10 ms·

How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

457 points by plinkplonk 15y ago

anthony_franco 15y ago
Jerry Seinfeld used this exact technique to become a great comic. As told by software developer Brad Isaac when he asked Jerry for career advice[0]: He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain." "Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis. [0] http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...
- prawn 15y ago
  I've used this in the past to track multiple goals in this way: http://www.joesgoals.com/ http://www.joesgoals.com/
  - jbigelow76 15y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion, I like this so far. My biggest beef with idonethis is the single check mark to indicate any activity whatsoever, making it less usable for tracking multiple goals.
    - prawn 15y ago
      Exactly. When I used this, I had some work and exercise-related positive goals, a multi-point goal (cooking, which I love but don't always make time for) and one negative line (caving in to the gaming addiction of the moment). At some point I abandoned it, but I can't remember what caused me to break the habit. I might have more luck with an iPhone app that kept the chains in my face more often?
- JohnLBevan 15y ago
  This was also recently mentioned by YouTuber "CharlieIsSoCoolLike", who's taken to putting videos online every day for a week to overcome his perfectionism, but who's also been following the technique for a much longer time to keep himself learning.
- eee_c 15y ago
  Yah, that's actually where I got the original idea: http://japhr.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-chain.html http://japhr.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-chain.html (should have made that more clear). I'm never going to reach Seinfeld levels, but that's all right.
- its_so_on 15y ago
  There's only one problem. When you do break the long chain you're out for the count. When was the last time you heard anything from Seinfeld after his long-running eponymous show was cancelled? How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?
  - stevetursi 15y ago
    True. But you're focusing on the chain for the chain's sake. Remember the chain is a hack - a method of altering your behavior to produce a result - and that result should be the focus. Of course, I'm not going to lie and deny that the chain has its own intrinsic value, which only intensifies as it gets longer. But consider- a.) The longer the chain, the less willing you are to break it, the more you learn not to let superficial things (like the futility of starting a new 3000-day chain) get in the way. b.) The longer the chain, the more you've achieved your result, and the less you need the chain. If that result didn't happen, then you should reconsider the chain in the first place (as per my point above.) Example of a.) As of today I have not missed a day of running in 485 days. After finishing a 100-mile ultramarathon 3.5 weeks ago, I got out and hacked together a 1-mile run the day after. Super painful, and took me 15 minutes, but it was an honest jog, and it counts. If my streak was much less than 460 days (at the time), I would not have continued the chain. example of b.) The result of the chain? It helped me to finish a 100-mile ultramarathon, even at 6'6" 285lbs. If I have to break the chain tomorrow, and its length keeps me from ever starting a new chain, well - look at what I accomplished. I'd say it was worth it. And I suspect Seinfeld would agree regarding his chain.
  - mangodrunk 15y ago
    It wasn't canceled, he chose to stop the show, and at the time it was the most viewed show [0]. They offered him a lot more money but he decided to leave on a high point [1]. After having one of the most successful shows of all time, he went on to create a successful movie (Bee Movie) [2] and continues to do stand-up. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings [1] http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/26/seinfeld/ http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/26/seinfeld/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie
- emehrkay 15y ago
  This is the reason why I use ["I done this today"](https://idonethis.com/ https://idonethis.com/). I have it send me an email everynight at 11pm and I respond back with what I did for the day. I cant wait to look at it in a year.
- nathanbarry 15y ago
  This is a fantastic method. I wrote an iPhone app around this concept: http://thinklegend.com/commit http://thinklegend.com/commit One of my current commitments is to write 1000 words each day.
  - sireat 15y ago
    I can highly recommend 750words.com if daily writing is what you are after , lots of those little psychological hooks to keep writing. I just love all those semi-useless graphs and stats you can generate if you wish. Completely Free too (it shows around 5% of people as donating something).
    - nathanbarry 15y ago
      I'll check that out. Thanks!
    - gnosis 15y ago
      Gah! You have to log in to use it. Worse, it the login has to be Facebook, Yahoo, or OpenID. No fucking way am I going to sign up for any of that shit, or let them track me as I visit sites I'm interested in. No thanks!
- mr-ron 15y ago
  http://chains.cc http://chains.cc is a good gui for this
  - nathanbarry 15y ago
    Wow, this is a really good UI. Having designed something similar with Commit I think did a really good job!
  - dodoflying 15y ago
    Thanks for this.
  - BerislavLopac 15y ago
    I'm impressed. My first thought was "I should write an app for this", but seeing what they have done I have no intention whatsoever to even try. :-)
  - wyan 15y ago
    This is a really nice site. Thanks.
- statenjason 15y ago
  Specific to open source on Github, but I've encountered this before: http://calendaraboutnothing.com/ http://calendaraboutnothing.com/
  - wyan 15y ago
    Neat :)
- LyleK 15y ago
  Staying on track with a goal or two is easy. The hard part is that when you have enough goals, they all compete for time. So choosing which goals you want to follow becomes the ultimate problem.
- nevster 15y ago
  Try out http://dontbreakthechain.com/ http://dontbreakthechain.com/ - it's awesome.
guynamedloren 15y ago
This is fantastic. Another method to "tricking yourself into being awesome" (also called learning) is to jump right in and start working on a project. Like the author, you'll come up with loads of questions that need answering, and if your project is going to be successful, those questions must be answered. Otherwise your project/startup will die. Personal experience: this is exactly how I learned Ruby on Rails as a non-programmer. I had an idea for a project, so I tried reading books and tutorials for months. Nothing stuck. It just didn't make sense. I couldn't translate the words I was reading into code. So I said "screw it" and started hacking away at my project, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. Progress was slow obstacles were rampant, but it turns out those obstacles are easy to overcome with stack traces and google/stackoverflow!
- andyouthink 15y ago
  I think the difference is that some of us need a little more structure. By providing a method and a repetitive activity, by the 21st day or so (3 weeks they say), it will become habit. After that point, making a point of solving problems for a particular purpose everyday will be much easier, and you'll be making more progress. A few stories to illustrate: 1. I had a few friends that made it a point to learn a new technology every day of the month and blog about it. In the end, the friends had learned quite a bit, and even though they only had cursory knowledge of the subject, the structure allowed them to succeed at their goal to have a more general knowledge in their discipline. 2. I have another friend that started writing an application with the point for it to be the central product of a great new startup. This friend is not only intelligent, but very capable in the whole stack, self-organized, and I would have expected him to succeed. However, he lost interest in the end before go-live. there were competitors, and I think he lost the vision that he had in the beginning. He could still finish the product, but now he has another job. I credit this to lack of structure, which is not his fault; I've gotten no where near as far as he did on a myriad of ideas for products.
  - guynamedloren 15y ago
    > I think the difference is that some of us need a little more structure. By providing a method and a repetitive activity, by the 21st day or so (3 weeks they say), it will become habit. After that point, making a point of solving problems for a particular purpose everyday will be much easier, and you'll be making more progress. Yep, I agree. As long as you are able to find problems to solve. Personally, this doesn't work for me because I am not able to come up with problems unless the present themselves in something I'm working on. I can read 100 books on a subject, but if I can't apply the knowledge or imagine how I can apply it, it doesn't stick. Just different ways of learning, I guess.
personlurking 15y ago
I spent many years doing something similar, blogging about what I had just learned (no posing of questions, though). I posted once or twice a day in two blogs and what I learned wasn't so much via the content as it was via the research and curation skills I taught myself. To me, research is all about staying committed to the information I am looking for, yet being flexible in my approach (something I learned growing up with a computer, ie, a problem needs solving so I look at all the ways to solve it). Still get close to 20K pageviews/month in the main blog even though I barely post anymore, which is cool, and the result is the same as your blogging and books...sharing what you learn with others. Now I'm taking on a new subject/blog. I will try to use your method. Thanks!
epaga 15y ago
Very inspiring stuff. A friend of mine once told himself he'd never be stumped by the same question twice and held himself to it. It's amazing what simple habits can do if you give them time.
oskarth 15y ago
This is a great way of working. I just wonder if the books are: (a) any good? (b) selling? There's a huge difference between writing a good book and sticking a couple of notes together. Anyone read the books in question? EDIT: I didn't see that one of the books was published - search on Amazon gave nothing and all I could find was a buy-my-book landing page. Sorry about that.
- andyouthink 15y ago
  Did you miss this part: "The Pragmatic Programmers"?
  - lukejduncan 15y ago
    Oh wow, I definitely missed that part. For some reason I thought the middle of the post was the end. The bold "How'd I do" made me think that was a closer
- swah 15y ago
  AFAIK many folks have a dream of getting a book published, not gettting it to be a best seller. (Probably getting a book published means less in the digital age but still a cool thing to have done.)
  - mhartl 15y ago
    This only true the first time. The thrill of being a published author wears off quickly when you realize that this doesn't pay the rent. (In my case, the second time 'round I figured out how to get it to pay the rent as well. Believe me, it's very satisfying.)
- masterj 15y ago
  One data point here. I found the Recipes with Backbone well worth the $24 asking price. Aside from the PeepCode screencasts, it was the source that most helped me get up and running with Backbone. I've also seen it recommended in several threads so I'm guessing (b) is also satisfied.
makeshifter 15y ago
I think you're patting yourself on the back too much. I was reading about a woman in Cambodia who escaped from torture and near death with her two children and survived in the jungle for 3 years. They never stayed in the same place two days in a row and ate nothing but roots and bugs. Despite this mother's best efforts, her youngest child starved to death and died in her arms. A few years later, she founded a safehouse for depressed women who had been raped and tortured like her. Now SHE is an awesome person and I respect her a lot more.
- microcentury 15y ago
  She does sound like an incredible person, but what are we supposed to do with that information? Does it mean we should not try and do anything, given there is always someone out there who has a 'better' (for very wide definitions of 'better') story? I don't write this to be snarky, and I used to think in a similar way myself, but this is not a good way to see the world.
  - SpaceDragon 15y ago
    Here's what I took away from the story: there are incredibly humble people who have overcome incredible hardships and went on to help and heal others. A lot of the "accomplishments" I read on HN like raising VC money or blogging for a year straight is weaksauce in comparison.
    - wwosik 15y ago
      So? If we never achieve such greatness, does it mean we shouldn't go for the weaksauce? My answer is no - not every has to be the hero. If one's a decent one, it's great already in itself.
  - MortenK 15y ago
    I think OP is just making a general call for people to be a bit more humble. Fueled by this particular case where a guy declares himself to be awesome, because he wrote a blog post every day for a year, and self-published 3 PDF's.
sparknlaunch12 15y ago
Super story! This is exactly why we started writing a blog. It has kept is learning and recording new information everyday. Pretty impressive to see the blog author publishing books on topics he knew nothing about a year ago.
andyouthink 15y ago
I loved this story! The only parts that need a little work were: 1. His background, because he didn't just go from zero to book writer, 2. How in the heck Nick Gauthier decided to co-write with him on a topic Chris previously knew nothing about, 3. Usually "I'm awesome!" is just asking for a humility check... but I think that the point is that you can be awesome.
- eee_c 15y ago
  I've been coding since the mid-nineties and had been content to be good/competent. From there to book writer is, I think, a natural outgrowth of the chain posts. I know Nick IRL. He had previously toyed with the idea of doing a book. I can't speak for him, but I think he signed up after seeing what I did with The SPDY Book. It worked out well IMO. He took the more in-depth ones, I took the more foundation recipes and then we proof read each other.
regularfry 15y ago
This doesn't work for me. I've tried several times, but I just can't make it stick.
- fendale 15y ago
  Maybe doing it daily is too often to get started, certainly if you have a lot of other stuff going on in your life too. I set myself a target of writing one good blog post a week about a year ago, with the target of having 52 posts in a year. Right now, I have about 31 with 1 month to go - I am pretty pleased with that, especially since I have been on at least 4 weeks holidays through the year where I left my laptop firmly at home.
tangue 15y ago
Though I respect the process and the efforts behind this, "How to write books with a superficial understanding of what you're talking about" would be more appropriate.
- eee_c 15y ago
  Ah, but I think that's the point. My understanding of the topics is anything but superficial. If you follow along with my daily posts, I think you can see me work through initial infatuation, recognition of limitations, and finally deeper understanding. To be sure, I could know more. But I think you're being dismissive by characterizing this as superficial.
  - tangue 15y ago
    To be clear : I'm dismissive about the title but admiring the results. I'm just tired of reading blog posts where everything from jquery plugins to pancakes recipes are "awesome"
    - eee_c 15y ago
      Gotcha. The title is intentionally over the top and definitely worthy of, at least, a skeptical attitude. I do have some awesome pancake recipes though...
  - dansingerman 15y ago
    Is it more than superficial though? Depends on your definition of 'superficial': If I buy a book on SPDY (or any technology), it is likely because I want to use it in a production/live environment. I want to buy a book on technology from someone who has run a live system, and got the battle scars one gets from doing so; who has learnt from the experiences, which they can then share. When it comes to technology, one can research all they like about it, but until you have practical _experience_ in a live environment, I would call it 'superficial'. (From the blog post it is not clear; if you have run all these technologies live then I agree, your understanding is not superficial)
bdunn 15y ago
Chris - congrats man. I've been silently stalking your "chain", and also came across your posts frequently when I was writing Planscope and was frantically Googling for Backbone help. The thing I like best is that you now have a time capsule for your professional life. You can look back and see exactly where you came from and where you went, which is more than most of us can say. I have a hard time remembering what I was doing a month ago! Keep it up, and I look forward to seeing what technology or library you tackle next!
- eee_c 15y ago
  Much thanks. I've definitely appreciated the encouragement along the way. But mostly it's cool to know that my posts have helped. Makes it that much more worthwhile :)
free 15y ago
Someone here submitted site for the same thing. http://sein-cal.co.cc/ http://sein-cal.co.cc/ What I have done is taken a printout of the same and marked on it everyday.
mickeyben 15y ago
I'm really surprised nobody said it yet. But indeed, you are awesome.
ctdonath 15y ago
Someone else with a similar attitude I find inspiring: Les Stroud. He'd go to some random remote wilderness location, take a few video cameras and nothing else, and record himself surviving for a week. Result: Survivorman, a hit TV show going into its fourth season, with at least 3 spinoff shows. A more mundane example: my brother took a photograph every day for a year. Not a big deal, no particular subjects or goals, but getting that one picture a day was paramount. With some editing & on-demand publishing, result was a very nice coffee-table book of intriguing eclectic photos. Same idea. Pick a topic, dive in, write/record for an audience, do it with passion and consistency and detail, the result is awesomeness. The more you strive the awesomer you get.
- gnosis 15y ago
  There's also this guy, who painted every day for nine years, and went from a completely unskilled beginner to a master artist: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031684 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031684
  - ctdonath 15y ago
    And the guy who, to test Gladwell's "10,000 hours" theory, has taken up golf and intends to turn pro. He knew nigh unto nothing about the game when he started. (BTW: how's he doing on that? anyone have updates?)
    - gjm11 15y ago
      http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/ where there's a blog, regularly posted videos, etc. Current status (I just looked): 2 years in, 2700 hours done, and he just shot his first sub-80 round of golf.
  - WiseWeasel 15y ago
    Thanks for making me waste an embarrassing number of hours!
raheemm 15y ago
hey man... I'm going to try this out.
jpastika 15y ago
Congratulations, you are awesome! Not only did you accomplish your goal, but you have tangible evidence of your achievement. Your name is on the cover of three books, and no one can ever take that away. So what now? Does the bar get raised. Are you saying to yourself "Wow, I can't believe I did that, what else can I do?" The difference between success and failure is ambition. You sir have tapped into your inner ambition. Harness it, focus it and you are unstoppable. You've inspired me. Thank you!
marcamillion 15y ago
slow clap This is pretty awesome. The best way to ensure that you truly understand something, is to attempt teaching it. This is a technique I am starting to use in my quest to be more awesome too...doubt I will write a book, but you never know.
- huggyface 15y ago
  The best way to ensure that you truly understand something, is to attempt teaching it. To put the foot on the other shoe, however, the last person I ever want to learn from is someone who is learning for the sake of teaching. Such knowledge is usually the thinnest of veneers.
  - marcamillion 15y ago
    Couldn't disagree more. He who has just learned something, or is in the process of FULLY learning it....is usually better able to teach it, because they understand the challenges with learning it. I can't tell you the amount of times I have had PhDs explain concepts to me in the most convulted way - using terms and language that just flies over my head, until I am explained the same concepts by a fellow student or a TA or something in the simplistic of terms. It's easy, once we 'master' something, to forget how to empathize with those that have not and to get caught up in our own knowledge. Happens to me all the time, so I am not just pointing fingers at everyone else. I have found that when I force myself to remember what it feels like to not understand something I am teaching, I tend to be a better teacher because I break it down to the simplest unit. Most experts don't/can't do that. A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming books...how horrible are they? Quite horrible...many of them. Some are good - and the ones that are, tend to stand out from the crowd. It's not because they are any less of an expert, it is usually because they can empathize with the reader more.
    - huggyface 15y ago
      He who has just learned something, or is in the process of FULLY learning it....is usually better able to teach it, because they understand the challenges with learning it. Perhaps. Or perhaps they're at the point where they think they get it -- they understand it -- and they start espousing their wisdom to others prematurely? Only they have some fundamentally wrong ideas about the thing they just started to learn. This is the story of almost every developer's apprenticeship since the beginning of time. Heck, it's the story of the world (the whole "I was a better parent before I had children" thing. And of course the most you'll ever know is in the first year of university, before you learn how much you don't know). A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming books...how horrible are they? I'm not sure how that is a case in point given that the overwhelming majority of programming books are written by people trying to gain credibility through authoring as a surrogate for actual code (indeed, isn't this what this submission is about?) -- it is hardly dominated by experts since, what, the 70s? The software development how-to field -- and this has only been made worse by the whole self-publishing trend -- is dominated by apprentices. It is the guy who has laid his first brick telling the world how to be a mason. No thanks.
rgonzalez 15y ago
Very impressive self-commitment.
Lewton 15y ago
The idea behind this is roughly the same reason that I had a much harder time creating a habit of running 3 days a week, than I had creating a habit of running 6 days a week. If you start doing something daily, the friction to get started on the task is almost completely gone
MrTibbles 15y ago
self-masturbatory nonsense. you must first be a fool to "trick" yourself into doing anything. Either you want to or you don't. Congrats on your dedication nevertheless.
ozataman 15y ago
I applaud the author for his tenacity. There is no doubt that kind of discipline produces results, both in terms of work product and personal advancement. However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience. The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other procedural knowledge. I really don't think it would work for anything in or above the intermediate range of content on any meaningful, commonly deep topic. Just imagine whether the "Mythical Man Month", "Code Complete" or "Innovator's Dilemma" could have been written with this kind of approach. I don't know about others but when I read a book, I sometimes realize the presence of an unavoidable slight bias towards believing the author and respecting his conclusions, that is unless I am already deeply knowledgeable about the subject and have my own strong opinions. It better be the case that the author is in fact trustworthy on the subject.
- timwiseman 15y ago
  It depends very much on the topic. Something that can be approached with analytical rigor or determined completely through a few tests can probably be written by diving in and learning everything while you write. Personally, I write technical articles mostly to cement things I just found out in my own mind and I have often found that in my testing and writing I learn things creating my articles that I hadn't known. But more ephemeral topics benefit greatly from experience. When I was in the military, I benefitted greatly from the experience of my NCOs and much of what they passed on to me where things that would have been very hard to put into a book or discover through any process other than experience. But I suspect most technical topics fall into the former category rather than the later.
- utnick 15y ago
  Generally I agree, but the topics of his books (SPDY, Dart, and backbone ) are all extremely new technologies. Like they have all been released only in the past year. Very few people have a ton of real world experience with these. So I think the book reader probably will know that the author doesn't have years of battle tested experience but understand that the book is meant to be a good way for a beginner to get up to speed and get going with the topic.
bking 15y ago
This is a wonderful story about how impressive your willpower is. Everyone has the desire to be great, and most people can see the rough path they must take. But, the hardest part for everyone is keeping the willpower to continually push themselves to work towards that goal every day. I am curious as to how you kept yourself motivated over the past 366 days.
courtewing 15y ago
I'd say this in the original article's comments, but apparently it does not allow anonymous comments: I found this article to be really inspiring. I guess I can see how some people may think Chris is just stroking his own ego, but I did not read it that way at all. First and foremost, I took from this article that a key to feeling great about yourself and your accomplishments is to actually do stuff, all the time. It's a simple concept that I'm sure we're all aware of, but this article really hit it home for me. As a direct result of this article, I am inspired to do stuff, even if that stuff is considerably less awesome than what Chris accomplished last year. I start with a personal response via blog post: http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-chains-and-being-awesome.html http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-chains-and-being-awe...
davemel37 15y ago
My takeaway, "Just Write. Go and Create Content. Stay Committed and you will surprise yourself at what you can accomplish." The only thing I take issue with is the comment that the author has more than quiting smoking to show for it, he has 3 books. as a former smoker, who hasnt smoked in 20 months, I can assure you that the struggle never ends, whereas once the book is finished, you can move to the next project. I still rely on my 20 month chain once in a while to remind myself that I can do and continue doing the impossible... but the battle to quit smoking, is a constant one, and pays off for the rest of your life... the battle to write a few books is hardly comparable.
jwwest 15y ago
Theres a lot of 'sayers' in the world: armchair quarterbacks, pundits, etc, but not enough 'doers'. There will always be a glut of consumers and a small fraction of producers. Not even our "consumer generated media" age of twitterbooks and instafaces has stopped this. Although it has raised the amount of snark and uneducated criticism. So if you move your hand to write three sentences about Django, you're already in the 2% (totally made up) of producers on the internet. Hell, if you blog consistently for a month straight you're in the top .5% of bloggers. The fact is doing something, anything, is worthy of some admiration. People that would try to detract from your work are often the 98% of never-have-beens.
sampsonjs 15y ago
Suggested title for all self help submissions to Haxor News: "How I discovered the one and only one secret to being incredibly awesome at everything".
tersiag 15y ago
I'm defiantly going to try this
sree_nair 15y ago
I have to say I am outraged by the amount of negativity on the comments. How do you think all the masters we respect started out?. Did Steve jobs give his best sales speech on day 1?. Did roger federer win the very first grandslam he played in ?, Did Obama gave the perfect speech on his very first attempt?. They tried and improved to be what they are and can't we applaud him for his effort and guide him if we think we are more capable and experienced rather than looking down on his work?. Hats off to you man for doing something not many have managed to do. keep doing it and you'll scale new Heights.
fforw 15y ago
Sorry, but an awesome programmer does not only talk about programming, he does it.
Nitramp 15y ago
I wonder what's the point in writing a book about Dart, where the language, environment, toolchain, compiler(s), and community are still very, very unstable. At best, it could be an intro saying "this is what they're trying to do"; but you can also cover that in a blog post, right?
- eee_c 15y ago
  I was really unsure what the result would be -- I definitely shared your concerns when I started. The core of Dart is surprisingly stable -- the team is doing a really solid job of not yanking the rug out from under developers' feet. Sure, I could have stopped at one blog post, but I ended up with 90 and still feel like I have more in me. In the end, I was pleased with the result. But I might be biased :)
ilaksh 15y ago
Some people didn't get one main aspect of his point which is the 'tricking' part where he publicly committed himself to his daily work output goal. I guess two problems with that are A) I am unfortunately not that "gullible" as far as believing that there will really be dire consequences if I don't produce a certain amount and B) as far as I know there is no public for me who would care if I suddenly declared that I was going to produce one new feature every day no matter what or whatever. I have no twitter followers and no one ever really read my blogs and generally posts on sites like reddit are autobanned. The closest I could do would be to go on Facebook and almost everyone on there is family. They would probably react the way they usually do to my Facebook posts which is "wow, I forgot that guy was on Facebook? He is so weird" with an addition of "who cares". Also, its easier to write one article a day than it is to say push a major feature per day. Also it is easier to measure and break off writing goals than software goals. I don't have a problem doing work every day, but I do feel like some days are vastly more productive than others. Not sure what goal I could have per day other than X amount of hours of actual work.

457 points by plinkplonk 15y ago

Jerry Seinfeld used this exact technique to become a great comic. As told by software developer Brad Isaac when he asked Jerry for career advice[0]: He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain." "Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis. [0] http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...

prawn 15y ago
I've used this in the past to track multiple goals in this way: http://www.joesgoals.com/ http://www.joesgoals.com/
- jbigelow76 15y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion, I like this so far. My biggest beef with idonethis is the single check mark to indicate any activity whatsoever, making it less usable for tracking multiple goals.
  - prawn 15y ago
    Exactly. When I used this, I had some work and exercise-related positive goals, a multi-point goal (cooking, which I love but don't always make time for) and one negative line (caving in to the gaming addiction of the moment). At some point I abandoned it, but I can't remember what caused me to break the habit. I might have more luck with an iPhone app that kept the chains in my face more often?
JohnLBevan 15y ago
This was also recently mentioned by YouTuber "CharlieIsSoCoolLike", who's taken to putting videos online every day for a week to overcome his perfectionism, but who's also been following the technique for a much longer time to keep himself learning.
eee_c 15y ago
Yah, that's actually where I got the original idea: http://japhr.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-chain.html http://japhr.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-chain.html (should have made that more clear). I'm never going to reach Seinfeld levels, but that's all right.
its_so_on 15y ago
There's only one problem. When you do break the long chain you're out for the count. When was the last time you heard anything from Seinfeld after his long-running eponymous show was cancelled? How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?
- stevetursi 15y ago
  True. But you're focusing on the chain for the chain's sake. Remember the chain is a hack - a method of altering your behavior to produce a result - and that result should be the focus. Of course, I'm not going to lie and deny that the chain has its own intrinsic value, which only intensifies as it gets longer. But consider- a.) The longer the chain, the less willing you are to break it, the more you learn not to let superficial things (like the futility of starting a new 3000-day chain) get in the way. b.) The longer the chain, the more you've achieved your result, and the less you need the chain. If that result didn't happen, then you should reconsider the chain in the first place (as per my point above.) Example of a.) As of today I have not missed a day of running in 485 days. After finishing a 100-mile ultramarathon 3.5 weeks ago, I got out and hacked together a 1-mile run the day after. Super painful, and took me 15 minutes, but it was an honest jog, and it counts. If my streak was much less than 460 days (at the time), I would not have continued the chain. example of b.) The result of the chain? It helped me to finish a 100-mile ultramarathon, even at 6'6" 285lbs. If I have to break the chain tomorrow, and its length keeps me from ever starting a new chain, well - look at what I accomplished. I'd say it was worth it. And I suspect Seinfeld would agree regarding his chain.
- mangodrunk 15y ago
  It wasn't canceled, he chose to stop the show, and at the time it was the most viewed show [0]. They offered him a lot more money but he decided to leave on a high point [1]. After having one of the most successful shows of all time, he went on to create a successful movie (Bee Movie) [2] and continues to do stand-up. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings [1] http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/26/seinfeld/ http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/26/seinfeld/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie
emehrkay 15y ago
This is the reason why I use ["I done this today"](https://idonethis.com/ https://idonethis.com/). I have it send me an email everynight at 11pm and I respond back with what I did for the day. I cant wait to look at it in a year.
nathanbarry 15y ago
This is a fantastic method. I wrote an iPhone app around this concept: http://thinklegend.com/commit http://thinklegend.com/commit One of my current commitments is to write 1000 words each day.
- sireat 15y ago
  I can highly recommend 750words.com if daily writing is what you are after , lots of those little psychological hooks to keep writing. I just love all those semi-useless graphs and stats you can generate if you wish. Completely Free too (it shows around 5% of people as donating something).
  - nathanbarry 15y ago
    I'll check that out. Thanks!
  - gnosis 15y ago
    Gah! You have to log in to use it. Worse, it the login has to be Facebook, Yahoo, or OpenID. No fucking way am I going to sign up for any of that shit, or let them track me as I visit sites I'm interested in. No thanks!
mr-ron 15y ago
http://chains.cc http://chains.cc is a good gui for this
- nathanbarry 15y ago
  Wow, this is a really good UI. Having designed something similar with Commit I think did a really good job!
- dodoflying 15y ago
  Thanks for this.
- BerislavLopac 15y ago
  I'm impressed. My first thought was "I should write an app for this", but seeing what they have done I have no intention whatsoever to even try. :-)
- wyan 15y ago
  This is a really nice site. Thanks.
statenjason 15y ago
Specific to open source on Github, but I've encountered this before: http://calendaraboutnothing.com/ http://calendaraboutnothing.com/
- wyan 15y ago
  Neat :)
LyleK 15y ago
Staying on track with a goal or two is easy. The hard part is that when you have enough goals, they all compete for time. So choosing which goals you want to follow becomes the ultimate problem.
nevster 15y ago
Try out http://dontbreakthechain.com/ http://dontbreakthechain.com/ - it's awesome.

guynamedloren 15y ago

This is fantastic. Another method to "tricking yourself into being awesome" (also called learning) is to jump right in and start working on a project. Like the author, you'll come up with loads of questions that need answering, and if your project is going to be successful, those questions must be answered. Otherwise your project/startup will die. Personal experience: this is exactly how I learned Ruby on Rails as a non-programmer. I had an idea for a project, so I tried reading books and tutorials for months. Nothing stuck. It just didn't make sense. I couldn't translate the words I was reading into code. So I said "screw it" and started hacking away at my project, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. Progress was slow obstacles were rampant, but it turns out those obstacles are easy to overcome with stack traces and google/stackoverflow!

andyouthink 15y ago
I think the difference is that some of us need a little more structure. By providing a method and a repetitive activity, by the 21st day or so (3 weeks they say), it will become habit. After that point, making a point of solving problems for a particular purpose everyday will be much easier, and you'll be making more progress. A few stories to illustrate: 1. I had a few friends that made it a point to learn a new technology every day of the month and blog about it. In the end, the friends had learned quite a bit, and even though they only had cursory knowledge of the subject, the structure allowed them to succeed at their goal to have a more general knowledge in their discipline. 2. I have another friend that started writing an application with the point for it to be the central product of a great new startup. This friend is not only intelligent, but very capable in the whole stack, self-organized, and I would have expected him to succeed. However, he lost interest in the end before go-live. there were competitors, and I think he lost the vision that he had in the beginning. He could still finish the product, but now he has another job. I credit this to lack of structure, which is not his fault; I've gotten no where near as far as he did on a myriad of ideas for products.
- guynamedloren 15y ago
  > I think the difference is that some of us need a little more structure. By providing a method and a repetitive activity, by the 21st day or so (3 weeks they say), it will become habit. After that point, making a point of solving problems for a particular purpose everyday will be much easier, and you'll be making more progress. Yep, I agree. As long as you are able to find problems to solve. Personally, this doesn't work for me because I am not able to come up with problems unless the present themselves in something I'm working on. I can read 100 books on a subject, but if I can't apply the knowledge or imagine how I can apply it, it doesn't stick. Just different ways of learning, I guess.

personlurking 15y ago

I spent many years doing something similar, blogging about what I had just learned (no posing of questions, though). I posted once or twice a day in two blogs and what I learned wasn't so much via the content as it was via the research and curation skills I taught myself. To me, research is all about staying committed to the information I am looking for, yet being flexible in my approach (something I learned growing up with a computer, ie, a problem needs solving so I look at all the ways to solve it). Still get close to 20K pageviews/month in the main blog even though I barely post anymore, which is cool, and the result is the same as your blogging and books...sharing what you learn with others. Now I'm taking on a new subject/blog. I will try to use your method. Thanks!

epaga 15y ago

Very inspiring stuff. A friend of mine once told himself he'd never be stumped by the same question twice and held himself to it. It's amazing what simple habits can do if you give them time.

oskarth 15y ago

This is a great way of working. I just wonder if the books are: (a) any good? (b) selling? There's a huge difference between writing a good book and sticking a couple of notes together. Anyone read the books in question? EDIT: I didn't see that one of the books was published - search on Amazon gave nothing and all I could find was a buy-my-book landing page. Sorry about that.

andyouthink 15y ago
Did you miss this part: "The Pragmatic Programmers"?
- lukejduncan 15y ago
  Oh wow, I definitely missed that part. For some reason I thought the middle of the post was the end. The bold "How'd I do" made me think that was a closer
swah 15y ago
AFAIK many folks have a dream of getting a book published, not gettting it to be a best seller. (Probably getting a book published means less in the digital age but still a cool thing to have done.)
- mhartl 15y ago
  This only true the first time. The thrill of being a published author wears off quickly when you realize that this doesn't pay the rent. (In my case, the second time 'round I figured out how to get it to pay the rent as well. Believe me, it's very satisfying.)
masterj 15y ago
One data point here. I found the Recipes with Backbone well worth the $24 asking price. Aside from the PeepCode screencasts, it was the source that most helped me get up and running with Backbone. I've also seen it recommended in several threads so I'm guessing (b) is also satisfied.

makeshifter 15y ago

I think you're patting yourself on the back too much. I was reading about a woman in Cambodia who escaped from torture and near death with her two children and survived in the jungle for 3 years. They never stayed in the same place two days in a row and ate nothing but roots and bugs. Despite this mother's best efforts, her youngest child starved to death and died in her arms. A few years later, she founded a safehouse for depressed women who had been raped and tortured like her. Now SHE is an awesome person and I respect her a lot more.

microcentury 15y ago
She does sound like an incredible person, but what are we supposed to do with that information? Does it mean we should not try and do anything, given there is always someone out there who has a 'better' (for very wide definitions of 'better') story? I don't write this to be snarky, and I used to think in a similar way myself, but this is not a good way to see the world.
- SpaceDragon 15y ago
  Here's what I took away from the story: there are incredibly humble people who have overcome incredible hardships and went on to help and heal others. A lot of the "accomplishments" I read on HN like raising VC money or blogging for a year straight is weaksauce in comparison.
  - wwosik 15y ago
    So? If we never achieve such greatness, does it mean we shouldn't go for the weaksauce? My answer is no - not every has to be the hero. If one's a decent one, it's great already in itself.
- MortenK 15y ago
  I think OP is just making a general call for people to be a bit more humble. Fueled by this particular case where a guy declares himself to be awesome, because he wrote a blog post every day for a year, and self-published 3 PDF's.

sparknlaunch12 15y ago

Super story! This is exactly why we started writing a blog. It has kept is learning and recording new information everyday. Pretty impressive to see the blog author publishing books on topics he knew nothing about a year ago.

andyouthink 15y ago

I loved this story! The only parts that need a little work were: 1. His background, because he didn't just go from zero to book writer, 2. How in the heck Nick Gauthier decided to co-write with him on a topic Chris previously knew nothing about, 3. Usually "I'm awesome!" is just asking for a humility check... but I think that the point is that you can be awesome.

eee_c 15y ago
I've been coding since the mid-nineties and had been content to be good/competent. From there to book writer is, I think, a natural outgrowth of the chain posts. I know Nick IRL. He had previously toyed with the idea of doing a book. I can't speak for him, but I think he signed up after seeing what I did with The SPDY Book. It worked out well IMO. He took the more in-depth ones, I took the more foundation recipes and then we proof read each other.

regularfry 15y ago

This doesn't work for me. I've tried several times, but I just can't make it stick.

fendale 15y ago
Maybe doing it daily is too often to get started, certainly if you have a lot of other stuff going on in your life too. I set myself a target of writing one good blog post a week about a year ago, with the target of having 52 posts in a year. Right now, I have about 31 with 1 month to go - I am pretty pleased with that, especially since I have been on at least 4 weeks holidays through the year where I left my laptop firmly at home.

tangue 15y ago

Though I respect the process and the efforts behind this, "How to write books with a superficial understanding of what you're talking about" would be more appropriate.

eee_c 15y ago
Ah, but I think that's the point. My understanding of the topics is anything but superficial. If you follow along with my daily posts, I think you can see me work through initial infatuation, recognition of limitations, and finally deeper understanding. To be sure, I could know more. But I think you're being dismissive by characterizing this as superficial.
- tangue 15y ago
  To be clear : I'm dismissive about the title but admiring the results. I'm just tired of reading blog posts where everything from jquery plugins to pancakes recipes are "awesome"
  - eee_c 15y ago
    Gotcha. The title is intentionally over the top and definitely worthy of, at least, a skeptical attitude. I do have some awesome pancake recipes though...
- dansingerman 15y ago
  Is it more than superficial though? Depends on your definition of 'superficial': If I buy a book on SPDY (or any technology), it is likely because I want to use it in a production/live environment. I want to buy a book on technology from someone who has run a live system, and got the battle scars one gets from doing so; who has learnt from the experiences, which they can then share. When it comes to technology, one can research all they like about it, but until you have practical _experience_ in a live environment, I would call it 'superficial'. (From the blog post it is not clear; if you have run all these technologies live then I agree, your understanding is not superficial)

bdunn 15y ago

Chris - congrats man. I've been silently stalking your "chain", and also came across your posts frequently when I was writing Planscope and was frantically Googling for Backbone help. The thing I like best is that you now have a time capsule for your professional life. You can look back and see exactly where you came from and where you went, which is more than most of us can say. I have a hard time remembering what I was doing a month ago! Keep it up, and I look forward to seeing what technology or library you tackle next!

eee_c 15y ago
Much thanks. I've definitely appreciated the encouragement along the way. But mostly it's cool to know that my posts have helped. Makes it that much more worthwhile :)

free 15y ago

Someone here submitted site for the same thing. http://sein-cal.co.cc/ http://sein-cal.co.cc/ What I have done is taken a printout of the same and marked on it everyday.

mickeyben 15y ago

I'm really surprised nobody said it yet. But indeed, you are awesome.

ctdonath 15y ago

Someone else with a similar attitude I find inspiring: Les Stroud. He'd go to some random remote wilderness location, take a few video cameras and nothing else, and record himself surviving for a week. Result: Survivorman, a hit TV show going into its fourth season, with at least 3 spinoff shows. A more mundane example: my brother took a photograph every day for a year. Not a big deal, no particular subjects or goals, but getting that one picture a day was paramount. With some editing & on-demand publishing, result was a very nice coffee-table book of intriguing eclectic photos. Same idea. Pick a topic, dive in, write/record for an audience, do it with passion and consistency and detail, the result is awesomeness. The more you strive the awesomer you get.

gnosis 15y ago
There's also this guy, who painted every day for nine years, and went from a completely unskilled beginner to a master artist: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031684 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031684
- ctdonath 15y ago
  And the guy who, to test Gladwell's "10,000 hours" theory, has taken up golf and intends to turn pro. He knew nigh unto nothing about the game when he started. (BTW: how's he doing on that? anyone have updates?)
  - gjm11 15y ago
    http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/ where there's a blog, regularly posted videos, etc. Current status (I just looked): 2 years in, 2700 hours done, and he just shot his first sub-80 round of golf.
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  Thanks for making me waste an embarrassing number of hours!

raheemm 15y ago

hey man... I'm going to try this out.

jpastika 15y ago

Congratulations, you are awesome! Not only did you accomplish your goal, but you have tangible evidence of your achievement. Your name is on the cover of three books, and no one can ever take that away. So what now? Does the bar get raised. Are you saying to yourself "Wow, I can't believe I did that, what else can I do?" The difference between success and failure is ambition. You sir have tapped into your inner ambition. Harness it, focus it and you are unstoppable. You've inspired me. Thank you!

marcamillion 15y ago

slow clap This is pretty awesome. The best way to ensure that you truly understand something, is to attempt teaching it. This is a technique I am starting to use in my quest to be more awesome too...doubt I will write a book, but you never know.

huggyface 15y ago
The best way to ensure that you truly understand something, is to attempt teaching it. To put the foot on the other shoe, however, the last person I ever want to learn from is someone who is learning for the sake of teaching. Such knowledge is usually the thinnest of veneers.
- marcamillion 15y ago
  Couldn't disagree more. He who has just learned something, or is in the process of FULLY learning it....is usually better able to teach it, because they understand the challenges with learning it. I can't tell you the amount of times I have had PhDs explain concepts to me in the most convulted way - using terms and language that just flies over my head, until I am explained the same concepts by a fellow student or a TA or something in the simplistic of terms. It's easy, once we 'master' something, to forget how to empathize with those that have not and to get caught up in our own knowledge. Happens to me all the time, so I am not just pointing fingers at everyone else. I have found that when I force myself to remember what it feels like to not understand something I am teaching, I tend to be a better teacher because I break it down to the simplest unit. Most experts don't/can't do that. A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming books...how horrible are they? Quite horrible...many of them. Some are good - and the ones that are, tend to stand out from the crowd. It's not because they are any less of an expert, it is usually because they can empathize with the reader more.
  - huggyface 15y ago
    He who has just learned something, or is in the process of FULLY learning it....is usually better able to teach it, because they understand the challenges with learning it. Perhaps. Or perhaps they're at the point where they think they get it -- they understand it -- and they start espousing their wisdom to others prematurely? Only they have some fundamentally wrong ideas about the thing they just started to learn. This is the story of almost every developer's apprenticeship since the beginning of time. Heck, it's the story of the world (the whole "I was a better parent before I had children" thing. And of course the most you'll ever know is in the first year of university, before you learn how much you don't know). A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming books...how horrible are they? I'm not sure how that is a case in point given that the overwhelming majority of programming books are written by people trying to gain credibility through authoring as a surrogate for actual code (indeed, isn't this what this submission is about?) -- it is hardly dominated by experts since, what, the 70s? The software development how-to field -- and this has only been made worse by the whole self-publishing trend -- is dominated by apprentices. It is the guy who has laid his first brick telling the world how to be a mason. No thanks.

rgonzalez 15y ago

Very impressive self-commitment.

Lewton 15y ago

The idea behind this is roughly the same reason that I had a much harder time creating a habit of running 3 days a week, than I had creating a habit of running 6 days a week. If you start doing something daily, the friction to get started on the task is almost completely gone

MrTibbles 15y ago

self-masturbatory nonsense. you must first be a fool to "trick" yourself into doing anything. Either you want to or you don't. Congrats on your dedication nevertheless.

ozataman 15y ago

I applaud the author for his tenacity. There is no doubt that kind of discipline produces results, both in terms of work product and personal advancement. However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience. The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other procedural knowledge. I really don't think it would work for anything in or above the intermediate range of content on any meaningful, commonly deep topic. Just imagine whether the "Mythical Man Month", "Code Complete" or "Innovator's Dilemma" could have been written with this kind of approach. I don't know about others but when I read a book, I sometimes realize the presence of an unavoidable slight bias towards believing the author and respecting his conclusions, that is unless I am already deeply knowledgeable about the subject and have my own strong opinions. It better be the case that the author is in fact trustworthy on the subject.

timwiseman 15y ago
It depends very much on the topic. Something that can be approached with analytical rigor or determined completely through a few tests can probably be written by diving in and learning everything while you write. Personally, I write technical articles mostly to cement things I just found out in my own mind and I have often found that in my testing and writing I learn things creating my articles that I hadn't known. But more ephemeral topics benefit greatly from experience. When I was in the military, I benefitted greatly from the experience of my NCOs and much of what they passed on to me where things that would have been very hard to put into a book or discover through any process other than experience. But I suspect most technical topics fall into the former category rather than the later.
utnick 15y ago
Generally I agree, but the topics of his books (SPDY, Dart, and backbone ) are all extremely new technologies. Like they have all been released only in the past year. Very few people have a ton of real world experience with these. So I think the book reader probably will know that the author doesn't have years of battle tested experience but understand that the book is meant to be a good way for a beginner to get up to speed and get going with the topic.

bking 15y ago

This is a wonderful story about how impressive your willpower is. Everyone has the desire to be great, and most people can see the rough path they must take. But, the hardest part for everyone is keeping the willpower to continually push themselves to work towards that goal every day. I am curious as to how you kept yourself motivated over the past 366 days.

courtewing 15y ago

I'd say this in the original article's comments, but apparently it does not allow anonymous comments: I found this article to be really inspiring. I guess I can see how some people may think Chris is just stroking his own ego, but I did not read it that way at all. First and foremost, I took from this article that a key to feeling great about yourself and your accomplishments is to actually do stuff, all the time. It's a simple concept that I'm sure we're all aware of, but this article really hit it home for me. As a direct result of this article, I am inspired to do stuff, even if that stuff is considerably less awesome than what Chris accomplished last year. I start with a personal response via blog post: http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-chains-and-being-awesome.html http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-chains-and-being-awe...

davemel37 15y ago

My takeaway, "Just Write. Go and Create Content. Stay Committed and you will surprise yourself at what you can accomplish." The only thing I take issue with is the comment that the author has more than quiting smoking to show for it, he has 3 books. as a former smoker, who hasnt smoked in 20 months, I can assure you that the struggle never ends, whereas once the book is finished, you can move to the next project. I still rely on my 20 month chain once in a while to remind myself that I can do and continue doing the impossible... but the battle to quit smoking, is a constant one, and pays off for the rest of your life... the battle to write a few books is hardly comparable.

jwwest 15y ago

Theres a lot of 'sayers' in the world: armchair quarterbacks, pundits, etc, but not enough 'doers'. There will always be a glut of consumers and a small fraction of producers. Not even our "consumer generated media" age of twitterbooks and instafaces has stopped this. Although it has raised the amount of snark and uneducated criticism. So if you move your hand to write three sentences about Django, you're already in the 2% (totally made up) of producers on the internet. Hell, if you blog consistently for a month straight you're in the top .5% of bloggers. The fact is doing something, anything, is worthy of some admiration. People that would try to detract from your work are often the 98% of never-have-beens.

sampsonjs 15y ago

Suggested title for all self help submissions to Haxor News: "How I discovered the one and only one secret to being incredibly awesome at everything".

tersiag 15y ago

I'm defiantly going to try this

sree_nair 15y ago

I have to say I am outraged by the amount of negativity on the comments. How do you think all the masters we respect started out?. Did Steve jobs give his best sales speech on day 1?. Did roger federer win the very first grandslam he played in ?, Did Obama gave the perfect speech on his very first attempt?. They tried and improved to be what they are and can't we applaud him for his effort and guide him if we think we are more capable and experienced rather than looking down on his work?. Hats off to you man for doing something not many have managed to do. keep doing it and you'll scale new Heights.

fforw 15y ago

Sorry, but an awesome programmer does not only talk about programming, he does it.

Nitramp 15y ago

I wonder what's the point in writing a book about Dart, where the language, environment, toolchain, compiler(s), and community are still very, very unstable. At best, it could be an intro saying "this is what they're trying to do"; but you can also cover that in a blog post, right?

eee_c 15y ago
I was really unsure what the result would be -- I definitely shared your concerns when I started. The core of Dart is surprisingly stable -- the team is doing a really solid job of not yanking the rug out from under developers' feet. Sure, I could have stopped at one blog post, but I ended up with 90 and still feel like I have more in me. In the end, I was pleased with the result. But I might be biased :)

ilaksh 15y ago

Some people didn't get one main aspect of his point which is the 'tricking' part where he publicly committed himself to his daily work output goal. I guess two problems with that are A) I am unfortunately not that "gullible" as far as believing that there will really be dire consequences if I don't produce a certain amount and B) as far as I know there is no public for me who would care if I suddenly declared that I was going to produce one new feature every day no matter what or whatever. I have no twitter followers and no one ever really read my blogs and generally posts on sites like reddit are autobanned. The closest I could do would be to go on Facebook and almost everyone on there is family. They would probably react the way they usually do to my Facebook posts which is "wow, I forgot that guy was on Facebook? He is so weird" with an addition of "who cares". Also, its easier to write one article a day than it is to say push a major feature per day. Also it is easier to measure and break off writing goals than software goals. I don't have a problem doing work every day, but I do feel like some days are vastly more productive than others. Not sure what goal I could have per day other than X amount of hours of actual work.