4 ms·

Absolutely titilating work. Off-topic: Never heard of you before, but you paint yourself as quite the polyglot for someone your age, I'm a bit dumbfounded and

Absolutely titilating work. Off-topic: Never heard of you before, but you paint yourself as quite the polyglot for someone your age, I'm a bit dumbfounded and frankly a little upset at myself for not even coming close to what you've produced/created. What's your secret(s) to being so productive?

stevelosh 11y ago
To be good at everything you have to accept that you'll never be great at anything. I've made peace with that (for the most part). Also I don't have kids or a mortgage so I have more flexibility than most.
- msellout 11y ago
  If "everything" is simply interpreted as many things, I believe one can be great at something and good at many things. If you interpret "everything" as a vast number of things, then being good at a vast number of things is a greatness in itself. Peace is good, but I'm not sure this is the right application.
  - pyre 11y ago
    "Making peace with <x>" on a personal level is just "coming to terms with <x>" or "accepting <x>." In this case, OP is probably accepting that he will never be a "master" or "guru" at something, while at the same time reaching "good" status on many things. This acceptance probably helps with not feeling that you are failing all of the time (i.e. not good enough) because you haven't reached some sort of "master/guru" status.
codyb 11y ago
There's a lot of hours in the day and a lot of years to life. Steve does seem very accomplished, that's quite a blog and set of projects he's got going on there. If you just set out to accomplish things though, you'll be surprised at how much you can complete, Also exercise (he does it through dancing it seems), you get a lot of energy from that. He's likely bilingual (or tri, or quad, or more) since he's from Iceland. That's super healthy. And he's clearly exercising all the areas of his brain by playing music, writing, engineering, and dancing. Probably doesn't spend too much time reading the news (it's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole that is reddit or hackernews sometimes), probably doesn't spend too much time binge watching things, probably doesn't party too hard too often. That's very different from assuming he never does any of those activities, it's probably just not his de facto constant. So I guess, and this is just an educated guess based on what I can see from him and my own personal experiences, my recommendation to you (and you didn't ask for my advice I know!) would be to limit the amount of time you spend doing things which are easy (reddit, hackernews, reading the news, watching TV), make sure to exercise, make sure to do something creative, and set singular goals for yourself (This week I want to write a blog post, my next goal is to develop a small program to do X). Finally, as you grow and continue to develop healthier habits it gets easier and easier to continue. So if you spend one week making sure to work towards your current singular goal, you're more likely to do so the next week. Also, starting is always the hardest part. Sometimes it's as simple as just opening the computer, closing the browser, and starting to futz around with some code. It takes about ten or fifteen minutes for me and then I'm in there like swim wear! And I can keep going for quite some time. But starting is always a bit arduous. Anyways, this is a bit winding but that's my opinion on your question.
- stevelosh 11y ago
  > He's likely bilingual (or tri, or quad, or more) since he's from Iceland. Not quite, unfortunately. I just moved here a couple of months ago (I'm from the US). I am taking Icelandic classes though, and I do speak a bit of American Sign Language from my undergrad time at RIT. So I'm working on it. Also yeah, getting the hell off of reddit/facebook/hn is extremely important. Sometimes HN is good for finding interesting reading (I hit hckrnews.com once or twice a day to find good links) but always remember the golden rule of the internet: http://shouldireadthecomments.com http://shouldireadthecomments.com
  - ghrifter 11y ago
    Huh, didn't know you can iframe a whole web page... At first I thought this page just ripped all the Wikipedia stylesheets and html but its just all one big iframe.
  - Coding_Cat 11y ago
    I don't have twitter, so I'll just leave this here: perhaps it'd be fun to graph the time delay between RUINED and SAVED? >but always remember the golden rule of the internet: http://shouldireadthecomments.com http://shouldireadthecomments.com Rather ironic you should post that here :).
  - codyb 11y ago
    Ha! That link got a great laugh out of me.
- Dirlewanger 11y ago
  I appreciate the post, thanks to you and Steve.

stevelosh 11y ago

To be good at everything you have to accept that you'll never be great at anything. I've made peace with that (for the most part). Also I don't have kids or a mortgage so I have more flexibility than most.

msellout 11y ago
If "everything" is simply interpreted as many things, I believe one can be great at something and good at many things. If you interpret "everything" as a vast number of things, then being good at a vast number of things is a greatness in itself. Peace is good, but I'm not sure this is the right application.
- pyre 11y ago
  "Making peace with <x>" on a personal level is just "coming to terms with <x>" or "accepting <x>." In this case, OP is probably accepting that he will never be a "master" or "guru" at something, while at the same time reaching "good" status on many things. This acceptance probably helps with not feeling that you are failing all of the time (i.e. not good enough) because you haven't reached some sort of "master/guru" status.

codyb 11y ago

There's a lot of hours in the day and a lot of years to life. Steve does seem very accomplished, that's quite a blog and set of projects he's got going on there. If you just set out to accomplish things though, you'll be surprised at how much you can complete, Also exercise (he does it through dancing it seems), you get a lot of energy from that. He's likely bilingual (or tri, or quad, or more) since he's from Iceland. That's super healthy. And he's clearly exercising all the areas of his brain by playing music, writing, engineering, and dancing. Probably doesn't spend too much time reading the news (it's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole that is reddit or hackernews sometimes), probably doesn't spend too much time binge watching things, probably doesn't party too hard too often. That's very different from assuming he never does any of those activities, it's probably just not his de facto constant. So I guess, and this is just an educated guess based on what I can see from him and my own personal experiences, my recommendation to you (and you didn't ask for my advice I know!) would be to limit the amount of time you spend doing things which are easy (reddit, hackernews, reading the news, watching TV), make sure to exercise, make sure to do something creative, and set singular goals for yourself (This week I want to write a blog post, my next goal is to develop a small program to do X). Finally, as you grow and continue to develop healthier habits it gets easier and easier to continue. So if you spend one week making sure to work towards your current singular goal, you're more likely to do so the next week. Also, starting is always the hardest part. Sometimes it's as simple as just opening the computer, closing the browser, and starting to futz around with some code. It takes about ten or fifteen minutes for me and then I'm in there like swim wear! And I can keep going for quite some time. But starting is always a bit arduous. Anyways, this is a bit winding but that's my opinion on your question.

stevelosh 11y ago
> He's likely bilingual (or tri, or quad, or more) since he's from Iceland. Not quite, unfortunately. I just moved here a couple of months ago (I'm from the US). I am taking Icelandic classes though, and I do speak a bit of American Sign Language from my undergrad time at RIT. So I'm working on it. Also yeah, getting the hell off of reddit/facebook/hn is extremely important. Sometimes HN is good for finding interesting reading (I hit hckrnews.com once or twice a day to find good links) but always remember the golden rule of the internet: http://shouldireadthecomments.com http://shouldireadthecomments.com
- ghrifter 11y ago
  Huh, didn't know you can iframe a whole web page... At first I thought this page just ripped all the Wikipedia stylesheets and html but its just all one big iframe.
- Coding_Cat 11y ago
  I don't have twitter, so I'll just leave this here: perhaps it'd be fun to graph the time delay between RUINED and SAVED? >but always remember the golden rule of the internet: http://shouldireadthecomments.com http://shouldireadthecomments.com Rather ironic you should post that here :).
- codyb 11y ago
  Ha! That link got a great laugh out of me.
Dirlewanger 11y ago
I appreciate the post, thanks to you and Steve.