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Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator.
- henning 18y agoIt's just as true now as it was then, perfect is the enemy of good enough.
- gruseom 18y agoBut would you rather have good enough or Leonardo?
- rokhayakebe 18y agoGood enough, because masses will be able to afford it and benefit from it. Bring in Leo and the cost goes from nearly free to extremely expensive. Think bicycle against Ferrari, when all you need is a way to make the 3 mile commute between home and the plant.
- chriskelley 18y agoIt's not always about getting from point A to point B. There is always something to be said for the beauty of the journey.
- FlorinAndrei 18y agoY'all are totally missing the point.
- gruseom 18y agoGood enough, because masses will be able to afford it and benefit from it. This reads like something out of Turgenev. A pair of boots is worth more than the complete works of Shakespeare! Before art, bread! By contrast, one might ask: Leonardo's procrastinations have more value than the output of how many thousands of sensible, disciplined people?
- jhancock 18y agoboth. please don't make me chose.
- WilliamLP 18y agoDa Vinci was a true Renaissance Man.
- robg 18y agoReal artists occasionally ship? Steve Jobs tried to motivate people by saying "Real artists ship." This is a fine sentence, but unfortunately not true. Many famous works of art are unfinished. It's true in fields that have hard deadlines, like architecture and filmmaking, but even there people tend to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of their hands. http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html
- bentoner 18y agoMy solution to procrastination: 1. Identify the activities you procrastinate (for me, writing scientific papers); 2. Rearrange your life so you don't have to do them any more. (I just left academia to do a startup.)
- juliend2 18y agowhat kind of startup? Is it linked to science?
- bentoner 18y agoI don't know yet! I'm still exploring that, while finishing up various academic projects.
- raphar 18y agoYou are delaying facing your fate too! Just do it man. If something is told here over and over, is that theres no perfect business idea. You pick one direction and correct your course every time your market tells you so. good luck. :)
- jacquesm 18y agothat's the single best solution to the procrastination problem I've seen. Another possibility is to rearrange things in such a way that the only think you can still do are the things you are trying to get away from.
- eru 18y agoYou can always sit there and stare.
- acangiano 18y agoLeonardo was the ultimate hyperbrain at work (see http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/08/28/hyperbrain-owners-manual-1-the-big-picture http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/08/28/hyperbrain-owners-m...).
- jonmc12 18y agoOn a day to day basis Leonardo would allocate his time between customer projects and his own. He would balance client commitments with his natural energy for creativity - and according to this article, his natural energy often won that battle. It could be argued that it was the vision and taste of the Medici family in Florence that actually launched the renaissance. Their customer dollars enabled a new class of Italian artists and scientists to pursue creativity and innovation. Leonardo took this to a whole new level - if you had the opportunity to see the recent exhibit in the San Jose Tech Museum, it is clear the he was standing on the shoulder of other intellectual giants at the time.. all spurred by customers with a taste for art and technology. However, when the vision of the creator exceeds the vision of customer, what is the result? A starving artist, a 'self-sabatoger', a practitioner of 'sinful laziness' and 'self-abuse'? The author points out that academia has no place for the passionate creative. I would argue that similarly the a customer driven market is also no place for the passionate creative. So, where do they belong? Are we content as a society to witness that occasional, rare intersection of the visionary customer with the passionate creative? As entrepreneurs, is it our place to find a solution?
- te_platt 18y agoI would say it is the place of the passionate creative to be entrepreneurs.
- ajju 18y agoAn entrepreneur who caters to something other than a "customer driven market" is a rare one. And even if an entrepreneur can create a whole new market on their own by innovating, it will soon become customer driven. I am betting on the theory that entrepreneurship itself provides much more space for creativity than most other professions and if you succeed, you'll have a lot of money and time to pursue creativity full time. I have also read about a lot of successful entrepreneurs who discovered that they really need a startup to give direction to their creativity. Thus, serial entrepreneurs are born. pg is one of the few entrepreneurs I can think of who didn't become a serial entrepreneur in the traditional meaning of the word but still found great outlets for their creativity. Although, at least one of pg's outlets - YCombinator can be thought of as a startup.
- anr 18y agoCatchy title. Diagnosing "procrastination" seems to be all the rage nowadays, people will almost always identify with it.
- mblakele 18y agoThis may not apply to Leonardo da Vinci, but I'm reminded of M.A. Foster's notion that overcrowding generates bureaucracy. The idea may not be original to him, but he suggested that people erect social or procedural barriers when physical ones are no longer available. Perhaps procrastination is a similar phenomenon. The workplace is ubiquitous now, if we allow it to be. Do we procrastinate so that our minds have time to recover from these new demands?
- markessien 18y agoWhat he should have been is a type of center of ideas where other people who could execute brilliantly, but did not have as many insights and ideas could start from to complete his stuff. He'd have become some type of manager at the end though.
- 10ren 18y ago* hopeful
- electromagnetic 18y agoI completely disagree that Leonardo was a procrastinator simply because he didn't do everything he dreamed of. I'm sorry, I've looked through some of the books of his designs and he has things like strip-miners and hang-gliders and such. I'm sorry, they were physically incapable of making them in his day. He understood concepts and designed things that fit them, likely knowing he'd never be able to build them in his lifetime. The first design for a Space Elevator came in like 1895, and in 2009 we still don't have the technology to make one, so why is Leonardo a 'procrastinator' simply because it was impossible to build some of the things he wanted to.
- anthonyrubin 18y agoBecause labeling Leonardo a procrastinator makes all of us procrastinators feel better about ourselves.
- electromagnetic 18y agoAnd not saying it makes me feel like I'm not a procrastinator! I rue the minute you commented and ruined my few moments of not feeling like a procrastinator.
- abossy 18y agoFurthermore, the fact that Leonardo is a procastinator and so are we indicates that we are all merely human and somewhat equally capable, regardless of how human history has elevated the status of one being over another.
- jacquesm 18y agoThat's a good one. I think the author is mistaking 'visionary' for 'procrastinator'. THe simple fact that Leonardo Da Vinci did not have access to the technology to realize his visions (and could not even begin to guess how far away that technology was) does not make him a procrastinator. Have a look at the stuff that he came up with that had the technology readily available. It's a good thing they didn't have patents back then or Leonardos descendants would have owned the world.
- jhancock 18y ago"The unambiguously negative idea of procrastination seems unique to the Western world" As an American living in Shanghai for 9 years, I have had to confront this meme in its various forms on many occasions. My wife (Chinese) will simply tell me things like "Chinese people are not afforded the luxury of your behavior". It appears procrastination is something that must be "afforded". Its not that procrastination is unique to us (modern-Western-middle-class++), but that it may have cultivated itself into an attribute that has reluctant value; otherwise da Vinci would have no merit in this context.
- pkaler 18y agoParaphrasing David Allen: Procrastination isn't about not getting things done. Procrastination is about not getting things done AND feeling bad about it. I spent a month in India this year. It's a much slower lifestyle there. When something doesn't get done, they just don't feel bad about it. (Obviously, huge generalizations in that last paragraph.)
- alecco 18y agoProcrastination is like masturbation, it's all good until you realize you just f***ed yourself.
- steelhive 18y agoJust because he once worked on Duke Nukem Forever, da Vinci has been unfairly tagged as a procrastinator.
- tlb 18y agoIs he a procrastinator for not actually attempting to build his helicopter with late-15th century technology? He would have failed, as the rough-hewn wooden gearboxes of the day were incapable of the power levels needed for rotary-wing flight. And other reasons. It was probably better to move on and sketch some new ideas than try to build things centuries ahead of what was technologically possible.
- theBobMcCormick 18y agoYou're seriously missing the point. If you read the article, Leonardo also failed to finish a great number of paintings and sculptures. These were clearly completable within the technology of the time and within Leonardo's personal skill.
- chenelson 18y agoI think that's kinda the point of the article. Why was Leo focusing his energy on something that he had to know wasn't possible in his lifetime? For many, that would be waste of talent: a boy in a man's body. What we may fail to recognize or appreciate is that product B couldn't exist without unrealized product A... and that product D includes elements of A, B, and C.
- jodrellblank 18y ago"You know how Einstein's grades were bad as a kid? Well mine are even worse!" - Calvin (& Hobbes).
- sutro 18y agoUnfortunately for da Vinci, pg had not yet finished the "noprocrast" feature, so would-be masterworks gathered dust as da Vinci frittered away his days on an early version of Hacker News.
- helveticaman 18y agoI'm in good company. In all seriousness, that sounds like ADD.