through (I got my boyfriend a burger for lunch tomorrow), N got gas at the nextdoor gas station, and then I was driven back.
I asked my boyfriend if he had anything else he felt like he needed to talk to me about since we had both calmed down, and he said no, and that he had already gotten over it. We hugged and kissed and spent the next two hours eating dinner and laughing over youtube.
When it came time for bed, I had just thrown up (I have Crohns, it happens a lot), and was very exhausted. I was just dozing off when my boyfriend asked, "So, what did you tell N to get him to rush over here so quickly?"
I told N that my boyfriend and I had gotten into an argument, but that we would be fine, and we just needed to air out the apartment of bad vibes. I tried to tell this to my boyfriend, but he immediately cut me off angrily and said "Oh, I see" right after I finished "argument."
I tried to continue explaining that I didn't say anything bad about him to N, only for my boyfriend to ask why I had to run away with a male friend after an argument, and then asked if I had "sucked his dick too" while I was gone.
I am gay, but my boyfriend is pan, and has friends of all genders. I was shocked at him saying this, and asked why he would accuse me of cheating on him. He avoided this question and kept asking why I made such a huge deal of our fight earlier that I needed to run away. I tried to explain that I wanted to clear my head so I could approach the issue productively, but by this point I was in tears over him accusing me of cheating. He then asked why it made me so upset if I didn't do anything, and I said it was because I felt incredibly shocked and disrespected.
I ended up crying so much that my boyfriend got angry with me again, and we got into another verbal altercation. He tried to claim that he was just joking with the dick sucking comment, but when I asked if me going with a female friend would have been different, he said yes. I pointed out that he hangs out with both male and female friends all the time alone for long stretches of time, but I had never felt like he was cheating on me with any of them. I also said he could read all the messages between me and N if he still didn't trust me. This seemed to finally get to him, and he hugged me and ushered me back to bed. I cried, and told him I would never cheat on him, and he said he knew that, and we went to sleep.
It has been hours since then and I have barely gotten a wink of sleep. It feels like my heart has broken. This man is truly the love of my life as corny as it sounds. Our lives are interlinked, and we have already talked about marriage and how we want to spend the rest of our lives together.
I think part of why it hurts so bad is because his closest friend is his ex girlfriend, who is also his ex fiance. They dated for five years and I support their friendship because she was a major part of his life. He frequently brings her food and lets her borrow his playstation, but I have never once thought that he would cheat on me with her. Now that he's accused me of this, though, I don't know what to think.
I would like to know what my next step should be in approaching this situation, that helps both myself and my boyfriend move past this.
TL:DR; After a fight, I took a short drive with a male friend to clear my head. My boyfriend accused me of cheating on him with this friend, and now it feels like my heart has broken, and I don't know what the next step to take is.

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

Hey gang, I’m getting back into zomboid after a long time away. When I played in the past, I just played vanilla.
I’d love some suggestions for QoL mods you just can’t play without! Ideally nothing game changing but I am also open to wilder suggestions if there’s fun to be had!

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

My (34f) stbx husband (39M) and I live in a very complicated situation. We've been in this process of divorce for already 2 years, but we still live together under the same roof. His income is significantly higher than mine (he's an anaesthesiologist) and he's not doing the effort to move out from the apartment and told me that it would make things easier for him if I supported him financially, while he is planning to travel in June on his own to Istanbul and recently bought himself a toothbrush of 300 usd. Unfortunately I'm still economically dependent on him, and just recently working on making my own income as a freelance web designer. During a discussion he got upset and angry when I told him that I wanted to stop having sex with him (because he keeps insisting and I have told him we should stop) and I met someone on bumble who I'm considering having casual sex with. He told me that I should love myself more and I'm just giving away my body to a stranger and treating myself like a whore and while he's working hard, I'm technically abusing him and talking to strangers/other guys and treat him like a money making machine because I'm "demanding" him to do some fixtures in the apartment that hasn't been finished for years, even if I wish to do this myself, he doesn't allow me to. For the record, he doesn't do any housechores at home, plays on his Playstation when he comes back from his work and he doesn't bother to cook, fold his laundry nor takes care of the dog he wanted so bad, it's me doing everything.. I have been dedicating my life taking care of our home, we have lamps hanging on cables for more than 11 years, and even if I want to change them for decorative lamps, I'm not allowed to do it myself. We have a kitchen that has been under construction since 2017, and I want to hire someone to finish it, but he doesn't agree with it and believes it's better that he does this job himself rather than a professional. We have a 5 year old daughter together and he is a good father, but there also has been issues in the past where he broke her toys during a discussion and he has hit me as well, but according to him, he did those things because I angered him during a discussion and said hurtful things, and it shouldn't matter much anymore since it happened a year ago. Our home is filled with his stuff, he also has an expensive hobby (DJ) and we live in a very small apartment. I just want a happy free life and a beautiful home and perhaps it was wrong of me to look for casual dates on bumble during this process as a way to distract myself from all the issues we have together while I'm still living under the same roof with him, but I feel that living with him has become unbearable, and I simply here to vent out.

TW! Suicide
HELP!! Ever since i was 7-8 I have had anxiety, though every year it gets worse and worse. Im at the point where i never go outside and lay in bed all day, rotting away. I have done this for maybe 4 years, though the past 2 years i legit haven’t went outside at all, where as before i would maybe go to the store with my mom or something. I was even homeschooled due to my anxiety. The most embarrassing part is that its all because of the fact that i have to fart/poop when i am anxious. Knowing this, i get even more anxious. Its a snowball effect.
When i did go to school, i would cry and beg my mother to not make me go because of the fact that i would constantly have to fart during class. I never did, i would just hold it in. Even when i did so, my stomach would make loud growling noises that i swear the entire class could hear but idk if they did. When i was finally homeschooled, i stayed inside because i was afraid of having to fart. Yes, even around my family.
But after some traumatic events this anxiety has caused which i cannot go into detail abt, i never want to leave my bed again. Unfortunately, my family is broke and we can’t afford to live in our trailer anymore so we are getting kicked out. My mother can’t afford to buy a home and we don’t wanna keep getting kicked out of homes because we can’t afford rent. So, she decided on getting a camperv for all of us to live in. I thought this trailer was bad, but i cannot imagine having to live in an rv with my family. I get bad anxiety thinking about it, and as im typing i am shaking.
I know i am dramatic for being so afraid of these things, especially around my family, but i don’t think i have any control over it. I just don’t know what i am gonna do. All my life i’ve felt hopeless and isolated from the world. I have even gone so far as to considering suicide multiple times when at my limit. Im just so tired. I don’t wanna live this way, but i am too afraid to get out of my comfort zone or tell anyone.
Im only 15 and i have had no childhood. Its just been me on my device in bed all day long. I don’t even remember anything due to my anxiety sometimes, like most of my childhood. My mom tells me she wishes the old me before my anxiety, though i dont remember it. I wish i could live life like a normal person and not like a freak with my stupid anxiety. Rn all i know i can do to prepare to move into the rv is to not eat which i haven’t for 2 days so far. I am so afraid of getting a stomach ache or diarrhea, especially in a car. I haven’t even been in a car for years, but every time i was in one it would be a terrible experience.
Im writing this to maybe get some reassurance or tips, and to get it off my chest as i am having a mental breakdown. I read some others having a similar issues on here, so i got a bit of courage to share my own story. Srry its long.

My girlfriend and I have known each other for 5+ years, we met at work. We’ve had a bit of an on again off again relationship, and we had a year long break about 6 months ago. Our relationship started approximately 5 years ago.
To keep a long story short, we started dating and afterwards she revealed to me that she slept with another of our coworkers. This destroyed me and I had an incredibly difficult time dealing with this. I think past partners are no big deal, but typically they’re faceless entities. This guy I knew personally, we all worked together on a regular basis. At this time, her and I still worked together, but this guy had left the company. Time passes, we’ve been together for about 2.5 years, we no longer work at that company, we don’t work together, but still dealing with other issues. Ultimately, we broke up, and after about a year decided to get back together (messy, I know), for the most recent time. However, this time she revealed to me that she had slept with another coworker all those years ago. This just reignited all the insecurity and anger from the first guy, on top of now the second guy that we all worked with. Not to mention I explicitly asked her if she had any history with him and she lied to my face for years.
Finally, I ask, how can I deal with this? She was remorseful and we both love each other, but for some reason this eats away at me. I know she’s had other partners, as have I, but the lying and the coworkers just bother me relentlessly. Any advice as to how to move forward?

and while I’ve done this in the past, this one for whatever reason felt really difficult. I’ve been DMing for close to a decade, and have been blessed to play with some absolutely awesome people who are properly invested in the game, but that’s also made these kinds of moments harder. She was quite upset, and I’m not sure exactly what the tact is in a situation like this, outside of having a drink in her honour and saying that her last moments were powerful and very much in the vein of her character.
D&D can be such a brutal game sometimes, and my run of Rime of the Frostmaiden has been both filled with laughs, but also some of the darkest moments I’ve had playing the game, and as a DM who hasn’t too many of those moments in the past, I have to admit I’m a little out of my depth on how to handle them. I don’t want to shy away from it, as we’re getting to the end part of the campaign, but I also want to find a way to temper the sessions so that it’s not all doom and gloom.
I’m really just posting this for some emotional support or to see if other people have had similar experiences. Thanks everyone ❤️

This has been really eating away at me and I don’t know how to address it. The company I work for went through a title change for all employees to align with current roles. I am the only woman on a team with approximately 25 men. Previously, we all had some variation of “engineer” in our titles. So after the change, I look at the org chart and I see that every single peer, all men, retained an engineer title, but mine for some reason changed to “analyst”. I have asked my boss FOUR times over the past year what is the reasoning behind this and get vague responses and zero effort to get me an answer. I continue to ask and reply to my original email to retain the thread history. I don’t know how to approach this for fear of retaliation. Layoffs are coming up. I have survived through 4 layoffs over the past 10 years. And if I report this concern, I’m afraid I will end up on the list. And I don’t know if I should report it now, or wait to report it in the event of a lay off, or not report it all. Please please help, this is a horrible feeling to be treated “less than”, and is demoralizing. Thank you in advance.

I love the game and try to play on Lethal, the majority of the time I have no problem though it took me a bit to get used to not moving in combat and letting the combos move me instead, but the thing is sometimes Jin gets possessed by some weird kind of aim assist I've noticed in other Sony games and goes off the rails. I've noticed it is more prevalent when an enemy is slightly above or below him, or slightly farther away than an attack would move him, in which case Jin would either just go up or down the step separating him from the enemy and move far past him or turn around to attack some enemy off-camera that is closer, sometimes even through a wall and I could swear once trying to fight a barrel to the death.
Aiming the bow also suffers from a slight stickiness to it that makes me miss more than it helps when an enemy stops moving suddenly and I get pulled back, but I can understand that since I'm playing on a controller. Aim assist is off, though, so I would love it if I could mess with some .ini to get rid of both problems entirely.