4 ms·

I really wish I were surrounded (or perceived myself to be surrounded) by more productive people. Seeing someone better than yourself can be a great motivator.

I really wish I were surrounded (or perceived myself to be surrounded) by more productive people. Seeing someone better than yourself can be a great motivator. But when most people you see set low standards for themselves (relatively speaking), it's easy to slip and forget to work hard. Every minute is precious if you have a goal to reach.

inerte 14y ago
And why are you not surrounded by more productive people?
- shurcooL 14y ago
  I don't know, perhaps I'm doing something wrong, or it hasn't happened yet but will happen soon. The latter is less likely because I'm 26 yo already.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - obstacle1 14y ago
    You are 26 years old. You have, what, 30, 35 years of working life ahead of you? Sure, resign to mediocrity for literally 5/6ths of your career, if you want. But there's plenty of room and time for you to develop how you want. Age is not your main obstacle.
- rjzzleep 14y ago
  because i just started to work for the government.
  - singold 14y ago
    Same here. A bit depressing really... Because of salary it is a dificult position to leave for me, but I'm working on that developing my own startup :)
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  This question made me scratch my head (in a good way). Do you think that it is easy to find productive people? Where do you live? The most obvious way on HN to find productive people is probably to move into the valley, or a similar region, but that's a big step from most parts of the world. And then there is the huge shadow mass of brilliant programmers who aren't extroverted on the internet but that I'd love to have around me. They probably exist even in smaller cities or rural areas, but how do you find them?
ams6110 14y ago
Maybe you should be the motivator then. Bring your coworkers up instead of letting them bring you down.
svdad 14y ago
No. This is something you have to stop. Speaking from experience I know it is hard not to define yourself by the people around you, but it's deadly. What helped (and continues to help) me is this question: Do you want to be that person? As in, "do you want to be the person who sits in the office chatting and surfing facebook all day? or do you want to be the person who other people look to to get things done?" The point is, look at yourself from outside. Decide how you want to act (for me, thinking about how I want to be perceived helps here). Then make it happen. Stop waiting for the people around you to make you into the person you want to be.
- shurcooL 14y ago
  Ok, I have to clarify. Things are pretty great for me. They've been improving and they're much better than in the past. I'm really happy doing what I'm doing. Procrastination has been a much lesser[1] problem lately. So I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. That said, there's still a lot of room for improvement, if I find like-minded people and get a chance to work with them. I'm going to a workshop on the very topic that interests me[2], and I hope that'll be my chance to do some networking in this narrow area, and maybe get a chance to collaborate on something. [1] https://github.com/shurcooL/ https://github.com/shurcooL/ [2] http://liveprogramming.github.com/2013/ http://liveprogramming.github.com/2013/
hexagonc 14y ago
This seems to be an excuse to start looking for a new job, depending on how your company rewards high performers. Since everyone around you is unproductive, this suggests that there is not really a competitive environment for performance bonuses. No one wants to be in that 20% that does 80% of the work without some payoff at the end.
- shurcooL 14y ago
  That's the thing, I'm self-employed and I'm the only one working on (highly experimental) open-source software development tools. It's not so much that there are unproductive people around me, it's that there are no people. My real-life friends are mostly doing their PhDs and none of them are coders/developers.
  - Jayschwa 14y ago
    I quit a fairly toxic job last summer. For about six months, I worked by myself on my own projects. However, I felt my productivity begin to slip, and frankly, not being around people began to weird me out. I'm now in the current batch of hackerschool.com, and it's great. I'm still pretty much working solo on my own project, but it really helps to be in a space surrounded by fellow, productive nerds.

inerte 14y ago

And why are you not surrounded by more productive people?

shurcooL 14y ago
I don't know, perhaps I'm doing something wrong, or it hasn't happened yet but will happen soon. The latter is less likely because I'm 26 yo already.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- obstacle1 14y ago
  You are 26 years old. You have, what, 30, 35 years of working life ahead of you? Sure, resign to mediocrity for literally 5/6ths of your career, if you want. But there's plenty of room and time for you to develop how you want. Age is not your main obstacle.
rjzzleep 14y ago
because i just started to work for the government.
- singold 14y ago
  Same here. A bit depressing really... Because of salary it is a dificult position to leave for me, but I'm working on that developing my own startup :)
gurkendoktor 14y ago
This question made me scratch my head (in a good way). Do you think that it is easy to find productive people? Where do you live? The most obvious way on HN to find productive people is probably to move into the valley, or a similar region, but that's a big step from most parts of the world. And then there is the huge shadow mass of brilliant programmers who aren't extroverted on the internet but that I'd love to have around me. They probably exist even in smaller cities or rural areas, but how do you find them?

ams6110 14y ago

Maybe you should be the motivator then. Bring your coworkers up instead of letting them bring you down.

svdad 14y ago

No. This is something you have to stop. Speaking from experience I know it is hard not to define yourself by the people around you, but it's deadly. What helped (and continues to help) me is this question: Do you want to be that person? As in, "do you want to be the person who sits in the office chatting and surfing facebook all day? or do you want to be the person who other people look to to get things done?" The point is, look at yourself from outside. Decide how you want to act (for me, thinking about how I want to be perceived helps here). Then make it happen. Stop waiting for the people around you to make you into the person you want to be.

shurcooL 14y ago
Ok, I have to clarify. Things are pretty great for me. They've been improving and they're much better than in the past. I'm really happy doing what I'm doing. Procrastination has been a much lesser[1] problem lately. So I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. That said, there's still a lot of room for improvement, if I find like-minded people and get a chance to work with them. I'm going to a workshop on the very topic that interests me[2], and I hope that'll be my chance to do some networking in this narrow area, and maybe get a chance to collaborate on something. [1] https://github.com/shurcooL/ https://github.com/shurcooL/ [2] http://liveprogramming.github.com/2013/ http://liveprogramming.github.com/2013/

hexagonc 14y ago

This seems to be an excuse to start looking for a new job, depending on how your company rewards high performers. Since everyone around you is unproductive, this suggests that there is not really a competitive environment for performance bonuses. No one wants to be in that 20% that does 80% of the work without some payoff at the end.

shurcooL 14y ago
That's the thing, I'm self-employed and I'm the only one working on (highly experimental) open-source software development tools. It's not so much that there are unproductive people around me, it's that there are no people. My real-life friends are mostly doing their PhDs and none of them are coders/developers.
- Jayschwa 14y ago
  I quit a fairly toxic job last summer. For about six months, I worked by myself on my own projects. However, I felt my productivity begin to slip, and frankly, not being around people began to weird me out. I'm now in the current batch of hackerschool.com, and it's great. I'm still pretty much working solo on my own project, but it really helps to be in a space surrounded by fellow, productive nerds.