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> Ask any successful person. Ask any experienced person. They’ll all tell you the same thing – It takes time to create something valuable. Something worth doing

> Ask any successful person. Ask any experienced person. They’ll all tell you the same thing – It takes time to create something valuable. Something worth doing. Over time I've ended up not really understanding this advice, but only because of something I accomplished in the past. One day I just felt like writing something. I hadn't written since elementary school and had never published a piece of writing online before. But one day I just felt like writing something. The idea just would not leave my mind and I failed to get any sleep, instead spending all of my conscious time writing. Within a week I was more or less finished. It was a short story numbering only a few dozen pages at most. But save for some minor editing it was complete. And I decided that since I finished something, it was a success. And I also liked what I wrote, legitimately. I don't think it was that great in the context of people with experience, but it was mine, and that was enough for me to declare it a success. To me, I thought it was valuable. To me, I thought it was worth doing. So if it's true that you must spend a lot of time to make something valuable, then in my view one of two things is true: 1. What I accomplished in only a week was not valuable to me or anyone else and was not worth doing, and I'm just deluding myself. 2. The advice was untrue and you can still create things of value without spending a lot of time - it just depends on what the scale is. And if there is no way to create something valuable without spending a lot of time on it, then I don't understand why Ludum Dare and NaNoWriMo still exist, unless people believe the things they accomplish during those events are valueless, which doesn't sound right to me. Since then I have never really felt like writing. I will either sit down and not think of anything for hours, or at most write whatever comes to my mind in a stream of consciousness and then proceed to not look at or edit it ever again. I think this is what people call being trapped by their past successes. I expect to be able to accomplish again what I actually did accomplish a single time in the past, which is not realistic. Not everything I do will turn out as well as that one time. But the fact remains that I called what I accomplished a success despite not spending much time on it at all, and on top of that it was the first thing I had seriously written in over a decade, and I seem to be unable to reconcile that with the practicalities of developing a skill properly.

keenmaster 6y ago
I have a similar sentiment and anecdote. I'm fully aware that the OP is more about long term projects, but sometimes long term projects can be helped by a modular approach - including starting with a singular high energy event at the beginning to keep you motivated or get validation. Anecdote: A few months ago I was speaking with a friend and I mentioned the prospect of writing a certain article for publication in a newspaper (at least a local one), but I quickly dismissed the idea. I thought "what are the chances?" I actually looked up the chances of getting published in a top newspaper, and, according to Quora, they were extremely slim. My friend pushed me to go ahead with it anyway. I spent the next 4 hours producing and editing the first draft. My friend and a random guy sitting next to me at Starbucks helped revise it. I submitted the article to one of the top newspapers in the country/world and got published a couple weeks later. I literally never wrote a blog or article before that, and two weeks later tens of thousands of people were reading it and it was shared in elite circles. I sent the link to random Starbucks dude to show that his 10 minutes talking to a stranger resulted in more words on a national newspaper. He got a kick out of it. Though writing is not my profession, I would now feel more confident pursuing a long term writing project like authoring a book in my free time. This goes back to the modularity I mentioned above. This story could easily have been about a small side project that got traction on GitHub. There is a paucity of action. Just do it. I'm glad my friend told me that.
justaguyhere 6y ago
There is a whole cottage industry on giving advice, coaching etc (not talking about this article, just in general). Maybe most of the advice is well intentioned. But everyone's situation, skills, motivations, drive etc are different. What works for one person may not work for another. We can take general advice from successful people, I guess (especially those who has had recent success). But more than that, it is on the individual to tailor what he/she learned according to their needs. After listening to whole bunch of people giving advice and trying many of them, I haven't found much that can be applied as is.
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
There is an idea of beginner's luck - that when one starts doing something one resonates with on a deep level, one tends to have unexpected success because the potential to be great at it is seeking to escape and wants to signal to the conscious mind that it exists. But the same set of attitudes also believes that as one continues on the same path, the challenges it brings will rapidly grow to match one's burgeoning capabilities. So I would guess the people who say that worthwhile things take a long time, did often have experiences of grace like you, where things were easy. But I would guess they also found that anything worth doing is worth challenging oneself with.

keenmaster 6y ago

I have a similar sentiment and anecdote. I'm fully aware that the OP is more about long term projects, but sometimes long term projects can be helped by a modular approach - including starting with a singular high energy event at the beginning to keep you motivated or get validation. Anecdote: A few months ago I was speaking with a friend and I mentioned the prospect of writing a certain article for publication in a newspaper (at least a local one), but I quickly dismissed the idea. I thought "what are the chances?" I actually looked up the chances of getting published in a top newspaper, and, according to Quora, they were extremely slim. My friend pushed me to go ahead with it anyway. I spent the next 4 hours producing and editing the first draft. My friend and a random guy sitting next to me at Starbucks helped revise it. I submitted the article to one of the top newspapers in the country/world and got published a couple weeks later. I literally never wrote a blog or article before that, and two weeks later tens of thousands of people were reading it and it was shared in elite circles. I sent the link to random Starbucks dude to show that his 10 minutes talking to a stranger resulted in more words on a national newspaper. He got a kick out of it. Though writing is not my profession, I would now feel more confident pursuing a long term writing project like authoring a book in my free time. This goes back to the modularity I mentioned above. This story could easily have been about a small side project that got traction on GitHub. There is a paucity of action. Just do it. I'm glad my friend told me that.

justaguyhere 6y ago

There is a whole cottage industry on giving advice, coaching etc (not talking about this article, just in general). Maybe most of the advice is well intentioned. But everyone's situation, skills, motivations, drive etc are different. What works for one person may not work for another. We can take general advice from successful people, I guess (especially those who has had recent success). But more than that, it is on the individual to tailor what he/she learned according to their needs. After listening to whole bunch of people giving advice and trying many of them, I haven't found much that can be applied as is.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

There is an idea of beginner's luck - that when one starts doing something one resonates with on a deep level, one tends to have unexpected success because the potential to be great at it is seeking to escape and wants to signal to the conscious mind that it exists. But the same set of attitudes also believes that as one continues on the same path, the challenges it brings will rapidly grow to match one's burgeoning capabilities. So I would guess the people who say that worthwhile things take a long time, did often have experiences of grace like you, where things were easy. But I would guess they also found that anything worth doing is worth challenging oneself with.