Answer: Don’t!

Hire People or Get Your Friends to Help

Start like bezos

Keep it light. In the best case scenario, you're starting out with enough pocket change to hire a programmer or two, if they'd rather work with you than emmigrate to Silicon Valley.

If that's not you however, and instead you step up to master programming (a not unworthy challenge), remember a few things:

1. Programming is hard, in the beginning.

2. Smart programming is harder, in the beginning.

3. Later in the game, programming gets easier, and smart programming gets a lot easier.

Why is that?

Smart programming gets a lot easier because programs work together to minimize work load.

Let me give you an example: snippets

A smart programmer, codes up a fast snippet system. Then, whenever she writes some code, she saves it as a snippet. Voila, the next time she has to whip up a program, she queries her notes, calls the snippet, and the code just magically appears.

Example two: parsing json files

The internet is loaded with json files you can download. Let's say, for example, you've been posting text to facebook for a decade. 5 minutes every few days, a not unusual scenerio. You can download everything you've written, write some javascript code to parse it to a web server, then copy the reformatted text into your text editing program and generate hundreds of posts or snippets with just a few key strokes.

Example three: getting your technologies to work together

Most technologies can be made to work together, with a little effort. In the above example, you found and parsed some data into a new format. You may be able to use that new format with multiple programs. This is the case with, for example, the emacs code I share on this website. Not only is it already written, it's already in a publishible format, thanks to emacs org-mode. That means I can use the find and replace programs to restructure my editor code and publish content easily.

The same can be said for parsing Facebook data. Using a javascript parser in combination with emacs and hugo, you can port and preschedule your old facebook posts to your blog, or programmatically pass them into a format book publishers can use, if your facebook posts are any good that is.

While it may not be on your goal getting list, you might find after programming long enough you can knock out a huge amount of work in just a few days, like programmatically parsing and prescheduling 500 posts, so you don't have to maintain a blog for the next year. Then you can put your focus where it needs to be while still encouraging others to take up your system.

Mastering programming is hard, and if you can, start like Bezo's. But if that's not in the cards, or if you just like programming, put in a little extra effort in the beginning and you might find the time you need to prioritize things later in the game.

The Grand Master Program