9 ms·

Joseph Campbell’s daily routine for “the most important period of my study”

248 points by tuxguy 9y ago

z3t4 9y ago
1. Save up money as a student. 2. Hire an apartment in New York. 3. Don't take a job, just sit and play computer games all day. 4. Go out for dinners. 5. Get invited to cocktail parties ... Live like that for five years using the money you earned as a student. 6. Make a computer game. 7. Profit! ... Sounds like a plan!
- ak39 9y ago
  It does sound like a plan. But he also says don't think of 7. Be "fearless and desireless". What a man.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    And like anything and everything this plan can fail. It is quite hard (or lucky) to pull off in fact. Three problem with this plan is that it is very fragile.
    - z3t4 9y ago
      I was sarcastic. Most people end school with a fat loan. And who is gonna afford an apartment in New York !? Then eating out and, going to cocktail parties - makes it even insulting!
a_d 9y ago
Key passage: "When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous. Whereas the way these things are taught normally in college and school is a sampler of what this one wrote and that one wrote and you’re asked to be more interested in the date of the publication of Keat’s sonnets than in what’s in them.” I think many of us have deployed this graph in our own lives. I watch movies this way - watch more movies made by a director I like. Then watch movies by the people this director likes. Its a wonderful exploration. I wish there was a version of IMDB that allowed this meta exploration of movies - i.e. exploring the influence-graph for movies (or any art as a matter of fact). There is a wonderful documentary called Connections [1] that explores this in the world of science, technology and engineering -- it traces the sequence of inventions and inventors that had influenced each other. I strongly recommend viewing it. You may find it very inspiring! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)
- model_s 9y ago
  that writer might be Tim Urban, for me
- Griffinsauce 9y ago
  Inspiration gives amazing internal motivation, so follow your inspiration.
- subatomic 9y ago
  > I think many of us have deployed this graph in our own lives. I watch movies this way - watch more movies made by a director I like. Then watch movies by the people this director likes. Its a wonderful exploration. I use https://www.metal-archives.com https://www.metal-archives.com in this manner. The number of dimensions on which you can find connections and similarities makes finding new music a joy. A version of IMDB based upon the ideas in MA is what you seek.
  - vvanders 9y ago
    Wow, how have I never seen MA that's awesome and pretty darn accurate.
- mbrock 9y ago
  Campbell is the guy who said "follow your bliss."
- theodorton 9y ago
  This resonated really well with me. I know people ask you to try and do the opposite (which I guess won't hurt from time to time), but I also think it's really awarding to do exploration this way. I think it may apply better to arts and culture than it does to science and history. Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but I'm really happy with Taste.io for browsing personal movie recommendations. I think you should give it a try.
  - a_d 9y ago
    My first impression of Taste.io is very positive. Good recommendation! Thanks.
adamnemecek 9y ago
The NEET lifestyle is truly amazing. Too bad not many people espouse it.
- waivek 9y ago
  NEET's dont get invited for cocktails.
- ternaryoperator 9y ago
  Not entirely certain this routine would qualify for "Not in education."
siliconc0w 9y ago
Routine is simultaneously marvelous at producing results and a prison of one's own making. I'm into archery and at a certain point I was shooting everyday. My groups got tighter. Then, at a certain point a good shot lost it's wonder and became expected. I didn't feel anything except disappointment when I made a less than perfect shot. I then stopped and better understood why those that are better are better. There are no heroes, no calls to adventure or treacherous journeys - just a dull ceaseless repetition. Like a hammer driving a nail.
- worldburger 9y ago
  Newsflash: you didn’t enjoy the process of archery?
- erasmuse 9y ago
  No no. The routine is a space for unstructured improvement. Nor is there such a thing as repetition in learning. Every attempt at gaining skill is at least slightly different and is made under at least slightly different conditions. Progress being the slow accumulation of mastery over many details. If it feels dull then either a plateau has been reached or the ambition itself is an unworthy one and should be abandoned in favour of something else.
  - i2shar 9y ago
    Beautifully put!
  - jonathanstrange 9y ago
    I don't believe this is true, or at least it depends on the kind of thing you're learning. For example, when you want to become an outstanding guitar player, you'll need to go through many, many hours of dull and definitely boring training in order to perfect your playing technique. Without that training, you can become a good or a creative guitar player, but not a genuine master. I presume that it's similar with many other instruments and related skills like archery, gymnastics, dancing, or skateboarding.
    - 9y ago
tobych 9y ago
Typo: Campbell's needs that apostrophe.
pruthvishetty 9y ago
It's the gist of Deep Work by Cal Newport.
pravda 9y ago
If you've never heard of Joseph Campbell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1qd0KGOv9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1qd0KGOv9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbeWTOubqSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbeWTOubqSo
- ak39 9y ago
  Thank you very much for this. It is serendipitous. I wish I had the fortune of simply talking to or being in the presence of a man of such calibre. Such men are indeed rare and often their compassion and humble wisdom is easily drowned out by the noisy loud-mouthed advice we often get from so many self-help gurus. I've been kicked to curb this year with failures, with skullduggerous cheats, with outright rejections and with rejections of no communication. A growing sense of a dark godawful dread has made residence in the core of my belly. I walk around with it everywhere I go. I feel more than ever that I have now truly and completely doomed my family's future. I should have instead remained, I now think, grinding at that safe but soulless day job before I even thought of cultivating that perilous and impossible journey - that falsely advertised dream to go out alone in consulting and into the business of enterprise bloody software. (A place where arse-kissing and networking matters more than your ability to produce software that is actually useful to clients!) I was hanging by that last thread of once abundant hope. This dastardly year is coming to its ignoble end, and I continue to stare solemnly at the targets I set for myself in January this year. It's deplorable. Campbell says "the real end is the journey" and that I need to possess the fire to drive me into battle fearlessly. I have to summon that courage. But I have to summon the courage to be honest first!
  - jdpigeon 9y ago
    Hang in there, buddy. It sounds like you've got a lot of actually useful skills and I think you and your family will do fine in the long run. Even if you end up going back to a "safe but soulless" job.
    - ak39 9y ago
      Thanks, JD. Agreed, if I have to imagine doing fine in the longer run, I have to confront this phase as a game of nerves. Gotta keep the nerves. If you were in town, I'd get the first round this Friday!
nicklaf 9y ago
Whereas the way these things are taught normally in college and school is a sampler of what this one wrote and that one wrote and you’re asked to be more interested in the date of the publication of Keat’s sonnets than in what’s in them. So instead of reading this sample of Campbell's work of on Hacker News, I should be following the advice contained in it? But then the advice is to favor a single body of work over such samples! So had I followed his very advice too strictly, I would never have had the chance to read it in the first place! Unless, of course, if I already knew about Campbell's work because he was one of the authors I chose to read thoroughly. That all said, Edmund Burke did say: "Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods,choose both". So maybe: spend some time reading Hacker News, and most of it ignoring the web and other shallow sources entirely.
erikb 9y ago
This is really nice for a crunch time. It doesn't have to be 5 years I believe. Even 3 months is possible, and this can be discussed with the boss as well, if you have a job.
evjan 9y ago
That's admirable, I couldn't read that much! I'm wondering what Campbell did achieve by doing all that reading and what made it the most important period of his scholarship and study. The 10,000 hour figure (which is just an arbitrary number, not an absolute rule according to Anders Ericsson[1] whose research Malcolm Gladwell referred to) implies you can reach mastery with a lot of practice, given you do the right kind of practice. Mastery is the ability to perform a skill, it's not about knowledge. You need knowledge to perform, but knowledge without being able to perform does not imply mastery. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-ebook/dp/B011H56MKS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509695294&sr=8-1&keywords=peak https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-eb...
- kitotik 9y ago
  If you are wondering what he achieved by all that reading, read his books or watch the man speak. I’d say at minimum he achieved a much greater contentment than most people I’ve ever encountered have, and at most has positively impacted literally millions of people’s lives. Seems like a good investment to me.
  - evjan 9y ago
    Did he achieve that by reading for 9 hours a day or in spite of reading for 9 hours a day though? I'm aware of no research showing that reading that much would make you a happier person or more influential.
vongesell 9y ago
why is this on HN?
- waivek 9y ago
  Joseph Campbell is an important figure in the JavaScript community.
- kreetx 9y ago
  Joseph Campbell is a humanitarian who researches myths, also doing quite some interpretation and trying to relate the meaning to the human life at large. It has nothing to do with software development, but (apparently) many of us find his ideas applicable, perhaps especially on the startuppy side of things, where courage etc is required.
- n4r9 9y ago
  "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  A poor choice of questions, FYI. Campbell exhibits traits and practices of creativity, originality, and intellectual accomplishment of interest to some HN readers. Certainly myself.
- 1123581321 9y ago
  I think it's for a few reasons. Many of us are interested in biographies and what made famous people the way they are. Others would like to master programming, computer science, or some other field and look for how to achieve it. Still others are trying to figure out how to quit HN without losing any of the benefits. Finally, some users fall into all of these groups. :)
PeOe 9y ago
Love this. It´s amazing how he on his own maneuvered from a life with no order to creating his own order and sticking to it. I would wonder how he achieved that. I guess it was out of necessity. For anyone that is planning to become more organized and get more done during the day, I´d recommend https://zenkit.com https://zenkit.com (Disclaimer: I work at Zenkit.) Btw: my author of choice would be Tim Ferris. If you don´t know his books, definitely check him out. https://tim.blog/tim-ferriss-books/ https://tim.blog/tim-ferriss-books/
- HiroshiSan 9y ago
  Interesting choice for author of choice. I used to enjoy reading Tim Ferris' blog, read the four hour work week when it first came out, but over time I couldn't help feeling like he just wants to sell me something and it's given me a bitter outlook towards him. Granted he produces a lot of content at no cost, but his marketing tactics are very in your face.
  - PeOe 9y ago
    Well, yeah that´s true in some way. I really loved the Tools of Titans though and I´m still listening to his podcast on a daily basis. Just so many great insights.
- ck425 9y ago
  I also enjoy Tim Ferris, but other great alternatives are Mr Money Mustache and Cal Newport. Their particularly good as they concentrate on maximising money/happiness and time/concentration.
  - PeOe 9y ago
    Haven´t checked out those two yet. Will definitely try. Can you recommend any books?
kleiba 9y ago
Presumably, he must have had a good public library nearby in order to find enough reading material for that time frame, and also to be able to afford those books without a job. Learning is a luxury, and reading is key to it. That said, if you think about fields like mathematics or even programming, reading about them will hardly lead you to mastery: you need to sit down and get your fingers dirty, trying to do it yourself. Have you ever had this happening to you: when a teacher shows you a new method to compute something, it all sounds perfectly clear and simple, until you sit down and try it out on an unseen problem yourself? If you're on Hacker News (which you are) chances are you love reading to -- after all, it's a site that provides links to articles (sometimes videos). But increasingly, I realize that my time is better spent building something myself. Being a "hacker" (in the original sense of the word) implies doing something actively, while (to me) reading is a rather passive occupation. Enjoyable, yes, but at the end of the year, I'd like to look back and say "this year, I made X and Y" rather than "I read about X and Y". Has anyone actually read Campell's classic "The hero with a thousand faces"? I did when in college, but to be honest, I found it too dry to make it to the end. But I still have my copy of the book. Maybe I should get it out of the shelf and give it another try. Not for 9 hours of the day though. There's code that wants to bet written...
- steev 9y ago
  I agree that practice is equally important, but you certainly need to have an understanding of the material and what is going on prior to implementing something or working through a proof.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > I'd like to look back and say "this year, I made X and Y" rather than "I read about X and Y". A false dichotomy IMO. What I want is "this year, I understood X and Y", and understanding a thing involves both making and reading (most of the time).
  - kleiba 9y ago
    It's not a false dichotomy, it's an opinion - mine. An opinion about personal satisfaction. To me, reading and learning is great. I do it for a living, basically. But building something is much, much more satisfying for me. Not because I might have to understand something new along the way - that's an added bonus. But even building something new for which I didn't need to acquire new knowledge will give me a better feeling. It's about "creativity" in the original sense of the word. Perhaps it's because creating something is harder than reading something that makes it that way, although even reading something very difficult and finally getting it still can't beat "making".
amelius 9y ago
IMHO, what routine does is get you started every day. That is the most difficult part of the workday, those first 15-30 minutes.
Dowwie 9y ago
He obviously read Arthur Schopenhauer, "The Art of Literature" http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10714 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10714
criddell 9y ago
I wish I could read for even one 3 hour period each day. When I sit down with a book or my ereader and start reading, I start feeling sleepy after ten or fifteen minutes. I'll also find that I'm scanning the sentences, but not really absorbing, so I turn back a few pages and start reading again. I fare much better if I take notes as I read. I'm starting to think that maybe writing a chapter synopsis after every chapter I read would fix my problem. Plus then I could put them online and maybe get some feedback from other readers. I'm halfway through Cryptonomicon right now and find myself reading Steve Russillo's page on the book to remind myself what just happened. My brain might not be good enough for passive reading anymore. Edit: BTW, Russillo's page is a warm reminder to me of what first made me fall in love with the web. Check it out: http://russillosm.com/index.html http://russillosm.com/index.html
- hackermailman 9y ago
  Try 15-30mins on an exercise bike, or/and at intervals in the reading get up to do push ups or something. Same problem I end up mind wandering while trying to read and having to flip back pages but exercise solved that. Taking active notes helps too, I'll have emacs open and write down anything I'll likely use again, index it in org-mode then year(s) later I'll need to look up something like generating all n-tuples and have an index.org file that spans the three books I read on the subject.
iandanforth 9y ago
Any article like this that doesn't discuss how people pay for things is bunk. Yes the method of self actualization great people use is interesting but it's not applicable unless you know how they achieved their basic needs. While Thoreau was living in the woods his mother brought him food. Churchill had the time to write because he was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. These details matter. Edit: writer mixup
- bachmeier 9y ago
  I kept saying to myself as I read the article: this was the Great Depression, when people starved because they didn't have jobs. If all you had to do was go live in the woods and read books, the Depression wouldn't have been a problem. There's the practical issue of needing food and shelter, which didn't fall from heaven, and in his case, buying enough books to read for 16,000 hours.
hackermailman 9y ago
He only payed $20 a year for his shack http://edricketts.stanford.edu/Campbell_Ricketts3.pdf http://edricketts.stanford.edu/Campbell_Ricketts3.pdf and also went up to expeditions in Alaska during this time which only cost 25 cents per day. I guess you could do this now, find a rural trailer somewhere and live as cheap as possible to read all day but not with school debt/insurance obligations.
fallingfrog 9y ago
Where did he get money for food and shelter? I would have loved to live like this in my 20's, and I'm sure I would have gotten a lot done.. sadly I was employed, and when you take away 8 hours of work and 1 hours of commute time, you're left with zero hours per day, rather than 9. It was a constant source of frustration to me that I had to spend my useful hours following someone's instructions, instead of learning about the world, forging personal connections, and building beautiful things- which is what I really wanted to do.
oceanghost 9y ago
My uncle (a scholar in his own right) knew Joseph Campbell's family. They had a cattle farm (I'll decline to mention where), and mentioned their "Uncle Joe" had a room he came to stay in now and then. The family was completely unaware of the profundity of "Uncle Joe" other than that he was a professor and had written a few books. Humble individual, it seems.

248 points by tuxguy 9y ago

z3t4 9y ago

1. Save up money as a student. 2. Hire an apartment in New York. 3. Don't take a job, just sit and play computer games all day. 4. Go out for dinners. 5. Get invited to cocktail parties ... Live like that for five years using the money you earned as a student. 6. Make a computer game. 7. Profit! ... Sounds like a plan!

ak39 9y ago
It does sound like a plan. But he also says don't think of 7. Be "fearless and desireless". What a man.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  And like anything and everything this plan can fail. It is quite hard (or lucky) to pull off in fact. Three problem with this plan is that it is very fragile.
  - z3t4 9y ago
    I was sarcastic. Most people end school with a fat loan. And who is gonna afford an apartment in New York !? Then eating out and, going to cocktail parties - makes it even insulting!

a_d 9y ago

Key passage: "When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous. Whereas the way these things are taught normally in college and school is a sampler of what this one wrote and that one wrote and you’re asked to be more interested in the date of the publication of Keat’s sonnets than in what’s in them.” I think many of us have deployed this graph in our own lives. I watch movies this way - watch more movies made by a director I like. Then watch movies by the people this director likes. Its a wonderful exploration. I wish there was a version of IMDB that allowed this meta exploration of movies - i.e. exploring the influence-graph for movies (or any art as a matter of fact). There is a wonderful documentary called Connections [1] that explores this in the world of science, technology and engineering -- it traces the sequence of inventions and inventors that had influenced each other. I strongly recommend viewing it. You may find it very inspiring! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)

model_s 9y ago
that writer might be Tim Urban, for me
Griffinsauce 9y ago
Inspiration gives amazing internal motivation, so follow your inspiration.
subatomic 9y ago
> I think many of us have deployed this graph in our own lives. I watch movies this way - watch more movies made by a director I like. Then watch movies by the people this director likes. Its a wonderful exploration. I use https://www.metal-archives.com https://www.metal-archives.com in this manner. The number of dimensions on which you can find connections and similarities makes finding new music a joy. A version of IMDB based upon the ideas in MA is what you seek.
- vvanders 9y ago
  Wow, how have I never seen MA that's awesome and pretty darn accurate.
mbrock 9y ago
Campbell is the guy who said "follow your bliss."
theodorton 9y ago
This resonated really well with me. I know people ask you to try and do the opposite (which I guess won't hurt from time to time), but I also think it's really awarding to do exploration this way. I think it may apply better to arts and culture than it does to science and history. Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but I'm really happy with Taste.io for browsing personal movie recommendations. I think you should give it a try.
- a_d 9y ago
  My first impression of Taste.io is very positive. Good recommendation! Thanks.

adamnemecek 9y ago

The NEET lifestyle is truly amazing. Too bad not many people espouse it.

waivek 9y ago
NEET's dont get invited for cocktails.
ternaryoperator 9y ago
Not entirely certain this routine would qualify for "Not in education."

siliconc0w 9y ago

Routine is simultaneously marvelous at producing results and a prison of one's own making. I'm into archery and at a certain point I was shooting everyday. My groups got tighter. Then, at a certain point a good shot lost it's wonder and became expected. I didn't feel anything except disappointment when I made a less than perfect shot. I then stopped and better understood why those that are better are better. There are no heroes, no calls to adventure or treacherous journeys - just a dull ceaseless repetition. Like a hammer driving a nail.

worldburger 9y ago
Newsflash: you didn’t enjoy the process of archery?
erasmuse 9y ago
No no. The routine is a space for unstructured improvement. Nor is there such a thing as repetition in learning. Every attempt at gaining skill is at least slightly different and is made under at least slightly different conditions. Progress being the slow accumulation of mastery over many details. If it feels dull then either a plateau has been reached or the ambition itself is an unworthy one and should be abandoned in favour of something else.
- i2shar 9y ago
  Beautifully put!
- jonathanstrange 9y ago
  I don't believe this is true, or at least it depends on the kind of thing you're learning. For example, when you want to become an outstanding guitar player, you'll need to go through many, many hours of dull and definitely boring training in order to perfect your playing technique. Without that training, you can become a good or a creative guitar player, but not a genuine master. I presume that it's similar with many other instruments and related skills like archery, gymnastics, dancing, or skateboarding.
  - 9y ago

tobych 9y ago

Typo: Campbell's needs that apostrophe.

pruthvishetty 9y ago

It's the gist of Deep Work by Cal Newport.

pravda 9y ago

If you've never heard of Joseph Campbell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1qd0KGOv9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1qd0KGOv9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbeWTOubqSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbeWTOubqSo

ak39 9y ago
Thank you very much for this. It is serendipitous. I wish I had the fortune of simply talking to or being in the presence of a man of such calibre. Such men are indeed rare and often their compassion and humble wisdom is easily drowned out by the noisy loud-mouthed advice we often get from so many self-help gurus. I've been kicked to curb this year with failures, with skullduggerous cheats, with outright rejections and with rejections of no communication. A growing sense of a dark godawful dread has made residence in the core of my belly. I walk around with it everywhere I go. I feel more than ever that I have now truly and completely doomed my family's future. I should have instead remained, I now think, grinding at that safe but soulless day job before I even thought of cultivating that perilous and impossible journey - that falsely advertised dream to go out alone in consulting and into the business of enterprise bloody software. (A place where arse-kissing and networking matters more than your ability to produce software that is actually useful to clients!) I was hanging by that last thread of once abundant hope. This dastardly year is coming to its ignoble end, and I continue to stare solemnly at the targets I set for myself in January this year. It's deplorable. Campbell says "the real end is the journey" and that I need to possess the fire to drive me into battle fearlessly. I have to summon that courage. But I have to summon the courage to be honest first!
- jdpigeon 9y ago
  Hang in there, buddy. It sounds like you've got a lot of actually useful skills and I think you and your family will do fine in the long run. Even if you end up going back to a "safe but soulless" job.
  - ak39 9y ago
    Thanks, JD. Agreed, if I have to imagine doing fine in the longer run, I have to confront this phase as a game of nerves. Gotta keep the nerves. If you were in town, I'd get the first round this Friday!

nicklaf 9y ago

Whereas the way these things are taught normally in college and school is a sampler of what this one wrote and that one wrote and you’re asked to be more interested in the date of the publication of Keat’s sonnets than in what’s in them. So instead of reading this sample of Campbell's work of on Hacker News, I should be following the advice contained in it? But then the advice is to favor a single body of work over such samples! So had I followed his very advice too strictly, I would never have had the chance to read it in the first place! Unless, of course, if I already knew about Campbell's work because he was one of the authors I chose to read thoroughly. That all said, Edmund Burke did say: "Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods,choose both". So maybe: spend some time reading Hacker News, and most of it ignoring the web and other shallow sources entirely.

erikb 9y ago

This is really nice for a crunch time. It doesn't have to be 5 years I believe. Even 3 months is possible, and this can be discussed with the boss as well, if you have a job.

evjan 9y ago

That's admirable, I couldn't read that much! I'm wondering what Campbell did achieve by doing all that reading and what made it the most important period of his scholarship and study. The 10,000 hour figure (which is just an arbitrary number, not an absolute rule according to Anders Ericsson[1] whose research Malcolm Gladwell referred to) implies you can reach mastery with a lot of practice, given you do the right kind of practice. Mastery is the ability to perform a skill, it's not about knowledge. You need knowledge to perform, but knowledge without being able to perform does not imply mastery. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-ebook/dp/B011H56MKS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509695294&sr=8-1&keywords=peak https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-eb...

kitotik 9y ago
If you are wondering what he achieved by all that reading, read his books or watch the man speak. I’d say at minimum he achieved a much greater contentment than most people I’ve ever encountered have, and at most has positively impacted literally millions of people’s lives. Seems like a good investment to me.
- evjan 9y ago
  Did he achieve that by reading for 9 hours a day or in spite of reading for 9 hours a day though? I'm aware of no research showing that reading that much would make you a happier person or more influential.

vongesell 9y ago

why is this on HN?

waivek 9y ago
Joseph Campbell is an important figure in the JavaScript community.
kreetx 9y ago
Joseph Campbell is a humanitarian who researches myths, also doing quite some interpretation and trying to relate the meaning to the human life at large. It has nothing to do with software development, but (apparently) many of us find his ideas applicable, perhaps especially on the startuppy side of things, where courage etc is required.
n4r9 9y ago
"anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"
dredmorbius 9y ago
A poor choice of questions, FYI. Campbell exhibits traits and practices of creativity, originality, and intellectual accomplishment of interest to some HN readers. Certainly myself.
1123581321 9y ago
I think it's for a few reasons. Many of us are interested in biographies and what made famous people the way they are. Others would like to master programming, computer science, or some other field and look for how to achieve it. Still others are trying to figure out how to quit HN without losing any of the benefits. Finally, some users fall into all of these groups. :)

PeOe 9y ago

Love this. It´s amazing how he on his own maneuvered from a life with no order to creating his own order and sticking to it. I would wonder how he achieved that. I guess it was out of necessity. For anyone that is planning to become more organized and get more done during the day, I´d recommend https://zenkit.com https://zenkit.com (Disclaimer: I work at Zenkit.) Btw: my author of choice would be Tim Ferris. If you don´t know his books, definitely check him out. https://tim.blog/tim-ferriss-books/ https://tim.blog/tim-ferriss-books/

HiroshiSan 9y ago
Interesting choice for author of choice. I used to enjoy reading Tim Ferris' blog, read the four hour work week when it first came out, but over time I couldn't help feeling like he just wants to sell me something and it's given me a bitter outlook towards him. Granted he produces a lot of content at no cost, but his marketing tactics are very in your face.
- PeOe 9y ago
  Well, yeah that´s true in some way. I really loved the Tools of Titans though and I´m still listening to his podcast on a daily basis. Just so many great insights.
ck425 9y ago
I also enjoy Tim Ferris, but other great alternatives are Mr Money Mustache and Cal Newport. Their particularly good as they concentrate on maximising money/happiness and time/concentration.
- PeOe 9y ago
  Haven´t checked out those two yet. Will definitely try. Can you recommend any books?

kleiba 9y ago

Presumably, he must have had a good public library nearby in order to find enough reading material for that time frame, and also to be able to afford those books without a job. Learning is a luxury, and reading is key to it. That said, if you think about fields like mathematics or even programming, reading about them will hardly lead you to mastery: you need to sit down and get your fingers dirty, trying to do it yourself. Have you ever had this happening to you: when a teacher shows you a new method to compute something, it all sounds perfectly clear and simple, until you sit down and try it out on an unseen problem yourself? If you're on Hacker News (which you are) chances are you love reading to -- after all, it's a site that provides links to articles (sometimes videos). But increasingly, I realize that my time is better spent building something myself. Being a "hacker" (in the original sense of the word) implies doing something actively, while (to me) reading is a rather passive occupation. Enjoyable, yes, but at the end of the year, I'd like to look back and say "this year, I made X and Y" rather than "I read about X and Y". Has anyone actually read Campell's classic "The hero with a thousand faces"? I did when in college, but to be honest, I found it too dry to make it to the end. But I still have my copy of the book. Maybe I should get it out of the shelf and give it another try. Not for 9 hours of the day though. There's code that wants to bet written...

steev 9y ago
I agree that practice is equally important, but you certainly need to have an understanding of the material and what is going on prior to implementing something or working through a proof.
majewsky 9y ago
> I'd like to look back and say "this year, I made X and Y" rather than "I read about X and Y". A false dichotomy IMO. What I want is "this year, I understood X and Y", and understanding a thing involves both making and reading (most of the time).
- kleiba 9y ago
  It's not a false dichotomy, it's an opinion - mine. An opinion about personal satisfaction. To me, reading and learning is great. I do it for a living, basically. But building something is much, much more satisfying for me. Not because I might have to understand something new along the way - that's an added bonus. But even building something new for which I didn't need to acquire new knowledge will give me a better feeling. It's about "creativity" in the original sense of the word. Perhaps it's because creating something is harder than reading something that makes it that way, although even reading something very difficult and finally getting it still can't beat "making".

amelius 9y ago

IMHO, what routine does is get you started every day. That is the most difficult part of the workday, those first 15-30 minutes.

Dowwie 9y ago

He obviously read Arthur Schopenhauer, "The Art of Literature" http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10714 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10714

criddell 9y ago

I wish I could read for even one 3 hour period each day. When I sit down with a book or my ereader and start reading, I start feeling sleepy after ten or fifteen minutes. I'll also find that I'm scanning the sentences, but not really absorbing, so I turn back a few pages and start reading again. I fare much better if I take notes as I read. I'm starting to think that maybe writing a chapter synopsis after every chapter I read would fix my problem. Plus then I could put them online and maybe get some feedback from other readers. I'm halfway through Cryptonomicon right now and find myself reading Steve Russillo's page on the book to remind myself what just happened. My brain might not be good enough for passive reading anymore. Edit: BTW, Russillo's page is a warm reminder to me of what first made me fall in love with the web. Check it out: http://russillosm.com/index.html http://russillosm.com/index.html

hackermailman 9y ago
Try 15-30mins on an exercise bike, or/and at intervals in the reading get up to do push ups or something. Same problem I end up mind wandering while trying to read and having to flip back pages but exercise solved that. Taking active notes helps too, I'll have emacs open and write down anything I'll likely use again, index it in org-mode then year(s) later I'll need to look up something like generating all n-tuples and have an index.org file that spans the three books I read on the subject.

iandanforth 9y ago

Any article like this that doesn't discuss how people pay for things is bunk. Yes the method of self actualization great people use is interesting but it's not applicable unless you know how they achieved their basic needs. While Thoreau was living in the woods his mother brought him food. Churchill had the time to write because he was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. These details matter. Edit: writer mixup

bachmeier 9y ago
I kept saying to myself as I read the article: this was the Great Depression, when people starved because they didn't have jobs. If all you had to do was go live in the woods and read books, the Depression wouldn't have been a problem. There's the practical issue of needing food and shelter, which didn't fall from heaven, and in his case, buying enough books to read for 16,000 hours.

hackermailman 9y ago

He only payed $20 a year for his shack http://edricketts.stanford.edu/Campbell_Ricketts3.pdf http://edricketts.stanford.edu/Campbell_Ricketts3.pdf and also went up to expeditions in Alaska during this time which only cost 25 cents per day. I guess you could do this now, find a rural trailer somewhere and live as cheap as possible to read all day but not with school debt/insurance obligations.

fallingfrog 9y ago

Where did he get money for food and shelter? I would have loved to live like this in my 20's, and I'm sure I would have gotten a lot done.. sadly I was employed, and when you take away 8 hours of work and 1 hours of commute time, you're left with zero hours per day, rather than 9. It was a constant source of frustration to me that I had to spend my useful hours following someone's instructions, instead of learning about the world, forging personal connections, and building beautiful things- which is what I really wanted to do.

oceanghost 9y ago

My uncle (a scholar in his own right) knew Joseph Campbell's family. They had a cattle farm (I'll decline to mention where), and mentioned their "Uncle Joe" had a room he came to stay in now and then. The family was completely unaware of the profundity of "Uncle Joe" other than that he was a professor and had written a few books. Humble individual, it seems.