6 ms·

Mistakes in time

106 points by akharris 9y ago

barce 9y ago
With a startup, you can setup KPIs. The author of this piece mentions growth as the main one and to focus on that. How was the author able to measure his growth as a photographer?
- akharris 9y ago
  I haven't been able to figure out anything quantitative for this, but I can look at my recent pictures and see that they're better than my old ones. That's a start, at least.
mar77i 9y ago
Still better than my own existential dread about all the things programming I'll never be able/doing/learning/getting a hang on, which I derive from the realization that my lifespan is limited. I mean, it's not easy to admit that even my basic research is ... mostly out-/open-sourced. EDIT: reading the article further, I discover the author is covering this. It's an amazing read.
- akharris 9y ago
  Thanks - programming is another area where I feel this dynamic at work. It's such a vast and interesting and hard space.
cvaidya1986 9y ago
Thanks I needed that. “When you let go of that need to be immediately great, you are also able to better learn from the people around you. Rather than compare yourself to where people are, and decide that it would be impossible to match them in the time you have, you think more about how to get gradually better over the time you have.”
gt_ 9y ago
This post speaks to the value photography brings to my life, as something that can exercise sensual creativity. But, there is a caveat. This does not work in correlation with social media. This isn’t to say one should not share their photos, but that there can be a few different agendas at play there and this comment concerns the more personal one. I am often critical with art and normally one to make things harder than they need to be, but I don’t think my photography habits show it. I approach photography much like the author and, for me, it has nurtured a very special relationship between myself and the world around me that I feel so many miss out on, including many photographers. There are many ways to explain the zen and fulfillment of photography but experiencing might be harder for some people. I recommend stashing your photos and not uploading them to social media for long periods of time after shooting them. Shooting film helps with this. Also don’t shoot simply to document. Shoot because your visual senses are nudging you. Gear trap is awful. Shooting film has few defensible benefits, but it does prevent the gear trap. I shoot on a trusty Contax G2 with 3 lenses, using Velvia 800 or Tri-X 400 maybe push a couple stops and use my own flatbed scanner. This is a simple and reliable setup that no new equipment can compete with. For someone starting out, look for a decent condition rangefinder with around a sharp 35mm focal length lens. Also, I like the author’s photography!
- vvanders 9y ago
  > Shooting film helps with this. Yes! As amazing as digital photography is it's very much the automatic transmission of the photography world. It's easy to just treat a shot as a checkbox and "move on". Film requires specific consideration and slowing of pace due to the inherent limited resources and turn-around time involved with the medium. I don't do much photography any more but loved shooting film for this reason when I did.
- akharris 9y ago
  So glad you like my photos! I totally agree with your feelings around social media. I don't actually use it much, for many reasons, but a big one is that I don't want to feel as if I'm taking pictures to get likes. It is far more about doing something I enjoy.
  - 9y ago
neom 9y ago
I feel like this is what makes dyslexia kinda cool. You spend so long when you're young trying incredibly hard to pick up this seemingly impossible thing that comes naturally to everyone else, eventually you build up a resiliency to not being very good at anything in particular, and you become pretty comfortable just trying many many different things as creatively as you can, because there is a zero percent chance you'll become "good at them" anyway. The upside of this is an inherent curiosity. https://www.google.com/search?q=dyslexic+entrepreneurs https://www.google.com/search?q=dyslexic+entrepreneurs
- nico 9y ago
  My co-founder and wife is dyslexic. Just like you say, because she had to work so much harder than everyone else, she basically got really good at working hard and never giving up. Here's a piece she wrote about being a dyslexic entrepreneur: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ugly-dyslexic-duckling-misa-chien https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ugly-dyslexic-duckling-misa-c...
ronilan 9y ago
> Fundamentally, the thing that scares me is that I’m worried about not being great at the things I do. My daughter learns Mandarin at school. I try to catch up with Duolingo (which btw is amazingly good). Mandarin is a great antidote to the “greatness worry” above. No matter how hard we work, how much we progress, how good we become, there will always be at least a billion people better than us. “The race is long, but in the end it is only with yourself”.
SirensOfTitan 9y ago
Using a getting-things-done approach has really improved my ability to learn. Before, I’d often get too overwhelmed with the end goal I had in mind (being great, perhaps). Within GTD, I always define a next tangible action for things I want to learn. It changes the game, as it redirects my focus from horizon view to what I can do right here and now to advance my goals or desires.
DaniFong 9y ago
this is really great for understanding what has been happening to people. glad we built this time machine!
aldous 9y ago
Do you know the song "Quick Canal" by Atlas Sound? It articulates some of the sentiments in this thread beautifully. "I wanted to live the life of a prince Because I thought saints were born saints So, indeed, we didn't stand a chance Insalubrious offshoots of nature With heart & mind of our own All the daughters, all the sons Taking centuries to unearth the creature Heralding a stage Where consciousness is higher Taken through a costly process Of success & failure I thought saints were born saints I looked in the dirt & found wisdom is learnt Through a costly process Of success & failure Oh, wisdom is learnt" https://youtu.be/RwjUyrp7-aI https://youtu.be/RwjUyrp7-aI
dzink 9y ago
For the longest time I had this fear of looking at a pristine piece of paper and being afraid to put anything on it, because my ideas might not be worth the effort and materials it took to make the paper. I had collected stacks of beautiful clean notebooks as a child from friends and family who got promotional business materials, so I'd have plenty of paper to write on, once I get wiser (culture of scarcity in Eastern Europe didn't help matters). The biggest allure of dabbling with computers at 8 and learning to program was because you can play and undo things with no material impact. Today I pick my mediums of ideation carefully - scrappy paper notebooks, whiteboard or iPad and only pencils for creative work, but no fancy notebooks or permanent pens. Whether its time or medium the fears are the same - we just need to give ourselves permission to be kids again and go play.
lynnetye 9y ago
>>> I had 4 different jobs, and 4 different career paths, in the 10 years after college.... Each time I switched jobs... I also realized that I’d gotten older, and started to fear that I did not have the time to get great. I too have changed jobs and careers several times since graduating college. Strangely, doing so has actually been liberating for me. I entered a PhD program immediately after college, obsessed with not only being the greatest, but also the youngest. (I didn't just want to "break records," I also wanted to be many years younger than the previous record holder when I did.) I let go of these fantasies the moment I dropped out of grad school though. I was starting over from scratch which meant I'd be too old to be the best and youngest at anything. And not chasing that goal has pretty much set me free. Everything is way more fun now, including being a complete noob in a room full of experts. http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care... <-- I always appreciated this Scott Adams post. It helped me go from path #1 to path #2. Ps. Your photos are phenomenal. Thanks for sharing, even though it was scary to! You are (almost certainly) already the top 25% at two or more things. Now how bout dat?! :D

106 points by akharris 9y ago

With a startup, you can setup KPIs. The author of this piece mentions growth as the main one and to focus on that. How was the author able to measure his growth as a photographer?

akharris 9y ago
I haven't been able to figure out anything quantitative for this, but I can look at my recent pictures and see that they're better than my old ones. That's a start, at least.

mar77i 9y ago

Still better than my own existential dread about all the things programming I'll never be able/doing/learning/getting a hang on, which I derive from the realization that my lifespan is limited. I mean, it's not easy to admit that even my basic research is ... mostly out-/open-sourced. EDIT: reading the article further, I discover the author is covering this. It's an amazing read.

akharris 9y ago
Thanks - programming is another area where I feel this dynamic at work. It's such a vast and interesting and hard space.

cvaidya1986 9y ago

Thanks I needed that. “When you let go of that need to be immediately great, you are also able to better learn from the people around you. Rather than compare yourself to where people are, and decide that it would be impossible to match them in the time you have, you think more about how to get gradually better over the time you have.”

gt_ 9y ago

This post speaks to the value photography brings to my life, as something that can exercise sensual creativity. But, there is a caveat. This does not work in correlation with social media. This isn’t to say one should not share their photos, but that there can be a few different agendas at play there and this comment concerns the more personal one. I am often critical with art and normally one to make things harder than they need to be, but I don’t think my photography habits show it. I approach photography much like the author and, for me, it has nurtured a very special relationship between myself and the world around me that I feel so many miss out on, including many photographers. There are many ways to explain the zen and fulfillment of photography but experiencing might be harder for some people. I recommend stashing your photos and not uploading them to social media for long periods of time after shooting them. Shooting film helps with this. Also don’t shoot simply to document. Shoot because your visual senses are nudging you. Gear trap is awful. Shooting film has few defensible benefits, but it does prevent the gear trap. I shoot on a trusty Contax G2 with 3 lenses, using Velvia 800 or Tri-X 400 maybe push a couple stops and use my own flatbed scanner. This is a simple and reliable setup that no new equipment can compete with. For someone starting out, look for a decent condition rangefinder with around a sharp 35mm focal length lens. Also, I like the author’s photography!

vvanders 9y ago
> Shooting film helps with this. Yes! As amazing as digital photography is it's very much the automatic transmission of the photography world. It's easy to just treat a shot as a checkbox and "move on". Film requires specific consideration and slowing of pace due to the inherent limited resources and turn-around time involved with the medium. I don't do much photography any more but loved shooting film for this reason when I did.
akharris 9y ago
So glad you like my photos! I totally agree with your feelings around social media. I don't actually use it much, for many reasons, but a big one is that I don't want to feel as if I'm taking pictures to get likes. It is far more about doing something I enjoy.
- 9y ago

neom 9y ago

I feel like this is what makes dyslexia kinda cool. You spend so long when you're young trying incredibly hard to pick up this seemingly impossible thing that comes naturally to everyone else, eventually you build up a resiliency to not being very good at anything in particular, and you become pretty comfortable just trying many many different things as creatively as you can, because there is a zero percent chance you'll become "good at them" anyway. The upside of this is an inherent curiosity. https://www.google.com/search?q=dyslexic+entrepreneurs https://www.google.com/search?q=dyslexic+entrepreneurs

nico 9y ago
My co-founder and wife is dyslexic. Just like you say, because she had to work so much harder than everyone else, she basically got really good at working hard and never giving up. Here's a piece she wrote about being a dyslexic entrepreneur: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ugly-dyslexic-duckling-misa-chien https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ugly-dyslexic-duckling-misa-c...

ronilan 9y ago

> Fundamentally, the thing that scares me is that I’m worried about not being great at the things I do. My daughter learns Mandarin at school. I try to catch up with Duolingo (which btw is amazingly good). Mandarin is a great antidote to the “greatness worry” above. No matter how hard we work, how much we progress, how good we become, there will always be at least a billion people better than us. “The race is long, but in the end it is only with yourself”.

SirensOfTitan 9y ago

Using a getting-things-done approach has really improved my ability to learn. Before, I’d often get too overwhelmed with the end goal I had in mind (being great, perhaps). Within GTD, I always define a next tangible action for things I want to learn. It changes the game, as it redirects my focus from horizon view to what I can do right here and now to advance my goals or desires.

DaniFong 9y ago

this is really great for understanding what has been happening to people. glad we built this time machine!

aldous 9y ago

Do you know the song "Quick Canal" by Atlas Sound? It articulates some of the sentiments in this thread beautifully. "I wanted to live the life of a prince Because I thought saints were born saints So, indeed, we didn't stand a chance Insalubrious offshoots of nature With heart & mind of our own All the daughters, all the sons Taking centuries to unearth the creature Heralding a stage Where consciousness is higher Taken through a costly process Of success & failure I thought saints were born saints I looked in the dirt & found wisdom is learnt Through a costly process Of success & failure Oh, wisdom is learnt" https://youtu.be/RwjUyrp7-aI https://youtu.be/RwjUyrp7-aI

dzink 9y ago

For the longest time I had this fear of looking at a pristine piece of paper and being afraid to put anything on it, because my ideas might not be worth the effort and materials it took to make the paper. I had collected stacks of beautiful clean notebooks as a child from friends and family who got promotional business materials, so I'd have plenty of paper to write on, once I get wiser (culture of scarcity in Eastern Europe didn't help matters). The biggest allure of dabbling with computers at 8 and learning to program was because you can play and undo things with no material impact. Today I pick my mediums of ideation carefully - scrappy paper notebooks, whiteboard or iPad and only pencils for creative work, but no fancy notebooks or permanent pens. Whether its time or medium the fears are the same - we just need to give ourselves permission to be kids again and go play.

lynnetye 9y ago

>>> I had 4 different jobs, and 4 different career paths, in the 10 years after college.... Each time I switched jobs... I also realized that I’d gotten older, and started to fear that I did not have the time to get great. I too have changed jobs and careers several times since graduating college. Strangely, doing so has actually been liberating for me. I entered a PhD program immediately after college, obsessed with not only being the greatest, but also the youngest. (I didn't just want to "break records," I also wanted to be many years younger than the previous record holder when I did.) I let go of these fantasies the moment I dropped out of grad school though. I was starting over from scratch which meant I'd be too old to be the best and youngest at anything. And not chasing that goal has pretty much set me free. Everything is way more fun now, including being a complete noob in a room full of experts. http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care... <-- I always appreciated this Scott Adams post. It helped me go from path #1 to path #2. Ps. Your photos are phenomenal. Thanks for sharing, even though it was scary to! You are (almost certainly) already the top 25% at two or more things. Now how bout dat?! :D