3 ms·

> What Miyazaki makes clear throughout the guide is that he is, proudly, a cheapskate who isn’t fussy about tools. He looks for reliability and convenience. His

> What Miyazaki makes clear throughout the guide is that he is, proudly, a cheapskate who isn’t fussy about tools. He looks for reliability and convenience. His pitch for Holbein paints is just that they’re “reasonably priced and a little goes a long way.” > In his notes, Miyazaki purposely leans into sounding old and stuck in his ways. He rants about how he’s painted with nothing else for 40 years, how easy and cost-effective his tools are — and then he undermines himself by suggesting that, really, this is all he knows how to do. There's a deeper truth which is easy to overlook here. If you want to get good at some creative pursuit, you have to put a lot of time, attention, and decision making effort into the skill. All of those are finite resources. It's really easy to squander an unbelievable amount of time and effort on choosing gear. Doing that is time not spent mastering the craft. You might get really good at picking shit out, but you won't get good at painting, or poetry, or song-writing, or whatever. This is why so many successful artists seem stuck in their ways or dismissive of gear, or, conversely, fetishize certain gear. Those are all mental techniques to minimize the effort they spend on picking stuff so that they can focus that effort on creating.

MrGilbert 4y ago
I would go as far and extend that to almost every profession. I mean, when I started programming, I could spend ours choosing the right library, tools, or whatever. But nowadays, when I have an idea, I stick to C# and Visual Studio. Because that’s the language i'm familiar with for over a decade now. Which doesn’t mean I don’t look right and left - but still, I don’t want to think about my tooling.
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  Same. Although when I start a new project, I still spend hours shopping for the latest and greatest frameworks/libraries/tools that I haven't had a chance to use yet. I can't help it lol.
- hkab 4y ago
  That's right. As time go by, I care more about functionality. I didn't wasting time on gnome-look when I install a fresh Ubuntu like before.
mlindner 4y ago
This suddenly explains to me a lot of stuff in computer engineering/programming. 1. The developers who fight over vim vs emacs or other tools. A defensive mechanism. 2. The occasional developer that spent their lives working with C and C++ who attack Rust but only makes excuses on why. 3. Myself who spends way too much time trying to find the "best" development environment rather than just coding. And I'm sure people could mention a bunch of others.
- zeroxp 4y ago
  It is so easy to burn ten or fifteen minutes a few times a day just futzing with your development environment.
mroche 4y ago
It's really easy to squander an unbelievable amount of time and effort on choosing gear. It really cannot be understated how true this is. I've been trying to get back into digital music composition and arrangement and spent way more than I thought I did to get myself off the ground. I'm fortunate enough to be able to have the financial reserves to spend what I did, but in hindsight... man was a lot of it unnecessary. I've spent more time reading about and following discussions involving tools and sample libraries than I have re-studying music theory, orchestration, and actually producing something. It doesn't help that in this day and age, there are a ton of choices a person can make. Both choice-paralysis and "screw-it-just-get-everything[-if-it's-on-sale]" are absolutely real phenomena.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Every hobby I had, from woodworking and metalworking to poker, to photography, to telescopes, to piano, everything that requires practice and hands-on work: there are internet forums where you can talk about the hobbies and the gear an the tools and the tactics, and research and endlessly debate and compare, but they all will eventually grab you by the shoulders, shake you and say “Get off the Internet! Turn off the computer! Go and actually do the thing over and over!” Best advice you can get.
bardan 4y ago
This is a trap I fall into once in a while, getting too obsessed with my tools or environment. I sometimes try to remind myself of this part from the Red Dwarf book Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers about Rimmer's studying habits: > And now he sat there under the pink glow of his student's table lamp, preparing to sit the astronavigation exam for the thirteenth time. He found the process of revising so gruelingly unpleasant, so galling, so noxious, that like most people faced with tasks they find hateful he devised more and more elaborate ways of not doing it in a "doing it" kind of way. In fact, it was now possible for Rimmer to revise solidly for three months and not learn anything at all. > The first week of study, he would always devote to the construction of a revision timetable. Weeks of patient effort would be spent planning, designing and creating a revision schedule which, when finished, were minor works of art. > Every hour of every day was subdivided into different study periods, each labelled in his lovely, tiny copperplate hand; then painted over in watercolours, a different colour for each subject, the colours gradually becoming bolder and more urgent shades as the exam time approached. The effect was as if a myriad tiny rainbows had splintered and sprinkled across the poster-sized sheet of creamwove card. > The only problem was this: because the timetables often took seven or eight weeks, and sometimes more, to complete, by the time Rimmer had finished them the exam was almost on him. He'd then have to cram three months of astronavigation revision into a single week. Gripped by an almost deranging panic, he'd then decide to sacrifice the first two days of that final week to the making of another timetable. This time for someone who had to pack three months of revision into five days.
nicbou 4y ago
Relevant and pleasant watch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sz4YqwH_6D0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=sz4YqwH_6D0

MrGilbert 4y ago

I would go as far and extend that to almost every profession. I mean, when I started programming, I could spend ours choosing the right library, tools, or whatever. But nowadays, when I have an idea, I stick to C# and Visual Studio. Because that’s the language i'm familiar with for over a decade now. Which doesn’t mean I don’t look right and left - but still, I don’t want to think about my tooling.

danielvaughn 4y ago
Same. Although when I start a new project, I still spend hours shopping for the latest and greatest frameworks/libraries/tools that I haven't had a chance to use yet. I can't help it lol.
hkab 4y ago
That's right. As time go by, I care more about functionality. I didn't wasting time on gnome-look when I install a fresh Ubuntu like before.

mlindner 4y ago

This suddenly explains to me a lot of stuff in computer engineering/programming. 1. The developers who fight over vim vs emacs or other tools. A defensive mechanism. 2. The occasional developer that spent their lives working with C and C++ who attack Rust but only makes excuses on why. 3. Myself who spends way too much time trying to find the "best" development environment rather than just coding. And I'm sure people could mention a bunch of others.

zeroxp 4y ago
It is so easy to burn ten or fifteen minutes a few times a day just futzing with your development environment.

mroche 4y ago

It's really easy to squander an unbelievable amount of time and effort on choosing gear. It really cannot be understated how true this is. I've been trying to get back into digital music composition and arrangement and spent way more than I thought I did to get myself off the ground. I'm fortunate enough to be able to have the financial reserves to spend what I did, but in hindsight... man was a lot of it unnecessary. I've spent more time reading about and following discussions involving tools and sample libraries than I have re-studying music theory, orchestration, and actually producing something. It doesn't help that in this day and age, there are a ton of choices a person can make. Both choice-paralysis and "screw-it-just-get-everything[-if-it's-on-sale]" are absolutely real phenomena.

ryandrake 4y ago
Every hobby I had, from woodworking and metalworking to poker, to photography, to telescopes, to piano, everything that requires practice and hands-on work: there are internet forums where you can talk about the hobbies and the gear an the tools and the tactics, and research and endlessly debate and compare, but they all will eventually grab you by the shoulders, shake you and say “Get off the Internet! Turn off the computer! Go and actually do the thing over and over!” Best advice you can get.

bardan 4y ago

This is a trap I fall into once in a while, getting too obsessed with my tools or environment. I sometimes try to remind myself of this part from the Red Dwarf book Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers about Rimmer's studying habits: > And now he sat there under the pink glow of his student's table lamp, preparing to sit the astronavigation exam for the thirteenth time. He found the process of revising so gruelingly unpleasant, so galling, so noxious, that like most people faced with tasks they find hateful he devised more and more elaborate ways of not doing it in a "doing it" kind of way. In fact, it was now possible for Rimmer to revise solidly for three months and not learn anything at all. > The first week of study, he would always devote to the construction of a revision timetable. Weeks of patient effort would be spent planning, designing and creating a revision schedule which, when finished, were minor works of art. > Every hour of every day was subdivided into different study periods, each labelled in his lovely, tiny copperplate hand; then painted over in watercolours, a different colour for each subject, the colours gradually becoming bolder and more urgent shades as the exam time approached. The effect was as if a myriad tiny rainbows had splintered and sprinkled across the poster-sized sheet of creamwove card. > The only problem was this: because the timetables often took seven or eight weeks, and sometimes more, to complete, by the time Rimmer had finished them the exam was almost on him. He'd then have to cram three months of astronavigation revision into a single week. Gripped by an almost deranging panic, he'd then decide to sacrifice the first two days of that final week to the making of another timetable. This time for someone who had to pack three months of revision into five days.

nicbou 4y ago

Relevant and pleasant watch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sz4YqwH_6D0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=sz4YqwH_6D0