Why Are You Building?
Have you ever stopped and actually asked yourself that question?
I did. And it took me almost two years of building things to get there.
I think a lot of people are building right now for a few different reasons. Some are building because AI finally made it possible (vibecoding), the barrier is lower than it’s ever been and people are taking the opportunity. Some are trying to replace their 9-5 with something of their own. And then there’s a big chunk of people who are building simply because they see everyone else doing it and feel like they should be too.
That last one is the one worth talking about.
If you spend any time on X (buildinpublic), you’ve probably seen it. Posts telling you that if you’re in your 20s, working a regular job and don’t have a successful business yet - you’re behind, you’re losing and you’re wasting your life. It’s everywhere and it’s loud and after a while it gets inside your head whether you want it to or not.
I know because I was there. I started building partly because I genuinely enjoyed it, but also because social media had sold me this idea that a 9-5 was something to escape from and wont give you a nice Porsche 911. That if I wasn’t making money from my own products, something was wrong with me.
After almost two years of building, making some money, closing some deals, shipping things, I finally stopped and asked myself: why am I actually doing this?
And the answer surprised me with how simple it was.
I build because I love the process. When I’m deep in building something, it’s like I disconnect from everything else and step into a different world for a while. I’m not thinking about whether the product will make money, whether people will care, whether it’s even a good idea. I’m just in it. Enjoying it. And that’s enough.
That feeling has a name, actually, Schopenhauer wrote about how certain things, like art, compassion and deep contemplation, can pull us out of the endless cycle of desire for a brief moment. Building does that for me too.
That’s when things shifted for me. I stopped building out of frustration with 9-5 life and started building because it genuinely means something to me. There’s actually another piece I wrote about that specifically but the short version is: once I knew why, everything felt lighter.
Here’s the thing about social media though, it’s really good at making you feel like a failure. Everywhere you look there’s someone flexing their MRR, their “I quit my job” story, their course on how to make $10k a month. It looks real. It feels real. But a lot of it is either an illusion or someone selling you something - a course, a book, a tool, a lifestyle.
I’m not saying stop following the builders you genuinely like. And I’m not saying don’t build. I’m saying: know why you’re doing it.
Because if your whole energy comes from hating something, hating your job, hating where you are, hating that you’re “behind”, that’s a shaky foundation. It might push you for a while but it runs out. And when it does, building starts to feel hollow.
The better question isn’t how do I make money from this, it’s why do I want to build this in the first place? Maybe you spotted something and wanted to make it better. Maybe you have a problem only you can solve. Maybe it’s just a weird idea you couldn’t get out of your head. Those are all valid reasons. You don’t need some grand purpose to start.
What you do need is to be honest with yourself about where the motivation is coming from.
Also, stop watching videos of people flexing their revenue numbers. Stop buying courses that promise to make you rich fast. There is no course that does that. Read more instead. Write more. It’ll do more for your thinking than any highlight reel ever will.
You can live a genuinely happy life working a 9-5. You can build on the side just because you enjoy it. You can do both. You can do neither. Nobody gets to tell you what a meaningful life looks like - that’s yours to figure out.
Just make sure that when you’re building, it’s actually you building - not a version of you that social media convinced into it.
So seriously - why are you building?