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Don't Break The Chain
Some good advice that can apply to any aspiration
- marrone 19y agoIt works. I used to do something similar for going to the gym
- kingkongrevenge 19y ago"Don't you understand anything about commitment, about being a pro, about sticking with what you say you wanna be? You don't just do it when you feel good. You do it every day of your life. You do it when it hurts to do it, when it's the last thing in the world you wanna do. You do it because you're a professional." --Teddy Atlas Said to Michael Moorer when he wanted to skip a day of road-work while training to fight Holyfield.
- rms 19y agoYeah, that's pretty good advice.
- pg 19y agoI found it works for running. After you have a two month streak going, you really don't want to miss a day. You find you make the rest of your life fit around it.
- mynameishere 19y agoSeinfeld kept telling the same jokes for years.
- zach 19y agoAnd apparently every day, no less. But seriously, of course he did. People want to hear the hits, not the stuff you thought of in the shower that morning. Nice work if you can get it, though.
- SwellJoe 19y agoActually, his repertoire was pretty huge, he never worked blue, and he's among the most successful comics of all time (economically speaking). The last season of Seinfeld paid him (and his co-stars) $1 million per episode. He's not my favorite comic (or even in the top ten), but I'll take productivity advice from Seinfeld any day, all day.
- brlewis 19y agoThis principle is why many Lisp hackers fail to make good web sites or applications. Lisp programming can lead to days and weeks of fun programming, so that you break the chain of doing less-fun but important programming. Sometimes the improvement users want most involves non-fun programming. You really have to push yourself to implement it instead of procrastinating by coding something more fun but less desired.
- willarson 19y agoThis doesn't have anything to do with Lisp. Depending on what they view as fulfilling, some people veer away from difficult problems regardless of the language they are writing in. Working in a "more fun" language like Lisp doesn't make you more likely to avoid doing hard work, nor does writing in a "less fun" language like Java increase your propensity to actually deal with the difficult segments. Its a matter of self-control, and is, unfortunately, an issue for programmers in every language.
- brlewis 19y agoI assert that a less fun language does increase your propensity to face up to unpleasant tasks. If your programming language makes facing up to unpleasant tasks a part of your daily routine, you won't "break the chain" by spending a day or a week where programming is all fun and games. I'm not saying that self-control (a.k.a. passion for doing the right thing) is not an issue if you use a less-fun language, I'm just saying that it becomes less of an issue.
- dpapathanasiou 19y agoIt's a phenomena described in "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer" (http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm).
- brlewis 19y agoNo, that essay describes extraordinary people. I'm talking about something that affects ordinary people depending on what programming language they use.
- ivankirigin 19y agoI can imagine using multiple colors for various tasks on a single board. I might try this. I use something close to GTD, with a flat text file. I really need a PDA though.
- twism 19y agowould be an alright facebook app...
- sbraford 19y ago... the race has begun.