
Six months ago my barber told me my haircut doesn't suit me.

He said I should try growing it out. I told him this is the longest I've ever had it. He said: try it. Don't cut it for six months. Worst case, we go back to what you have now.

I sat in the car after and thought, why not? What actually happens? I look like a homeless person for six months? Maybe. But maybe I end up with the hair I always wanted to try.

It's been annoying. Hair sticking out everywhere. I shower in the morning now because of bed hair. I bought a leave-in conditioner, a product I never used in my life. Small adjustments just to make the thing work.

And six months later, I actually like it. I'm not going back to what I had before. And if I changed my mind tomorrow, I could fix it in one afternoon.

That's the whole math of a small bet. The downside was one haircut. The upside is the long hair I always wanted but never believed I could have. I'd written it off years ago because I thought I had the wrong kind of hair for it: too coarse, too stubborn to ever sit right.

People seem afraid to make these bets, afraid to change anything about their life, like every change is permanent. Most of them aren't. You can usually go back exactly where you started. If the new path doesn't work, you take one step back.

The barber knew this. He didn't sell me a new haircut. He sold me a reversible experiment.


My barber told me my haircut doesn't suit me. Try growing it out for six months, he said. Worst case, we go back to what you have now. That math changed how I think about small bets.

Make small bets


On Sunday I had a tough leg workout. Leg press, standard weight, definitely not a PR. I have two types of training. Sunday is more legs, Wednesday is more upper body, both full body. The difference is which part I push harder.

Monday morning I was supposed to train with my son. Every Monday and Thursday I walk 10 km on the walking desk. Always 10 when I get on it. I wasn't feeling great. Slight sore throat. But I went anyway.

My Whoop showed slightly worse recovery, but nothing dramatic. Maybe a combination of things. Some weakness, maybe I pushed the training a bit more. Hard to say.

After work, around 6-7pm, I went to the sauna. Sauna usually helps me. This time it knocked me out. That evening I jumped to 39°C fever. I thought they'd have to hospitalize me.

The thing is, that day looked identical to every other day I've lived through. Same routine, same pattern. But there were small variables I didn't notice, and I still can't evaluate them today. Slight sore throat. Slightly worse recovery. A bit more fatigue. Each one insignificant on its own.

I should have drastically slowed down at the first sign of being tired. I should have taken it easy. Now when I go to sauna because I'm not feeling well and want to rest, I think twice about it.

I don't know what the lesson is exactly. Maybe that's the point. Not every bad outcome has a clean takeaway. Sometimes you just didn't read the signals.


Tough leg day Sunday, 10 km walk Monday, sauna after work. By evening I had 39°C fever. The day looked identical to any other. But it wasn't.

I ignored every signal my body gave me


Having a full-time job and doing a side project on top of that is hard. Accept that you'll fail. Statistically, you just will. First time, second time, third, fifth, tenth. Maybe you'll never break through.

I've done about 12 projects over 10-11 years. Most of them went nowhere. There were gaps where I had no side project at all, or was just learning. At one point I was building a house, dropped side projects entirely, and took a second full-time job for about 1.5 years because I needed more money.

But here's what's even harder for me personally. I can't accept working under someone without the authority and ability to influence the direction my life is going. I just can't sit with that. The idea of being tied to that setup for the rest of my life is worse than any failure I've experienced with side projects.

That's why I'm ready to invest the free time I have now in the form of risk. The odds are bad. The track record proves it. But the alternative isn't safety. The alternative is giving up control over where my life goes. And that scares me more than failing again.


Having a full-time job and a side project is hard. Statistically, you'll fail. But working under someone without control over my direction is harder.

Employment scares me more than failure


When I have 30 things to do and I know I won't manage all of them, my body wants to run. Keep going, going, going. More and more. Make coffee faster, take out the trash faster, answer messages faster.

But I'm not actually doing any of it faster. I'm doing it with more tension. Same speed, more stress.

I used to do this with driving too. I'd know I'm going to be 5 or 10 minutes late for a meeting. So I'd force it. Drive aggressively, cut through traffic, stress the whole way. And I'd arrive 2 minutes less late instead of 10. That's what I got for all that tension. Two minutes.

Today when I know I won't make it on time, I just accept it. I drive there calmly. I'll be late. It's not okay, but it already happened. Some set of circumstances got me here and no amount of aggressive driving will fix it. And during that trip, I don't stress.

Same thing with a packed day. When there's too much and you know you won't get everything done, just accept that you won't. Reduce the intensity by 10, 20, 30 percent. Walk to the kitchen calmly. Don't run around the apartment like the world is ending. It's not.

Those extra 20 seconds you save by rushing won't save your day. But slowing down mentally might save your head.


When everything piles up, your body wants to sprint. But you're not actually moving faster. You're just doing the same things with more tension.

You're not faster, just tenser


When I started promoting videos on TikTok, I did what most people do. Picked one video, set a daily budget, set a campaign duration, and let it run. One video, one campaign.

Over time I figured out you can promote multiple videos at once. Today I never promote less 10 videos at a time.

The reason is simple. When you give TikTok multiple videos, its algorithm compares them. Videos that perform even slightly better get more of your budget. Even if organically they had 300, 400, 500 views and looked like failures, within that batch TikTok can tell which ones pull and which don't.

Real numbers from my last campaign. I paid about $400 total. Of that, only $240 was actual ad spend. The rest went to Apple fees and system fees. The campaign ran for 30 days. Total views: 50,339. Average cost per 1,000 views: roughly $5. The best-performing video hit $2.70 per thousand. The worst: $6.20. TikTok redistributed my budget toward the cheaper ones automatically.

That campaign gave me 15 new followers, 140 profile views, almost 5,000 likes, 13 comments, and 8 shares. I have 1,224 followers total right now.

The interesting part: the videos with the lowest and highest CPM look the same to me. Same lighting, same production quality, similar content. I genuinely can't tell the difference. But the algorithm can.

That's exactly why I never promote just one video. I can't pick the winner. TikTok can.


Promoting one video at a time on TikTok wastes money. I run 5-10 at once and let the algorithm pick the winner.

Why I never promote 1 video on TikTok


When I'm reading a marketing book and something connects to what I'm working on, I stop. I close the book mid-chapter and brainstorm. I don't push through just to read more pages. That doesn't make sense to me.

I bought 7 books specifically because of projects I was working on at the time. Not to "become well-read." Each one had a job: help me move a specific thing forward. The book Hooked from Nir Eyal, for example. Every chapter, I'm checking whether something can be applied to Edicek or not. That's how I read it. Not cover to cover like a novel.

Two things happen when you read this way. First, you get direct value. The book actually changes something in your work, not just in your head. Second, because you're applying it to yourself, you remember it. Try to recall something from a book you read passively two years ago. Good luck.

This works for content creation too. Once you start filtering everything through "can I use this," ideas start showing up everywhere. I save 10, 15 ideas a day just from consuming someone else's content or living my life. Not because I'm creative. Because I'm looking.

If I feel the urge to stop reading and jump to work, that's not a problem. That's the book doing its job.


I don't read to finish books. I read to apply what I find. If something clicks, I'd rather close the book and brainstorm than push through more pages.

I close the book mid-chapter


It took me 36 takes to record a one-minute video for Y Combinator.

Part of the application is a founder intro video. One minute. Just introduce yourself and explain what you're building. Sounds simple.

The problem is English isn't my first language. Speaking naturally while remembering a script is way harder than I expected.

Reading it was too obvious. So I memorized it. Then I had to deliver it without sounding like a robot.

Sometimes I smiled like a weirdo. Sometimes you could see me thinking about the next word. Take after take, something was off.

36 takes later, I had something I was okay with. Not perfect. Just acceptable.

And I still got rejected. ([You can read my whole application here.](/blog/my-yc-rejection-full-application))

But here's what happened. That video forced me to articulate what I'm building in one minute, in a language that's not mine. I had to compress everything about [Edicek](https://edicek.com) into 60 seconds that made sense.

Now I can explain it to anyone, anytime, without thinking. Investors. Users. Random people who ask what I'm working on.

36 takes wasn't wasted time. It was practice.


It took me 36 takes to record a one-minute YC video. English isn't my first language. I still got rejected. But now I can explain Edicek to anyone without thinking.

Petr Homoky.

36 takes for one minute of YC video.

New posts, in your inbox.

Make small bets.

I ignored every signal my body gave me.

Employment scares me more than failure.

You're not faster, just tenser.

Why I never promote 1 video on TikTok.

I close the book mid-chapter.