7 ms·

Jackie Chan's Best Advice

90 points by oDot 6y ago

raiyu 6y ago
I always said if you do something do your best at it. If you find yourself not doing your best, then choose not to do it. If you can't choose not to do it, that means this is essential, and so go see #1 again. Do your best. I think of it from the same perspective of business. Instead of doing OK support do your BEST support. If you are struggling, then choose to do no support - if your customers leave because support is critical, then guess what, you will probably get more benefit from doing your best. So I think that advice works well as a way to really minimize your engagements, and figure out which ones are essential, by not just doing them just cause, by trying to cancel them entirely otherwise.
hcarvalhoalves 6y ago
Life is too short to not really apply yourself in the things you choose to do - and if you're not doing your best, choose something else. Unfortunately I learned this lesson quite late in life.
- ticmasta 6y ago
  I understand where you're coming from, but you don't have to pursue your absolute best in everything you do. It's fine to just "do" things casually. I think people would be much happier if they prioritized participation over mastery.
  - allenu 6y ago
    Yeah, you will soon burn yourself out if you try to do the best in everything. It's really a matter of choosing a few key place to focus your energy and put in extra effort there, but to make sure you leave enough to do other things in life.
    - CMCDragonkai 6y ago
      There is the main course meal in life. But I still enjoy the side dishes.
- reginaldo 6y ago
  How late? Late 20s? 30s, 40s, or 50s? I think that, having come to the realization, you're already probably far ahead of the curve. I've been very inspired by Mandelbrot's life, lately. Reading "The fractalist", his memoir, it's possible to realize two things: 1) how incredibly resilient he and his family were; 2) how he worked from his own definition of success: the fact that he ended up achieving what most people define as undisputed success was almost incidental. He was, to use Joseph Campbell's words, following his bliss. Mandelbrot was born in 1924. The Mandelbrot set was discovered in 1980. Of course he worked on important things before that, but having his major discovery in the mid 50s puts things in perspective.
kjgkjhfkjf 6y ago
Software doesn't live forever. Good enough and soon enough is enough.
- allenu 6y ago
  With experience, you realize that minimum effort in the key places that bring maximum result is the name of the game. Obviously "minimum" differs from situation to situation. Just enough effort, but not more than needed, but not too little either.
- khazhoux 6y ago
  For years I've been mystified how certain people who make bad software engineering decisions over and over --but do so quickly and with commitment-- rise up in the leadership ranks. I'm talking about people who join projects like a hurricane, don't pull in all the relevant data before making a technical call, and their work /always/ has to be replaced or cleaned up 6 months later. I finally realized that there's usually not a "perfect" engineering solution, and you can spend weeks or months going back and forth on a plan. So the people that just plow ahead --even if not great-- wind up delivering "something", which is better than nothing. And put another way, they land 2 failures and one moderate success in the same amount of time the rest of us are busy landing our one single success... which also winds up being only a moderate success at best because writing good software systems is hard!
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    Look up "satisficing". It's a wonderful concept.
  - Baeocystin 6y ago
    Sometimes even a wrong decision is better than no decision, and that is so antithetical to how I want things to be it took a lot of pain events to beat that through my skull. But it is true nonetheless.
    - JimTheMan 6y ago
hatsunearu 6y ago
Jackie Chan is a bootlicker, I ain't listening to his garbage.
Kiro 6y ago
This is depressing. I always like to think "people will understand" but no, no-one cares. They only care about the end result.
adamredwoods 6y ago
>> I try to follow it with everything I do. I mildly disagree (commenting mostly on the article, less on JC). I certainly don't treat every aspect of my life "the best I can", but rather my time is precious and I try to be smart about my time. Where is it best allocated? Folding laundry to my best ability? I could certainly research it and become an expert, but is this good use of my time? Is this how I want to be known as? Is this this how I want to define myself? Time is precious. Know where to spend it.
- fairity 6y ago
  The article's basically saying do the best you can to achieve the goals you really care about. In your case, one of these goals seems to be making efficient use of your time. So, the article would advise you do the best you can at that.
  - smallnamespace 6y ago
    Making efficient use of time is rarely an end goal, but necessary to achieve most other goals.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sharadov 6y ago
Who cares about best in Software Engineering? Time and again I've wanted to do the best, to be asked to just provide a "workable solution" because either the best costs time or money. And I get it, business is all about tradeoffs. I do the best in domains where I have the complete freedom to do so.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  I agree. As well as for most jobs. I think Jackie's perspective makes a lot of sense as a creative artist though. The extra effort has a tangible reward and is appreciated by those around him.
- zeroxfe 6y ago
  You can consider reframing the problem: what's the best I can do, given the constraints (time, money, resources, etc.) I find that I'm most creative when I'm constrained. And these types of mindset hacks allow me to enjoy whatever I work on.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    There's an argument I believe that the best art comes when the artist has to deal with constraints. The lack of freedom in certain directions forces them to go deeper in the other directions.
    - purplecats 6y ago
      yup, just like in society where you're not allowed to talk about or question things that haven't been approved for conversation, but you can dive infinitely deep in areas that are approved.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "Who cares about best in Software Engineering?" Systems and low-level software such as compilers, operating systems, platform software. A bug in the kernel affects billions of devices, a bug in AWS/Azure/GCP affects millions of VMs.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
You mean Jackie Chan, the CCP muppet and traitor to Hong Kong?
b0rsuk 6y ago
I have a pretty pessimistic approach to programming nowadays. I like Rust language because it gives a very good result "on the first try" - meaning, the compiler does a very good job making the program bulletproof. I don't believe any company will give me a chance to write good, polished software. They just want whatever works. There is no refactoring, only maintenance. The alternative is programming as a hobby rather than a profession. But I would need to find a comparably well paying and stimulating profession first.
- johnisgood 6y ago
  Exactly. You will have ridiculous deadlines, you will have to implement stuff in an extremely shitty way because you have no time for higher quality code, and you will spend the rest of your time there unfucking the code, or other people's code that has been made as quickly as possible because of deadlines, and this is just an example. > I don't believe any company will give me a chance to write good, polished software. I do not believe it either, especially due to my experiences. I do not work in IT for a reason.
- jmann99999 6y ago
  It's all how you look at it. The devil is in the detail. What does "good polished software" really mean? Is it code that is understandable, efficient, and reusable ... or does it mean trying to achieve some personal ideal of perfect software. Does refactoring provide a business advantage or just a pathway to attempting code perfection? If you are in it for the art, then you need to find that shop that is in it for the art. Many aren't. I'm sure some are. If you are in it for providing outstanding code because it provides personal satisfaction or meets your world view, then great. It sounds like you need to find a way to provide what you want to provide in a timeframe that is almost as quick as the alternative. If you want to achieve personnel perfection and can't find a way to be almost quick at delivering a viable product as the alternative, then either you change, accept it, or move on. You sound like you are competent and have a world view. I would figure out ways to speed up your output (through templates or language choices that match who you are). If your code is great and you develop it fast, the people who are rushing you won't have a leg to stand on. If you are good, you can have it all.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad" - Shiguru Miyamoto
- foobarian 6y ago
  *distributed on cartridges
- vayeate 6y ago
  I can think of multiple examples of rushed games that are good, or became good - though Miyamoto's quote here may have been before the era of internet updates.
gcheong 6y ago
I'm ok with trying to be excellent at a few things and good enough at everything else.
goodcjw2 6y ago
I'm afraid lots of comments are missing the key point in the original post: Do not conflate “the best you can” with “perfect”. The advice is not about perfection, but challenge YOURSELF to do the best you within the constraints such as budget, deadlines, available resources, etc.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  One thing I got from the Bhagavad Gita is the quote “you are entitled to your actions but not the results”. To me this means you should do your best but should into expect specific results. Once you have done your best you did all you could do. The results are out of your hands.
  - karmakaze 6y ago
    I might have learned an instance of this. I repeated a Beat Saber song over and over until it was perfect but it lost tracking for a note in the middle and I didnt notice until the end, aargh. I did it again and then the left controller battery died on the third last note. It didn't matter.
- disown 6y ago
  Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- Twirrim 6y ago
  Something I keep having to remind myself, and other engineers in teams I work on is "Good enough is good enough". There are plenty of projects they're working on that could be better if they could spend another week or two working on it. But is it sufficient to actually justify that time vs working on other projects? Can we quantify how much difference that extra polish will make several months down the line? I find it hard to fight myself, because no small part of me sees my work in the same way Durnik does: > "Always do the very best job you can," he said on another occasion as he put a last few finishing touches with a file on the metal parts of a wagon tongue he was repairing. > "But that piece goes underneath," Garion said. "No-one will ever see it." > "But I know it's there," Durnik said, still smoothing the metal. "If it isn't done as well as I can do it, I'll be ashamed every time I see this wagon go by - and I'll see the wagon every day!" I landed a huge improvement on a product at work about 9 months ago, after months of work on it. Cut execution times down by a huge amount and made the customer experience more consistent. Managers look at it and see what I achieved. I look at it and see all the things I don't like about it, all the ugly hacks and things that make it work.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
I think this great if you have the luxury of not doing certain things. I often envy people who can focus on one thing and if they are good at it then they are set. People like athletes, artists or actors. A lot of normal workers don’t have that luxury. In a lot of jobs it doesn’t really matter how good you are as long as you fulfill some minimum requirements. Or you have a ton of tasks you aren’t good at but can’t get rid of. I became tech lead because I am a good programmer but now I have to do a lot of stuff I don’t like and am not good at as much as I try. Focusing only on programming would unfortunately cause a significant pay cut because you are not paid by excellence but by job title.
dudul 6y ago
The difference is that a lot of software is forever unfinished. I was about to say "if you work on a game, or a desktop app maybe" but even that is not true anymore. Games are patched almost weekly nowadays. This advice can absolutely be applied to making a movie, writing a book, painting a picture, etc, but not to software.
golemiprague 6y ago
Another useless advice like "eat healthy" or "just be yourself". It is the kind of stuff we all know intuitively that it is good but the hard part is changing your state of mind to actually perform it.
ImaCake 6y ago
I think this kind of advice is a symptom of the real issue. Which is that when you think you can’t do something your brain is often lying to you. You want to be lazy and find a way around the problem, but often you can complete the task, it is just challenging and thus parts of your brain wish to avoid it. The solution for me is to identify that my brain is lying to me and doing the things it tells me I can’t do. Alternatively sometimes this manifests as fear and all I have to do is to follow my fear.
hyko 6y ago
Follow this advice by left-aligning your text please :)
renewiltord 6y ago
This is exactly it. Excuses are only for you. Other people don't care if you're sorry, only if you're good at what you do. So be good.
pdimitar 6y ago
With all the respect I have for Jackie Chan, his quote is IMO just trying to tell you: "Try harder! Hustle more! No excuses!". No. I disagree. The world finally started noticing that mental health actually exists and it deteriorates when you are being treated as an assembly line robot that can barely (if ever) stop. We don't exist only to keep trying harder until our bodies cannot take it anymore. There has to exist a better way to be productive, useful, fulfilled and successful. But almost nobody is looking for that another way. In terms of current modern economics and ways of treating workers, we are in a local maxima and seldom anyone cares looking around for a taller hill.
- lazyant 6y ago
  Yes, it's not clear to me that we have a moral obligation to be "best" or do the best we can, even if there was no mental/physical price associated with it. (Let alone "best" is not clearly defined but I take it as quality/performance/output - frequently materialized in money or professional advancement).
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    Sadly nowadays there is no real incentive to try harder for most people -- except maybe "don't stop or all the money you poured into mortgage will evaporate and you and your family will be evicted". That's not motivational, that's being threatened with a big stick for a huge chunk of your adult life. Jackie Chan's advice definitely applies to his work -- movies and stunts. I can see how his words are true in that area. What many successful people keep missing however, is that their advice is very far from universally applicable.

90 points by oDot 6y ago

I always said if you do something do your best at it. If you find yourself not doing your best, then choose not to do it. If you can't choose not to do it, that means this is essential, and so go see #1 again. Do your best. I think of it from the same perspective of business. Instead of doing OK support do your BEST support. If you are struggling, then choose to do no support - if your customers leave because support is critical, then guess what, you will probably get more benefit from doing your best. So I think that advice works well as a way to really minimize your engagements, and figure out which ones are essential, by not just doing them just cause, by trying to cancel them entirely otherwise.

hcarvalhoalves 6y ago

Life is too short to not really apply yourself in the things you choose to do - and if you're not doing your best, choose something else. Unfortunately I learned this lesson quite late in life.

ticmasta 6y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but you don't have to pursue your absolute best in everything you do. It's fine to just "do" things casually. I think people would be much happier if they prioritized participation over mastery.
- allenu 6y ago
  Yeah, you will soon burn yourself out if you try to do the best in everything. It's really a matter of choosing a few key place to focus your energy and put in extra effort there, but to make sure you leave enough to do other things in life.
  - CMCDragonkai 6y ago
    There is the main course meal in life. But I still enjoy the side dishes.
reginaldo 6y ago
How late? Late 20s? 30s, 40s, or 50s? I think that, having come to the realization, you're already probably far ahead of the curve. I've been very inspired by Mandelbrot's life, lately. Reading "The fractalist", his memoir, it's possible to realize two things: 1) how incredibly resilient he and his family were; 2) how he worked from his own definition of success: the fact that he ended up achieving what most people define as undisputed success was almost incidental. He was, to use Joseph Campbell's words, following his bliss. Mandelbrot was born in 1924. The Mandelbrot set was discovered in 1980. Of course he worked on important things before that, but having his major discovery in the mid 50s puts things in perspective.

kjgkjhfkjf 6y ago

Software doesn't live forever. Good enough and soon enough is enough.

allenu 6y ago
With experience, you realize that minimum effort in the key places that bring maximum result is the name of the game. Obviously "minimum" differs from situation to situation. Just enough effort, but not more than needed, but not too little either.
khazhoux 6y ago
For years I've been mystified how certain people who make bad software engineering decisions over and over --but do so quickly and with commitment-- rise up in the leadership ranks. I'm talking about people who join projects like a hurricane, don't pull in all the relevant data before making a technical call, and their work /always/ has to be replaced or cleaned up 6 months later. I finally realized that there's usually not a "perfect" engineering solution, and you can spend weeks or months going back and forth on a plan. So the people that just plow ahead --even if not great-- wind up delivering "something", which is better than nothing. And put another way, they land 2 failures and one moderate success in the same amount of time the rest of us are busy landing our one single success... which also winds up being only a moderate success at best because writing good software systems is hard!
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  Look up "satisficing". It's a wonderful concept.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  Sometimes even a wrong decision is better than no decision, and that is so antithetical to how I want things to be it took a lot of pain events to beat that through my skull. But it is true nonetheless.
  - JimTheMan 6y ago

hatsunearu 6y ago

Jackie Chan is a bootlicker, I ain't listening to his garbage.

Kiro 6y ago

This is depressing. I always like to think "people will understand" but no, no-one cares. They only care about the end result.

adamredwoods 6y ago

>> I try to follow it with everything I do. I mildly disagree (commenting mostly on the article, less on JC). I certainly don't treat every aspect of my life "the best I can", but rather my time is precious and I try to be smart about my time. Where is it best allocated? Folding laundry to my best ability? I could certainly research it and become an expert, but is this good use of my time? Is this how I want to be known as? Is this this how I want to define myself? Time is precious. Know where to spend it.

fairity 6y ago
The article's basically saying do the best you can to achieve the goals you really care about. In your case, one of these goals seems to be making efficient use of your time. So, the article would advise you do the best you can at that.
- smallnamespace 6y ago
  Making efficient use of time is rarely an end goal, but necessary to achieve most other goals.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

sharadov 6y ago

Who cares about best in Software Engineering? Time and again I've wanted to do the best, to be asked to just provide a "workable solution" because either the best costs time or money. And I get it, business is all about tradeoffs. I do the best in domains where I have the complete freedom to do so.

klmadfejno 6y ago
I agree. As well as for most jobs. I think Jackie's perspective makes a lot of sense as a creative artist though. The extra effort has a tangible reward and is appreciated by those around him.
zeroxfe 6y ago
You can consider reframing the problem: what's the best I can do, given the constraints (time, money, resources, etc.) I find that I'm most creative when I'm constrained. And these types of mindset hacks allow me to enjoy whatever I work on.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  There's an argument I believe that the best art comes when the artist has to deal with constraints. The lack of freedom in certain directions forces them to go deeper in the other directions.
  - purplecats 6y ago
    yup, just like in society where you're not allowed to talk about or question things that haven't been approved for conversation, but you can dive infinitely deep in areas that are approved.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "Who cares about best in Software Engineering?" Systems and low-level software such as compilers, operating systems, platform software. A bug in the kernel affects billions of devices, a bug in AWS/Azure/GCP affects millions of VMs.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

You mean Jackie Chan, the CCP muppet and traitor to Hong Kong?

b0rsuk 6y ago

I have a pretty pessimistic approach to programming nowadays. I like Rust language because it gives a very good result "on the first try" - meaning, the compiler does a very good job making the program bulletproof. I don't believe any company will give me a chance to write good, polished software. They just want whatever works. There is no refactoring, only maintenance. The alternative is programming as a hobby rather than a profession. But I would need to find a comparably well paying and stimulating profession first.

johnisgood 6y ago
Exactly. You will have ridiculous deadlines, you will have to implement stuff in an extremely shitty way because you have no time for higher quality code, and you will spend the rest of your time there unfucking the code, or other people's code that has been made as quickly as possible because of deadlines, and this is just an example. > I don't believe any company will give me a chance to write good, polished software. I do not believe it either, especially due to my experiences. I do not work in IT for a reason.
jmann99999 6y ago
It's all how you look at it. The devil is in the detail. What does "good polished software" really mean? Is it code that is understandable, efficient, and reusable ... or does it mean trying to achieve some personal ideal of perfect software. Does refactoring provide a business advantage or just a pathway to attempting code perfection? If you are in it for the art, then you need to find that shop that is in it for the art. Many aren't. I'm sure some are. If you are in it for providing outstanding code because it provides personal satisfaction or meets your world view, then great. It sounds like you need to find a way to provide what you want to provide in a timeframe that is almost as quick as the alternative. If you want to achieve personnel perfection and can't find a way to be almost quick at delivering a viable product as the alternative, then either you change, accept it, or move on. You sound like you are competent and have a world view. I would figure out ways to speed up your output (through templates or language choices that match who you are). If your code is great and you develop it fast, the people who are rushing you won't have a leg to stand on. If you are good, you can have it all.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad" - Shiguru Miyamoto

foobarian 6y ago
*distributed on cartridges
vayeate 6y ago
I can think of multiple examples of rushed games that are good, or became good - though Miyamoto's quote here may have been before the era of internet updates.

gcheong 6y ago

I'm ok with trying to be excellent at a few things and good enough at everything else.

goodcjw2 6y ago

I'm afraid lots of comments are missing the key point in the original post: Do not conflate “the best you can” with “perfect”. The advice is not about perfection, but challenge YOURSELF to do the best you within the constraints such as budget, deadlines, available resources, etc.

spaetzleesser 6y ago
One thing I got from the Bhagavad Gita is the quote “you are entitled to your actions but not the results”. To me this means you should do your best but should into expect specific results. Once you have done your best you did all you could do. The results are out of your hands.
- karmakaze 6y ago
  I might have learned an instance of this. I repeated a Beat Saber song over and over until it was perfect but it lost tracking for a note in the middle and I didnt notice until the end, aargh. I did it again and then the left controller battery died on the third last note. It didn't matter.
disown 6y ago
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Twirrim 6y ago
Something I keep having to remind myself, and other engineers in teams I work on is "Good enough is good enough". There are plenty of projects they're working on that could be better if they could spend another week or two working on it. But is it sufficient to actually justify that time vs working on other projects? Can we quantify how much difference that extra polish will make several months down the line? I find it hard to fight myself, because no small part of me sees my work in the same way Durnik does: > "Always do the very best job you can," he said on another occasion as he put a last few finishing touches with a file on the metal parts of a wagon tongue he was repairing. > "But that piece goes underneath," Garion said. "No-one will ever see it." > "But I know it's there," Durnik said, still smoothing the metal. "If it isn't done as well as I can do it, I'll be ashamed every time I see this wagon go by - and I'll see the wagon every day!" I landed a huge improvement on a product at work about 9 months ago, after months of work on it. Cut execution times down by a huge amount and made the customer experience more consistent. Managers look at it and see what I achieved. I look at it and see all the things I don't like about it, all the ugly hacks and things that make it work.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

I think this great if you have the luxury of not doing certain things. I often envy people who can focus on one thing and if they are good at it then they are set. People like athletes, artists or actors. A lot of normal workers don’t have that luxury. In a lot of jobs it doesn’t really matter how good you are as long as you fulfill some minimum requirements. Or you have a ton of tasks you aren’t good at but can’t get rid of. I became tech lead because I am a good programmer but now I have to do a lot of stuff I don’t like and am not good at as much as I try. Focusing only on programming would unfortunately cause a significant pay cut because you are not paid by excellence but by job title.

dudul 6y ago

The difference is that a lot of software is forever unfinished. I was about to say "if you work on a game, or a desktop app maybe" but even that is not true anymore. Games are patched almost weekly nowadays. This advice can absolutely be applied to making a movie, writing a book, painting a picture, etc, but not to software.

golemiprague 6y ago

Another useless advice like "eat healthy" or "just be yourself". It is the kind of stuff we all know intuitively that it is good but the hard part is changing your state of mind to actually perform it.

ImaCake 6y ago

I think this kind of advice is a symptom of the real issue. Which is that when you think you can’t do something your brain is often lying to you. You want to be lazy and find a way around the problem, but often you can complete the task, it is just challenging and thus parts of your brain wish to avoid it. The solution for me is to identify that my brain is lying to me and doing the things it tells me I can’t do. Alternatively sometimes this manifests as fear and all I have to do is to follow my fear.

hyko 6y ago

Follow this advice by left-aligning your text please :)

renewiltord 6y ago

This is exactly it. Excuses are only for you. Other people don't care if you're sorry, only if you're good at what you do. So be good.

pdimitar 6y ago

With all the respect I have for Jackie Chan, his quote is IMO just trying to tell you: "Try harder! Hustle more! No excuses!". No. I disagree. The world finally started noticing that mental health actually exists and it deteriorates when you are being treated as an assembly line robot that can barely (if ever) stop. We don't exist only to keep trying harder until our bodies cannot take it anymore. There has to exist a better way to be productive, useful, fulfilled and successful. But almost nobody is looking for that another way. In terms of current modern economics and ways of treating workers, we are in a local maxima and seldom anyone cares looking around for a taller hill.

lazyant 6y ago
Yes, it's not clear to me that we have a moral obligation to be "best" or do the best we can, even if there was no mental/physical price associated with it. (Let alone "best" is not clearly defined but I take it as quality/performance/output - frequently materialized in money or professional advancement).
- pdimitar 6y ago
  Sadly nowadays there is no real incentive to try harder for most people -- except maybe "don't stop or all the money you poured into mortgage will evaporate and you and your family will be evicted". That's not motivational, that's being threatened with a big stick for a huge chunk of your adult life. Jackie Chan's advice definitely applies to his work -- movies and stunts. I can see how his words are true in that area. What many successful people keep missing however, is that their advice is very far from universally applicable.