5 ms·
Failure
- mynameishere 18y agoThat post is a good example of what is wrong with blogs. It's basically an interesting intro without a body, 'cause, you know, blog entries are 500 words or less.
- bprater 18y agoI disagree, I thought it was an amazing blog post. The bottom-line is that you have to entertain online. No entertainment, no visitors. And people aren't entertained when they see a big wall o' text. If you were even slightly entertained, I'll bet you give his blog another chance next time. Really, I'm not sure what more he could have said, beyond setting the stage for a grander story.
- netcan 18y agoThe bottom-line is that you have to entertain online. No entertainment, no visitors. And people aren't entertained when they see a big wall o' text. I wouldn't even say that. Blogs are blogs. They are a certain medium with certain styles & certain breakable 'rules.' Evolution & survivor bias ensure that most blog posts read are the types of blog posts that are appealing to the the people reading them. I see no problem with that. Same goes for novels, biographies, essays, magazine articles or pretty much any category of writing. Nothing wrong with that. A blog within the framework of the style is definitely a useful one to have out there.
- run4yourlives 18y agoAre you saying that blog posts need to be 5000 words to say something meaningful?
- mynameishere 18y agoNot at all, it depends on the context. I really liked his style, and then...bam...it stopped right when I thought it was about to start. Blog entry vs. Essay, I guess.
- run4yourlives 18y agoFair enough. I thought it flowed well though. The simplicity was very zen.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoCan I take a minute to talk about this blog post? It ended abruptly and the last two paragraphs read like he had envisioned a longer post but ran out of steam and/or things to say. Good overall theme, though.
- jballanc 18y agoThe short story wasn't considered a legitimate literary form until Edgar Allen Poe...to each his own I suppose.
- dschoon 18y agoSee, I like this article partially because it invites the reader to reflect on these thoughts, rather than provide an explicit, pre-packaged way of approaching life. I agree because I think this is another way of searching for authenticity in all our decisions: "complacency" is another way to say you're not re-evaluating the choices you've made. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_(philosophy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_(philosophy)
- greendestiny 18y agoI found this quote interesting: "psychologists have found that a person flourishes when their chance of success is between 80% and 95%. If your chance of success is below 80%, you start to act desperate. Above 95%, you start to get complacent". I wonder if many startups feel anywhere close to an 80% chance of success.
- bprater 18y agoI think it's imperative. From an outsider's perspective, most start-ups look like a bunch of nuts riding the edge of sanity. From the inside, you have to convince yourself that you will succeed. Yes, it looks a little bit like crazy.
- greendestiny 18y agoI'm not sure I've ever been that confident on a decent sized project. I'm starting to wonder if it explains a lot of things about me or if its just the latest convenient thing to tell myself :)
- diN0bot 18y agothe other interesting thing is that a persons perceptions of statistics and the statistics of different situations is all kind of skewed. the first question is how did psychologists ascertain and normalize someone's perception of the chance of success. the second question is how does the system react now that we know about it.
- papersports 18y agoA startup flourishes when its founders have the belief, whether it is well founded or not, that there chance of success is at least 80%.
- bprater 18y agoI've never heard that Buddhist story before! Pretty amazing. Why do you think you picked this life?
- greendestiny 18y agoMy life's pretty cushy. I want to know how sucky your options are to choose dieing young in some horrible way. I think if it is a genuine Buddhist belief its purpose is to make you more engaged with reality by accepting it as yours. Probably more worth dwelling on that.
- rms 18y agoTo experience life in the upper class of the second to last generation of humanity, Generation Y. It's a learning experience and my post-human soul will have this life added to its knowledge along with all of the other lives it has lived.
- russell 18y agoI was given a choice of this one or coming back as a cockroach. I chose this one. However, had I taken a closer look at life with my ex-wife, I might have chosen the cockroach.
- rw 18y agoFinal quote: "So let me spell out my thoughts explicitly: If success is the carrot, then failure is the stick, and I think we do our best work when we are conscious of both."
- jayair 18y agoThis idea of "..and I think we do our best work when we are conscious of both(success and failure)." has always intrigued me. Do we really need to know the reality of failure? The explanation I can come up with is that the experience and knowledge of failure gives us an advantage on both sides of the 80-95% spectrum (lets ignore the validity of the numbers for a second). For the times when we feel that our chances our below 80% we get scared and if we had the experience of failure we would be better suited to handle the stress. On the 95% portion I think it keeps you honest by reminding you that you could fail and the consequences if you do.
- nickb 18y agoBTW, Aaron's the author of one of the finest books on programming, programming Cocoa/Mac in Objective-C specifically: http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-Mac-OS-3rd/dp/0321503619/ http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-Mac-OS-3rd/dp/032150... If you've ever wanted to write that little iPhone app, pick up his book and you'll be a pro in few months.
- dgordon 18y ago"So let me spell out my thoughts explicitly: If success is the carrot, then failure is the stick, and I think we do our best work when we are conscious of both." I was disappointed here. This seems far too trite a conclusion for the thoughts he put forth in the rest of the entry. Did he feel compelled to wrap it up quickly for some reason? I don't know. But there's so much more he could have said, even within a reasonable-length blog entry.
- swombat 18y agoThe Buddhists have a belief that I find intriguing: Before you are born, you get to see what your life will be. You are then asked if the life will be acceptable. If you give your OK, your memory is wiped clean and you get to live that life. Otherwise, you get to look at another life. So, the life you lead, with all its suffering and challenges, is the life you chose on that day. Not to put too fine a point on it, as this is clearly just a fluffy inspirational quote, and the article itself is worth reading, but this quote kinda sorta makes no sense. Here's why: You are then asked if the life will be acceptable. What you find acceptable is a function of who you are. Who you are is also largely a function of the experiences you have had in life. What I find acceptable now is not what I found acceptable 10 years ago and probably not what I will find acceptable in 10 years. So, acceptable from what perspective? The perspective of the person who has lived that life, or the perspective of someone else? Those are two very different perspectives that will lead to very different answers. Another big hole is that there are only a finite number of existences out there. So surely someone has to be stumped with a life they didn't like. It is condescending and incredibly insulting to tell someone whose life really, really sucks that they chose it. So, a nice article, with a nice fluffy thought at the beginning, but the gaping holes in that fluffy thought kind of bothered me.
- dhimes 18y agoI've never heard of that belief, and a Buddhist posting on the original blog mentioned the same. Must be some specific flavor of Buddhism.
- eru 18y agoInteresting. Though I think the 80%-95% range was made up.