3 ms·

Why not do what's easy? It's a lot more fun, and as you do it you learn. Never assume that just because you're drifting through life you're not growing as a per

by unalone 17y ago

Why not do what's easy? It's a lot more fun, and as you do it you learn. Never assume that just because you're drifting through life you're not growing as a person. I find that I learn and progress just as much in my idle states in life as I do at those critical moments that throw everything in relief. I also think it's very, very bad advice to tell somebody to follow a dream that they don't entirely understand. I've had both: Dreams where I only vaguely felt I wanted something, and dreams I couldn't help but pursue because I understood them so completely. The latter dream is valuable and absolutely worth pursuing. The former dream isn't really a dream at all, and pushing too hard at it will only make you feel that maybe dreams aren't worth following after all. Following the wrong kind of dream will burn you out in the worst way.

scott_s 17y ago
The good stuff - the learning that, I think, matters and helps you actually grow - happens when you get past the easy beginnings and push into the hard stuff.
- unalone 17y ago
  I disagree. While sometimes you might not be willing to get into the good stuff, other times you're absolutely in that mood and get into it without breaking a sweat. I see nothing wrong in going with the flow most of the time. For the last while, I've been going at things at my own pace. I try, hard as possible, not to let myself get into anything I don't want to do. The result, I find, is that while I'm not as überproductive as I was last year, when I was in a bad place and trying hard to get out, I still generate a lot of work without seeming to have to make an effort. What's more, I'm growing in a lot of ways at once because I don't have the slight resentment against the work I used to force myself to do. I find as I look at great works of art, regardless of the genre, that with the greatest masterpieces there comes a sense of relaxation. The people who made them weren't obsessing over them any more than they wanted to. They'd just taken themselves down a path in which what they were making was exactly what they wanted to make, and they made it. I find the same thing about Internet startups, actually: My favorite start-ups tend to defy a lot of the conventional rules, work at a relaxed pace, and then explode and grow huge.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    We've had a similar conversation before, but I think you confuse "hard work" with "uncomfortable, obsessive, frantic work."
    - unalone 17y ago
      Have we? My bad. I guess I only start to think of work as work once I don't want to do it. Right now I'm messing with theme design, for instance, and if I'm lucky what I'm building will be used by hundreds if not thousands of people, but I'm doing it for fun so I'm not counting it as work. On the other hand, spending ten minutes to write a paper is excruciating labor.

by unalone 17y ago

scott_s 17y ago

The good stuff - the learning that, I think, matters and helps you actually grow - happens when you get past the easy beginnings and push into the hard stuff.

unalone 17y ago
I disagree. While sometimes you might not be willing to get into the good stuff, other times you're absolutely in that mood and get into it without breaking a sweat. I see nothing wrong in going with the flow most of the time. For the last while, I've been going at things at my own pace. I try, hard as possible, not to let myself get into anything I don't want to do. The result, I find, is that while I'm not as überproductive as I was last year, when I was in a bad place and trying hard to get out, I still generate a lot of work without seeming to have to make an effort. What's more, I'm growing in a lot of ways at once because I don't have the slight resentment against the work I used to force myself to do. I find as I look at great works of art, regardless of the genre, that with the greatest masterpieces there comes a sense of relaxation. The people who made them weren't obsessing over them any more than they wanted to. They'd just taken themselves down a path in which what they were making was exactly what they wanted to make, and they made it. I find the same thing about Internet startups, actually: My favorite start-ups tend to defy a lot of the conventional rules, work at a relaxed pace, and then explode and grow huge.
- scott_s 17y ago
  We've had a similar conversation before, but I think you confuse "hard work" with "uncomfortable, obsessive, frantic work."
  - unalone 17y ago
    Have we? My bad. I guess I only start to think of work as work once I don't want to do it. Right now I'm messing with theme design, for instance, and if I'm lucky what I'm building will be used by hundreds if not thousands of people, but I'm doing it for fun so I'm not counting it as work. On the other hand, spending ten minutes to write a paper is excruciating labor.