15 ms·

I don't like making the best things

• revskill 4y ago
  The natural evolution to me is always "less is more". You can see it with stateless (FP), serverless (lambda), homeless (remote work), mindless (AI), codeless (no code)... It's great when simplicity is the common (implicit) goal.
• LLyaudet 4y ago
  Hello, I'm not a native English speaker and I was wondering why he wrote "me things" instead of "my things" 3 times. Is it some kind of slang ? or kind of informal, or funny, or childish, or empathetic way to speak ? There is no will of looking down on what he wrote when I write childish in my question. I just don't get the nuance associated to this expression. Thanks, best regards, Laurent Lyaudet
  • bcbrown 4y ago
    "My things" are things that are mine, that I own or control. When I buy a book, or a car, or a spoon, it becomes my book, or car, or spoon. But that doesn't mean it was made with me in mind. A "me thing", and this is just my interpretation, is something that is "about, of, or from me." If one tries to create the "best thing", it's impossible, because it's always possible to imagine another version that's somehow better. In trying to create a "best thing", I will strip or polish away aspects of myself that I see in what I create, because I'm chasing an ideal that is "outside of me", "objective", "universal". If I instead choose to create a "me thing", that means accepting and celebrating that the thing I create will be a reflection of me, something that no one else can create, because it's imbued with the spirit of that who created it, namely, me. Does that help, Laurent? It's not formal, grammatical English. It's not a common idiom, or a phrase I've seen elsewhere. But I think I intuitively understand what the author is saying, and I hope this explanation helps you understand too.
    • LLyaudet 4y ago
      Thank you very much. I think I get it. He made a "me neologism" ;) Kind of meta thing a "me neologism" to talk about "me things" :D
• nixpulvis 4y ago
  I have a blog too, I kinda want to share this... but I don't know how frictionless that process should be for me. Ugh lolol
• akrakesh 4y ago
  One can try to make 'me things', and strive to make them good enough, or good, or even to their best extent, but not necessarily the best out there, at least always.
• kderbyma 4y ago
  I found that something to help is to just shamelessly share my stuff in tiny bits, and people who are interested will reach out, and others will say nothing. But I get a small bit of feedback and I get a small dose of accomplishment, even though the things I share I am not really that happy with myself and I want to do better.
• user38575848 4y ago
  Can relate to the author. I find this desire to create the ‘best’ solution often results in analysis paralysis. Better is to strive to iterate.
  • cjfd 4y ago
    Yes Iteration is great. That is the reason I love TDD so much. You can iterate, nothing you write has to be perfect but continuous improvement soon creates something that is much better than what I would have made if I had set out to write something perfect.
• ema 4y ago
  For me the noticable distinction is between whether I want to create something to express myself (never works out) or for a practical purpose (works out more often than not).
• pringk02 4y ago
  "The best is the enemy of the good" -- Voltaire
• pdimitar 4y ago
  This can likely be related to us using our websites as a portfolio and a resume, too. And it does indeed become paralyzing if you want to always make a good impression and you can't goof around anymore. My solution will be: have 2 blogs. One strictly professional where you post HOWTOs, and another one where you post anything and everything.
  • scary-size 4y ago
    I went for that solution. Got a main blog were I post more polished stuff and a microblog. On the latter I can just post spur-of-the-moment content. Also significantly lowered the barrier of posting to the microblog by just typing in a Notion page that's rendered to html and rss every few minutes.
• nivenkos 4y ago
  If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
• _uoud 4y ago
  That’s why I set up a subdomain for all sorts of ramblings that are not even search engine indexable: http://sentience.lostbookofsales.com http://sentience.lostbookofsales.com My main website hasn’t seen any activity lately because of what you mention, and laziness…
  • wood-porch 4y ago
    Hey I read your notes on Dr. Yapko's lecture on depression which led me to watch the lecture and I found it immensely helpful. Do you have any other resources you would recommend?
    • iamsanteri 4y ago
      I'm glad you found it helpful. I have some one-off articles like this one: https://www.davidsongifted.org/gifted-blog/dabrowskis-theory-and-existential-depression-in-gifted-children-and-adults/ https://www.davidsongifted.org/gifted-blog/dabrowskis-theory... However, in my case I mostly connect it with neuroticism on which I have an immense bunch of information piecing it all together. It seems to be sensitivity and neurotic qualities that are most connected with what led towards a rather strong depression. Ohh, and one absolutely huge website where lots of people share their experiences is the followjng: https://www.storiedmind.com/start-here/ https://www.storiedmind.com/start-here/ Spend some time around there, and particularly if you're of male sex, you'll probably find it extremely useful.
      • _uoud 4y ago
        Adding to this, I also did a summary of a book from Ernest Becker way back in the day, and the section on neuroticism, or how psychology is taking over from religion, and such broader societal topics you can read about here: https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-by-ernest-becker/#neurosis https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-by... It's quite some brutal and heavy reading, but then again, if it helps you understand the condition better then it's for the best I guess...
• marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I think adding a performative aspect to a lot of things sort of kills the joy in doing them. For like a year I didn't really tell anyone I had a website. It was always fun to work on, because I did it for myself when I was inspired. Then it got out, and now there's a lot more pressure. Writing because you feel you ought to because you haven't in a few months is about the least inspiring thing I know. That's just a chore. I quite deliberately don't put like or comment features on my website to sort of prevent this. Means on average I don't get a lot of interaction, since the minimum bar to interaction is sending me an email.
  • __boos 4y ago
    This! Our society as a whole push us toward performing aiming to produce more, to consume more again and over again. We don't do things because we like them of we want to have fun. We do these things to perform, gain wealth, visibility, status. Such approach steer us away from the innate human need of exploring, playing and mastering for the sake of it, which, surprise surprise, it is what make human happy.
    • Towaway69 4y ago
      That so true but unfortunately it takes many freedoms to able to do this. Freedom from financial worries, freedom from the worry of what others think, freedom from the worries of not knowing for what it will be good for (to explore). We do this as children since all those freedoms are given. It is hard to do when one starts out in society that places so many expectations on one.
  • nurbl 4y ago
    Yes, I think there is a risk in doing things publicly. You can get stuck in this loop of topping your last performance. We may need validation or criticism to improve. But improvement is not the only thing that matters. For me, enjoyment is more important; I can be quite happy making things that I never show anyone else, and obligations can quickly kill the joy. On the other hand, sometimes enjoyment falters because of stagnation. It is a tricky line to walk, with traps on both sides.
• elseweather 4y ago
  That's a lovely photo
• andrewstuart 4y ago
  There was a recent post on HN about how making yourself the primary user of your software makes it easier to build. Does anyone remember that?
  • smp0 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34520537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34520537
    • andrewstuart 4y ago
      Yes!
• acjacobson 4y ago
  This reminds me of the pottery class parable from Art & Fear. At the beginning of a pottery class the teacher divides the class into two groups. One group is to be graded purely on the quantity of pots they create, the other group solely on the quality (or, make one perfect pot). At the end of the class the group that focused on quantity had produced better results. Somewhat counterintuitively those that riff and just try a lot of different things get better over time - exactly what the author says makes them happiest. But perhaps we're all just a little shy about doing that in public, and pushing past that can a challenge.
  • dv35z 4y ago
    Curious - has this experiment been validated?
  • djkivi 4y ago
    Is the pottery story actually true? It seems it may have been modified from a similar story about photography: https://kottke.org/20/12/the-credibility-is-in-the-details https://kottke.org/20/12/the-credibility-is-in-the-details Another similar story revolves around graduates from Yale/Harvard that set goals vs. those that didn't. Again, that story is not true either: https://ask.library.yale.edu/faq/175224 https://ask.library.yale.edu/faq/175224
• racktash 4y ago
  Epictetus has a wonderful quote. He is talking about moral / philosophical improvement specifically but I find it more broadly applicable when overly high expectations paralyse me from doing a thing: "What then? Because I have no natural gifts, shall I on that account give up my discipline? Far be it from me! Epictetus will not be better than Socrates; but if only I am not worse, that suffices me. For I shall not be a Milo, either, and yet I do not neglect my body; nor a Croesus, and yet I do not neglect my property; nor, in a word, is there any other field in which we give up the appropriate discipline merely from despair of attaining the highest."
  • danShumway 4y ago
    I'll add to this a general take I have about "improving" the world: there is a metric ton of stuff to do in the world, and there aren't enough people to do it, and being the best at what you do is in no way necessary if your goal is to be useful or to produce meaningful things that make people's lives better. There are so many problems in the world that aren't solved literally because nobody has solved them, because the scope is gigantic and the people available who want to work on them or who are willing to work on them is very small in comparison. Many of those tasks aren't sexy, and they might not have broad appeal, but... I mean, I ported another person's gameboy emulator to a format that worked in NodeJS and had basically one API change so that you could run the project headlessly without a graphics stack, and so you could advance the emulator frame-by-frame after inspecting memory. It's a garbage project, I have no idea how emulators work. And yet, I've had people contact me on Discord and ask questions about it and go through support chats and thank me for building it. Was I the best suited person to do that? No. Could pretty much anyone at all with any experience build a better end result then I did? Yes. Heck, it would be trivial for someone to jump in, fork my project and improve it. And yet. The very specific niche case I coded it for didn't have a solution, and then it did have a solution. Sometimes that's enough. People underestimate how easy it is to be useful and to make the world better in small ways. It does not require you to perfect a skill, it just requires showing up and putting in some work and doing the best work that you can. And sometimes it means not asking "what's the biggest impact problem in the world", and instead asking "what's any problem that's close enough to me to solve that nobody is paying attention to?"
  • 4y ago
• challenger-derp 4y ago
  > I used to love X, but now it's been a few years since I've done X. What changed? At some point, everything got serious. [1] > I started to only want to publish the best things, so I didn't publish at all. ... > When I try to make the best thing, I become less happy, actually I become paralyzed. ... > When I try to make the best thing, it feels different. It feels like I'm trying to prove something to someone instead of trying to discover something for myself. ... I'm just me, so I should make me things. Pleasantly surprised to have chanced upon this piece of writing which has, in a few short paragraphs, captured a series of complex emotions I'd think are common among creators. Practically I think it helps to be in touch with a community of creators who can offer support, guidance and empathy. Personally I am far from mastering my emotions to the point where I'm comfortable putting my not-best creations up for public criticism/discussion while simultaneously recognizing the need to build up courage and wisdom to do so. I think for some this aversion partly stems from their upbringing's (family, education system, peer expectations) lack of openness/encouragement to exploration and failure to tolerate failure (failure comes hand in hand with exploration). While eschewing failure appears to be of little detriment to the "cog in the machine", cultures that have yet figured out how to discuss, accept, and tolerate failures are destined to avoid innovation. People who are serious about creating/innovating should find means of coping with people who are overly critical/ dismissive of "not-best" iterative attempts. Footnotes: [1] Took the liberty of generalizing the author's post by replacing the act of publishing which was the author's original focus to "X" with the intention of having "X" being any activity.
• keizo 4y ago
  I feel this. Often I work on one thing for a long time trying to make it the best thing ever. Iterations get slower and smaller or take longer and require more effort. Nice to work on new things carefree for the simple love of doing the work and enjoying early progress.
• zethsg 4y ago
  Nice!, it reminded me of a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti "The ideal breeds conflict ...It is this division between the prototype and the actual that breeds conflict." - https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-49-ideal-breeds-conflict https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-49-ideal-breed...
  • firatsarlar 4y ago
    Side effect of -a local optimum- education system.
• erur 4y ago
  This isn't totally unique to software engineering (and broadly speaking knowledge, science and maybe even content in general) but I feel it's better placed here than anywhere else. We're in a near global, near zero-marginal-cost environment. If you build a broom that's mediocre, someone can still sweep with it and it's worth something. In this realm though, if you build a mediocre version of something that already exists in a better form, it's likely worth nothing. That shouldn't keep anyone from enjoying building mediocre things - which might be the only path to get into a position to build great things. But it does make sense if your goal is to have an impact with the specific thing you're working on.
  • BossingAround 4y ago
    > In this realm though, if you build a mediocre version of something that already exists in a better form, it's likely worth nothing. That is technically true, though realistically, many companies will spend money implementing mediocre projects. Alternatively, a company might lose their edge and slip into a mediocre mode after gaining great market share. In other words, while in long-enough run, you are right that such companies will not "make it," they will happily pay mediocre salaries for mediocre programmers in the meantime. Consequently, "being a mediocre engineer" and "building mediocre things" is a sufficient and realistic career goal.
  • CM30 4y ago
    Depends on the marketing and advertising budget. Plenty of mediocre products have made their companies billions of dollars, and become hugely successful in their specific industries. It's very true that software engineering is a near zero cost, global environment, but that doesn't necessarily meant the best products win every time.
• robbiejs 4y ago
  This resonates with me beautifully
  • kentrf 4y ago
    Same here. On one side, it is "just ship it". On the other side, "internet is so full of outdated advice".
• Zobat 4y ago
  Nota bene: I spent all of fifteen seconds "reading" the blog post. I would sum this up as: "Don't let perfect be the enemy of done." Which is a really good advice.
• notpushkin 4y ago
  > I don't like making the best things (ghost.io) For a minute I thought this is an article from the Ghost corporate blog. Would be super weird tbh.
• arnklint 4y ago
  Recently read “The Art of not Giving a Fuck”, which might be a good book for people relating to the feelings that the author expresses.
• ByteBoost 4y ago
  Got on reddit and took my activity as a part of learning process. Getting things out, discussing with like minded people is something I strive for. It got me into much useful mindset than "perfecting the products"
• b0afc375b5 4y ago
  This was me as well. For a long time I put off writing my blog because I wanted to write something impactful/meaningful/substantial. However, I came across one blog which had numerous entries, starting from when the author was in college until today. The blog entries were about emacs tips and tricks, clojure, and other software engineering topics. I found it because I was trying to setup tree-sitter for clojure/clojurescript. I was grateful for the blog, learned a thing or two, and thanked the author. Anyway, what stood out to me was how almost all the blog entries, at least the earlier ones, was full of spelling and grammatical errors. Then it hit me. I'll never start writing something if I don't accept that most of the things I write will probably suck and will be read by no one. Since then I've written a couple of entries for my blog. And while I don't expect anyone to read them, it has been a cathartic experience for me. It's somewhat similar to meditation in that regard.
  • pocketarc 4y ago
    It's the blog equivalent of shipping an MVP. The sooner you get something out there, the sooner you can start improving. After writing 100 articles, you will absolutely have improved a drastic amount. You'll be much more fluent, have worked out the kinks in your writing workflow, and have built a habit. And that's before we even get into any benefits that may or may not come from people reading what you wrote. Note to self: Gotta do that, too.
  • __boos 4y ago
    It is like meditation because it is self reflection in the form of writing, which it is equivalent to maintaining a journal, which science tell us helps in improving our emotions, and well-being.
  • Towaway69 4y ago
    The point of this blog is not that it gets read rather that it gets written. That's what I wrote at the bottom of my blog when I started. Once that was there, I began to write what I wanted to write and not what I thought people want to read.
    • JohnFen 4y ago
• sneak 4y ago
  Related Ethan Hawke video about giving yourself permission to be creative and play the fool: https://youtu.be/WRS9Gek4V5Q https://youtu.be/WRS9Gek4V5Q
• mpreda 4y ago
  One of my favorite English words is: kakorrhaphiophobia Abnormal fear of failure Kakorrhaphiophobia is an abnormal, persistent, irrational fear of failure. In clinical cases, it's debilitating: the fear of even the most subtle failure or defeat is so intense that it restricts a person from doing anything at all. https://joshkaufman.net/fear-of-failure/ https://joshkaufman.net/fear-of-failure/
• vouaobrasil 4y ago
  The author made a mistake. They defined "best" incorrectly, as something that is polished or up to some specific technical standard. In terms of making things, the best should be more in line with being able to express yourself fully, not in terms of some pre-defined metric such as views or approval from the close-minded. Thus, a random spontaneous post can be much better than a well-researched one if it fulfils that criterion.
  • anotheraccount9 4y ago
    Who made a mistake?
• DarrenDev 4y ago
  "Perfect is the enemy of good." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good The answer. Seth Godin: "Just ship it."
• robalni 4y ago
  There are many different things that can be best because people value different things. It's pretty easy to be best at one thing if it's not the currently most popular thing. You probably don't even need to try to be best; as long as there is something you care about, you will probably be one of the best at that. An example of that is that the computer I use is the best computer I have ever used but it's far from the fastest one (which most people seem to care about). It seems like most things compete for the same type of best, which just makes everything the same, because everything is trying to be the same. This is boring because I often want something else. The best way to get anywhere is not to try to be the best, but to allow yourself to be another best.
• BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  That's zoomers in a nutshell.
• sussexby 4y ago
  Currently in the throes of stepping back my career dramatically as I realise two things: 1. I genuinely miss working alongside people (6+ years now of hybrid but mostly remote working) and by that I mean actually working things out together rather than either being expected to know, learn solo, or book people's time to learn from them 2. the pressure of delivering the best of everything in an ultra-competitive tech space Currently applying for jobs 1/3 my salary from last year, having already taken a step back to a role 2/3 my salary and still not able to take the pressure. Hoping I find peace in being "ok" in an "ok" job so I can focus on living life again. Edit: Inspired by the original post - I've kicked off my own: https://heathworks.medium.com/im-quitting-tech-kinda-chapter-1-e8f8598b86bc https://heathworks.medium.com/im-quitting-tech-kinda-chapter...
  • mashygpig 4y ago
    It seems really prevalent in western societies (America in my experience at least) have a strong culture of career growth. If you’re not getting better paying positions then what are you doing? I think a lot of people will claim they do this to have wealth reserved to be able to spend their time how they choose in the future, but they seem to me to just get lost in the cycles of wealth accretion and forget to live the life they have. A friend recently told me that he wanted to stagnate more in his career and grow more in his life, and I think that’s a sentiment that should be shared more.
    • detourdog 4y ago
      The problem I see in my western society is that career growth and personal growth are separated. An individual falling into this divide will always feel conflicted. Unfortunately in todays climate with no social safety net for the individual few may have the privilege to hear their inner voice.
      • mashygpig 4y ago
        Definitely agree. Christopher Alexander's "A City Is Not A Tree" [0] speaks to this separation too in the context of our physical spaces (based on your comment I sense you may be familiar with this idea). It feels that western society promotes separation by default. [0] http://en.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexander-A-city-is-not-a-tree.pdf http://en.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexan...
• musically_ut 4y ago
  Indirectly related to this is this beautiful paper which looks at what motivates people to continue playing versus quitting Chess: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1706530115#:~:text=We%20propose%20that%20one's%20personal,once%20they%20have%20done%20so https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1706530115#:~:text=We%.... > We propose that one’s personal best, or past peak performance, acts as a reference point by inducing effort when current performance would otherwise fall short. Analyzing a massive dataset of online chess games, we find that players exert effort to set new personal best ratings and quit once they have done so. There is no direct way of measuring the "Personal Best" in all areas of life (unlike Chess), but I believe that one can set benchmarks for oneself without articulating it: be it writing blog posts, making music, creating an OSS project, etc. Then beating one's own benchmark, even just once, dulls the desire to continue putting in effort. So I can imagine a very similar blog post with the title: > "I don't like making things which beat my personal best benchmark over and over again."
  • selykg 4y ago
    I'm not a huge fan of the book Atomic Habits, but James Clear does talk about something similar around goals. Effectively, one of the problems he brings up with goals is that if your goal is to run a 5k and then you achieve that goal, you're sort of "done." Instead he talks about building systems, and changing what you see yourself as. I.e. in the case of a 5k, instead of running a 5k, change who you are such that you are a runner. Then the 5k "goal" doesn't put you in the position of "okay, now what? Guess I'm done." type of mentality. I've always kind of liked this. I doubt it's unique to James Clear but it was the book I read that made it sort of click so I always go back to that part.
  • sdwr 4y ago
    Great angle!
• crabbone 4y ago
  As a child and in my pre-teen years I've not been good at sports. I was also a little chubby until around the age of 12. I did some swimming, but I sucked at it so much that I eventually just quit. I also tried judo, then since the class was free on a condition that the students represent the class in competitions I had to compete in one. Had been beaten in a ridiculously simple way by my opponent in the first 10 seconds of the match-up. Then my opponent was also beaten by someone else, so I was out of the competition pool. Towards the end of my second year of college I signed up for ballroom dancing class. College is about ten years too late to start a career in most sports, ballroom dancing is no exception. However, I persisted. The reasons were complex and it wasn't really the "character strength" or anything like that... until about four years in when me and my partner were representing the senior (yeah, in ballroom you are a senior once you are 18+) division of our dancing club we were competing in the regional yearly contest. We ended up being in the 3'rd place out of 16 couples. But that doesn't even begin to describe what it was like to get there. For months, hell or high water we'd rehearse 2-6 hours a day. We'd sewn our own outfits. My partner cooked me lunches sometimes because she knew I skipped eating to get to the rehearsal. One day she sprained her ankle and I carried her downstairs and to the cab. But it wasn't just "hardship". Two other couples from our club who were close with us would often go to a local pub after rehearsals. We'd dance in the pub, mostly to get free drinks, but really, to show off. We'd spend weekend nights at other (older) couple's place re-watching VHS tapes of Donnie Burns countless times. We shared small victories of getting a gig of teaching dancing in a local school, or mourned defeats when the leading dancer from our junior division broke up with her partner and they didn't go the the country contest. Until that moment when we won the 3'rd place I had no idea what it really feels like to try to be the best. The brief moment when during the dance you look at the audience, and you see moms who came to root for their kids at the side of the dancing hall screaming at the top of their lungs "number seven is the best!", and you realize that you are the "number seven". Your coach getting overly emotional and then running to the dressing room to prep you for the next round. Partners younger sister spending an hour on powdering and painting your partner's face and then crying being overcome with emotion seeing her sister on the dance floor. Never in my life had I felt so acutely the joy from doing something and being good at it. It's just a feeling that you'd never come across if you never compete against a lot of other dedicated opponents and with a good chance of winning. It's in the moments like this that you feel that your efforts were rewarded, hardship justified, that you accomplished something. I'm in my mid 40's, and those moments etched into my memories, they are as fresh as they were the day after. It's what in large part made my life worth living. I cannot imagine how someone could choose mediocrity to be their life goal when they could have attempted to be the best.
• pammf 4y ago
  I might be completely wrong, but these days I believe everyone is insecure to some degree and just create this “best” facade because don’t want to look worse than the rest that are bragging to be at least aiming for the best. What is sad to me is that a lot of times I perceive that society lauds the bragging ones and overlooks who sincerely (and bravely) admit their “weaknesses”.
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  When things paralyze me, it’s because I’m too in my head and need to get out in the world: https://jondouglas.dev/you-suffer-because-youre-not-what-you-could-be/ https://jondouglas.dev/you-suffer-because-youre-not-what-you... (There’s probably writing mistakes as I never went back to “perfect” it)
  • adammish 4y ago
    I read through your post above and it helped me put words to what I feel in my mind. A cluttered garage. Thank you for writing it.
    • thenerdhead 4y ago
      Thank you for reading it!
• smiley1437 4y ago
  Social media invites comparison, and comparison is the thief of joy
  • Towaway69 4y ago
    Reading HN and the quality of comments makes it hard to write anything. Ironically I did manage to write this comment :)
• josephg 4y ago
  I resonate with this too. The last few blog posts I've written have been very successful. The more that happens, the less desire I feel to write because I'll compare whatever I do next to that recent success. If it doesn't do as well, I've failed. I've been doing improv comedy for the past few years. Improv is a pretty constant source of upsetting insight into myself. I've recently discovered just how much of my capacity for play and experimentation is locked behind a door called "Don't disappoint anyone" (Or they'll reject you forever). I know its silly - the more I'm afraid of looking like a fool, the worse my improv is. The less I write or draw, or experiment on the piano. I know consciously that playing it safe isn't actually helping, but I can't seem to shake the habit. Its been really devastating to notice the sheer amount of myself caught in this trap. I feel stuck. Putting myself out there with my creative work - in any of its forms - and just letting the world judge me for me? Its terrifying.
  • toomanyrichies 4y ago
    I’m coming up on my 1-year anniversary of getting into improv comedy. I’m also a software engineer, which it appears we have in common as well. For what it’s worth, I’ve found that the logical, engineer side of my brain is a HUGE asset to my improv. Coming from a game-based, UCB-style background, I’ve learned that the “unusual thing” (aka the game) can really only “pop” and get laughs if the “voice of reason” is really good at grounding the scene in a base reality. That’s where my logical, engineering brain nails it. You’re doing a brave thing by putting yourself out there. Keep honing your craft, and don’t forget to have fun! Good luck.
    • josephg 4y ago
      I hear what you're saying. You're doing a brave thing too! At this point I've done some UCB style classes and some slower improv where we play it more "real" and honest. I don't think I really like the UCB style anymore. The more improv I do, the more see the UCB approach as a bit of a trap for smart people. The UCB style is alluring because it implies that you can think your way to being a good performer. But when you actually pay attention to what gets the biggest reactions from the audience during shows, its almost never the "clever" ideas. My favorite improv to watch is almost obvious - where the performers breathe and look at the audience and then do the "dumb" thing that you might never have thought to do. Its hard to explain these kind of moments. I once saw a performer endowed as a "horse breaker" who needed to get to Mars by his 3rd scene. I was in the audience stressing out on his behalf - how can he get to mars? But of course, he's a horse breaker. He goes to Africa and "breaks" the best horse there ever was so much she could fly him to mars. Its all made up, so why not!?. The audience was in hysterics. But it didn't feel fast or clever - just a fantastic show. "Poppy" performances bring me in my head to try and come up with the clever offer, but when I do that I sort of forget how to play and I disconnect from the moment. And I disconnect from my scene partners and the audience. I did some clowning recently. My clowning teacher said in good clowning, the clown knows less than the audience about whats going on. And when we feel shame as a performer, we should practice sending it "out not down". As performers, our feelings are part of the show too. There's something for me in that. It feels more integrated somehow than just getting laughs on stage for being clever. As I said, this whole journey has been full of upsetting moments of self awareness and learning. Its terrifying, but I couldn't recommend it enough if anyone is keen. Its definitely a good way to practice being brave.
• simonw 4y ago
  My best advice for writing more online is that it's crucial that you learn to hit publish while you're still unhappy with what you've written. If you strive for perfection in your writing you will inevitably end up with a folder full of hundreds of drafts (I still have one of those) and a blog with no content. A key thing to remember is that no-one else will ever know how great the thing you wanted to write would have been! You might find your post thoroughly disappointing because of all of that missed potential... but other people who read it and learn something will be thankful that you posted it. This is one of the big reasons I'm such a fan of the "TIL" (Today I Learned) format: it reduces the bar for writing about something to "did I recently learn a new thing?"
• pikseladam 4y ago
  wow this post hits home. thank you.
• cainxinth 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
• seandoe 4y ago
  I like this. Thank you for posting.
• 752963e64 4y ago
  [dead]
• cranium 4y ago
  I put off starting my blog for so long because I didn't feel I was good enough. Each idea worthy of a post felt so inadequate when laid down, because of my weak writing. It's agonizing to reread the text and be bored by your own creation. Too much context, sloppy transition, feels like fake enthusiasm, and so on. In the end, I partially solved it by separating "posts" from "notes". Posts are the nicely articulated ideas; notes: the one-shot, the straight-to-the-point, the bullet list, really anything with a bit of substance. It's liberating to have something out there, knowing it's not your best. I'm going to writes notes for a while, until I find one that pleases me. And when it'll become a post, it won't be my only public expression.
  • a_e_k 4y ago
    I really like that way of framing the distinction. I may have to borrow that. I've been thinking about reviving my blog by writing up some tidbits from my pen-and-paper notebooks as shorter form entries. I've usually preferred to post larger, more polished pieces when I felt like I really had something to say, but that also has meant sometimes going years between posts.
  • danShumway 4y ago
    I'm planning to potentially start separating my blog posts entirely from my website for similar reasons. I've been trying to think about why it's easier for me to write long replies on HN than it is for me to blog, and I think that putting posts on a pedestal and caring too much about formatting everything and making sure they're perfect is part of it. My thought is, I might start writing posts and pushing each one to a completely separate subdomain or even completely separate domain entirely using something like Netlify. And separately maybe I start to grab some of them and compress them into an RSS feed or copy them to the main site -- but I hate trying to think up-front "how does this contribute to my 'brand'?" And I'm wondering if having more of a "throw it out into the void, link it on some social networks" attitude might help alleviate some of that problem.
• koch 4y ago
  Yesterday someone posted[0] a project I've been working on, and, while it didn't get much traction, I did get a comment that struck me. They said what I made was "very advanced." Like, holy hell, I'm just trying to keep the lights on by doing some small thing every day. Apparently it pays off over time though, and it's helpful to have someone point that out to you. I think sometimes it's easy to forget how far you've come when you're in the thick of it day in and out. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34828474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34828474
  • JohnFen 4y ago
    This is such a key realization. The way we make large accomplishments is through a long series of small steps. How do you eat an elephant, and all that. One of my favorite moments in a large project is at the end, when I'm looking at the completed project as a whole. It looks huge and enormously complicated and I can barely believe that it was me that did it.
• ev9 4y ago
  This post is about the difference between art and design. Artists make art because there is something they want to display to the world for their own reasons, irrespective of the desires of the world. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Great art is impactful to humans beyond the artist. Design, on the other hand, is about influencing people first and foremost, and causing to take action in some way (could be a protest, or buying something, or simply clicking a button). Because of this, a designer strives to offer "the best", because that causes maximal impact. I wish the writer great success in his art!
  • JohnFen 4y ago
    Then what do I do? I make software to help people solve a problem. It's not meant to be an art piece on display, and it's also not intending to influence them in any way. It's just meant to help them accomplish a task they were already doing, preferably without altering the way they do it. I guess I do neither art nor design, but engineering.
    • Towaway69 4y ago
      Helping people with software can be very satisfying, especially if there is an immediate positive interaction with those people. Art can be a lonely business especially if no one understands what you are trying to express. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      > It's just meant to help them accomplish a task they were already doing That is influencing the world.
      • JohnFen 4y ago
        But a different sort of influencing. I'm not trying to make anyone take a particular action.
• m463 4y ago
  you know, maybe you just make a thing. and it gets better. and you get better. maybe it will be best, maybe the dumpster will catch on fire.
• lrvick 4y ago
  I am a security engineer so the bar for acceptable is very very high. It can make it very hard to justify taking the easy route even for personal projects, because others will copy those bad habits into enterprise software.
  • bartread 4y ago
    > others will copy those bad habits into enterprise software. Who cares? You can't martyr yourself to other peoples' ignorance. Right tool or technique, right place, right time: people bear their own responsibility for learning these, or for finding out about them when the need arises. There's a comment somewhere else in this thread about how developers need to learn the difference between building a shed and building a skyscraper. I think that comment is spot on. Sometimes a shed is fine.
• robotguy 4y ago
  I really love the way Ira Glass puts it: Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit. Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that. And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that. —Ira Glass
  • adversaryIdiot 4y ago
    How are you supposed to enjoy things if you're constantly ridiculing yourself? Does that mean the person who enjoys the things they do suck at what they do?
    • danShumway 4y ago
      I've been struggling with this a lot recently, but what I've been trying to do lately is dissect that exact question and sort of question the axioms it's based on: - is it actually impossible for me to critique myself and enjoy the things I've made, or is that a restriction that I've just made up in my mind? - is it actually necessary for me to think something is high quality to enjoy it? Is it OK for me to enjoy something even if the flaws are obvious to me? - is there a process here that's enjoyable independent of the output, regardless of whether or not what I make is good? - is my 'cringe' about the things I make primarily motivated by my internal taste, or about my worry that the things I make won't meet other people's expectations? Is my desire to create things that look good to other people different from my internal pride about my own work, and should I treat them differently? - is there an enjoyable aspect to stretching myself even if that means I fail more often? If I put a game to a higher difficulty, do I have less fun just because I'm being challenged more and die more often? So similarly, if I explore a medium or try a programming task that I'm not great at, should I be getting so discouraged about occasionally "failing" at it? ---- I think that it's not necessarily the case that enjoying something needs to be linked to its overall quality. And especially with creative work, I've been trying recently to get better about releasing things that I think are explicitly bad, and saying, "okay, I stink at this and the end result is terrible, but that doesn't necessarily mean I should feel bad looking at it or showing it to other people." And I'm not sure that getting rid of all the criticism centers of my brain or convincing myself that I'm a genius is necessary to get to that state. I think it's possible (albeit very difficult) for me to look at something I've made and see 100 flaws and still say, "I like the parts of it that aren't flaws, and I think those parts are cool." I'm not sure that it's healthy as an artist to even focus at all on whether or not you're good at something, just focus on getting better regardless of what your current skill level is. "Good" is kind of a wishy-washy term anyway. And I'm not sure it's healthy (at least for the way I work) to couple my enjoyment of the things I do to whether or not I think I'm good at them. But :shrug: I'm not sure. I do think that the original quote is less about "here's how you should think of your work, and is more about "you probably already have a tendency to think about your work this way, so don't feel so isolated about that or get too discouraged." Because it is discouraging and I think a lot of artists and creators struggle with the fact that they can see very clearly where they want to be and where they are, and they're not where they want to be -- and speaking personally, it's not something I had ever really vocalized to myself before originally hearing that quote, and I remember it being very cathartic to realize, "actually yeah, this is why I'm frustrated about everything I'm doing -- because my ability to critique my work is more developed than my ability to make it." It's not really saying that's the ideal, it's just describing a thing that happens to a lot of people. The original quote I heard was in a slightly different context: it was a game dev who brought up the same idea and then cautioned that the way a lot of developers internalize that mental conflict is that they never implement ideas or finish projects, because thinking about the theoretically perfect version of the thing in their head is always easier than looking at the objectively less perfect, sometimes kind of terrible thing they've made. His advice was, if you're in that position, recognize it and try to take steps to get more comfortable with messiness and imperfections, because it can be a huge barrier to ever actually implementing and practicing ideas.
• jasfi 4y ago
  An interesting idea is to write to designs. First, the best way, second the fast way. This is useful in startups.
• jasmer 4y ago
  Perfectionism can be a drag, so be careful about that. Also finding 'good enough' is a nice skill.
• JohnFen 4y ago
  I empathize with this. For my own projects, that only I will ever use, I don't want or need them to be the best that I can do. 80% of the way is more than sufficient -- plus, I like the things I use to be imperfect, have personality, and not seem new and perfect. When I'm working on a project for someone else, I want it to be the best that I can possibly make it. Even then, cost and time constraints make it rare that I can accomplish the best result possible -- but I can get 90% there.
• raldi 4y ago
  This reminds me of http://reddit.com/r/windowshots http://reddit.com/r/windowshots , a subreddit created over a decade ago with the rule, "Post a photo taken right now out the nearest window"; the best part about it was how real and unstaged they all were. Every now and then someone would post some beautiful vista clearly taken at a well-chosen time and I'd get all annoyed.
• dmd149 4y ago
  I self-published a book about becoming a solo 1099 federal sub-contractor. It's about 60,000 words, full of typos, has a boring cover, and is on an ugly looking shopify site. Oh, and it costs $100. BUT, I knew if I waited to catch all the typos, add in additional material that would be useful but not necessary, and build a beautiful website, it would never launch. So I published it and just mentioned on the website that you shouldn't buy it for all the reasons I listed above and described exactly what was in it. I've only sold about 50, but the feedback is good and already people are implementing the strategies and techniques in the book with successful results. If you have something of value to offer, it's also easy to forget that someone else is potentially NOT getting that value now if you decide to perfect it and keep procrastinating on launching it. The "About the book" page is below in case you want to see how I described the book and all its flaws: https://1099fedhub.com/pages/whats-in-the-book https://1099fedhub.com/pages/whats-in-the-book
  • toomanyrichies 4y ago
    Thanks for your post! I’m also starting the self-publishing journey this year. Trying to keep in mind the old Reid Hoffman quote, “ If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.” I love that you’re a) charging a premium ($100 for a beta version), and b) explicitly calling out all the shortcomings you foresee so prominently on your “About” page. That combination of transparency and chutzpah is inspiring.
    • dmd149 4y ago
      Thanks for the kind words! I’m a bit allergic to marketing that tries to cover up weaknesses and I feel much better just telling the truth. Then people can make their own decision. As far as the price I agree it is premium but with such a niche audience and focused value proposition I thought it was worth it. It is a barrier for some though but no one who was initially worried about the price and then bought it regretted it. What’s the topic of your book?
      • toomanyrichies 4y ago
• j2718h 4y ago
  As the Eagles say, "don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy!"
• writers_bloque 4y ago
  I constantly fall into the trap of writing for others. It's so easy to forget I'm mostly writing for my own interest or to find out what I think about something. The act of publishing is a simple desire to share my journey with others (and hopefully engage them in conversation so I might learn from them as well). Last year a friend shared a quote with me: "Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going." (William Zinsser, On Writing Well) Or if you'd like a more esoteric source, how about the Tao Te Ching: "When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you." (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation)
• CM30 4y ago
  Yeah, if you only try to publish the 'best' things (as the author puts it here), you'll never get anything done. You'll keep striving for perfection long past the point anyone else would consider it good enough, then maybe scrap the whole thing because you're your own worst critic. Plus, that route is a great way to get stuck in the mires of feature and scope creep too. It's all too easy to just add 'one more tiny feature' or 'implement this idea you've had just now that'll be so awesome to see in a tool like this', and get stuck doing the same thing over and over again until your project has been stuck in development hell for a decade. See for instance, Duke Nukem Forever. In the 14 years that game spent in development, we could have had 3-4 Duke Nukem games instead, and it's probable at least one of those would have been better than what we eventually got.
• some_random 4y ago
  One of the worst things about the internet is the way it brings the top 0.01% of performers to your attention at all times. You will never be that good at everything you want to be good at, you might not ever get that good at even one thing you want to be good at.
• lambdaloop 4y ago
  I had some similar thoughts a few days ago. In personal projects, it's better to value the process rather than the end result. This way, you get excited by playing around with a thing and discovering new aspects about it. So what if the final result is crap? If you put the hours in and value the process, eventually the result naturally shapes itself.
• systems_glitch 4y ago
  Had to start taking this approach with designing hobbyist vintage electronics related kits. Everyone has their input on what would be "the best," sometimes there's even broad consensus (e.g. Internet polls show a very clear "favorite option"). Trouble is, those things often weren't popular and ended up not being worth the time, money, and effort to do a run of kits. I still don't know if that's because I was more fired up for the things I wanted to do and less for the things everyone said they wanted...or just that what everyone said they wanted wasn't novel or different or whatever.
• atum47 4y ago
  I try to publish all my projects that I think is interesting. Maybe it's not interesting for a lot of people, but it could be for some.