Sooner or later, I think all of us who are entrepreneurially inclined encounter the paradox of outsized ambition. Big dreams seem necessary to keep yourself motivated, and to overcome the crushing loneliness and uncertainty that comes with striking out on your own. But those same dreams can be convenient ways to avoid, defer, or will away present responsibility.
Know that the world will never reward you for the thousands of great ideas you've come up with in your spare time. Those pipedreams will follow you to the grave, and no one will speak of them when you're no longer around to do so. But the world will reward you for the one idea you managed to bring to life. Maybe you won't strike gold, and maybe you won't become a "rock star" fixture on the scene of your choice. But you'll have created something real. You will have turned your time into great personal meaning, and, hopefully, into value for others. And, if nothing else, you'll have learned that becoming good at the task is more important than what started the task. (To your point, being an entrepreneur isn't about generating brilliant ideas; it's about being brilliant at implementing ideas).
As an aspiring writer, I went through a solid portion of my twenties telling anyone who'd listen -- often women -- that I was a "writer." (I don't think I ever became cheesy enough to call myself an "artist," but that thought couldn't have been far from my mind at any moment). I enjoyed the status that this self-imposed job description bestowed upon me -- or, more accurately, upon my own self perception. But did I write a single work, significant or otherwise, in those ten years? No. Instead, I focused on my "day job," and continued to nurse the daydream.
Maybe something about turning 30 brought things into focus for me. Maybe Steve Jobs's passing, coupled with his quotes about the clarifying force of mortality, lit a fire under my ass. Maybe a few choice words from an ex girlfriend provided a necessary reality check. And maybe the delayed realization that Hank Moody's story on "Californication" is meant to be a cautionary tale, and not an ideal, shocked me into submission to reality. I'm not sure. But now I'm actually writing shit. And it feels good. The world may never care about the product of my effort, but it sure as hell will never care about my idle fantasies and unrealized concepts.
The problem with big ideas is that they are usually fantasies. And the problem with fantasies is two-fold: First, dreaming about them will largely satisfy you and reduce your urge to actually make it happen. Secondly, you will be more easily discouraged when confronted with the obstacles that will come your way.
According to the book "59 seconds", the trick to getting things done is to interleave realistic daydreaming of the benefits of success with an assessment of the biggest problems and setbacks you are likely to encounter. It motivates you and puts you in a frame of mind of attacking the problems rather than getting discouraged by them.
Also, big ideas tend to minimize implementation difficulties, which is also why they make good fantasy material. Running the USA better than Obama? Easy - I'd close Guantanamo, put the banks in their place, provide universal healthcare, stop all wars, reduce defense spending and make sure businesses that really create value have plenty of investment and freedom. But finding 10 new clients for my web design business in the next month? No way, man. That is WAY too hard.
The author appears quite young, so I want to give my two cents to him (her?): when HN people downplay the importance of "ideas," be wary of what an idea counts for in the HN community. A PHP photo sharing site[1], useful markov chain eigendecomposition[2], and the underpinning of our entire industry[3] are all lumped under 'ideas' and yet the HN crowd seems skewed toward being the next PHP photo sharing site rather than the other two.
HN is focused primarily on business. A PHP photo sharing site has a much lower effort-to-bux ratio than some wacky electrical switch. This is completely fine, but you have to make the separation between "dollas" and "innovation." Often they live under the same roof, but one doesn't automatically imply the other. Ideas are where researchers play, and researchers are the antithesis of business.
Your advice ('think less, do more') still stands. I just want to let you know that ideas do have merit, you just have to look in the right place. Good luck!
He doesn't downplay the importance of ideas. He points at the next step which is to turn the idea into something real and concrete. Some people fail to even start the next step. The concluding advice is to go for the next step and make your idea/dream come trough.
Just some random advice, consider some, all or none:
1. Eliminate the following words and phrases: So, Now, But, In my opinion, anything you might put in a text message to shorten it, 95% of all words that end in "ly". Tighten things up. Nouns and verbs build great sentences, adverbs and adjectives stink up the joint.
2. Show, don't tell. Don't tell me it's not going to be a post about pickups. Show me it's not.
3. Effective use of parenthetical phrases is hard. Read some David Foster Wallace for great examples. When you say "Ouch" then stick the rest of the sentence in a parenthetical, it actually loses some of the punch because instead of being orthogonal to the "Ouch", it's should be the punchline of your joke.
4. Use imagery to get your point across. Instead of saying that you'd get wasted, say "If some chic said that to me, I'd be headed for a three day bender that would make Ernest Hemingway look like a teetotaler." Paint the reader a picture.
5. I don't mind the "bro" style but it's going to put a lot of people off. It's very tricky to do well but don't let that stop you if you like it. Style is in the eye of the beholder. Just tighten things up a lot if you're going to use it.
6. Write it one day, proof and publish it the next. I find this to be terribly difficult. However, you'd be surprised how much better an essay gets with even a single revision. At the very least, write in the morning and publish in the afternoon.
Also, contractions are written to replace the removed letters with an apostrophe, like this:
isn't
Not like this:
is'nt
To be honest, I'm wondering how it's possible that you've made it this far in life without knowing this. I'd understand if English isn't your first language, but the "bro" writing style suggests otherwise...
(Edit: "You" in this comment refers to the OP/post author, not to the author of the parent comment. Sorry about that.)
Gonna have to disgree with #1. I think it's a giant myth that adverbs and adjectives are somehow bad. By all means be judicious in your use of them, but it's absolutely ridiculous to say they're categorically taboo or something. Same with So, Now, But - they can stink up the joint if they're every other sentence, but they can also help segue from one thought to the next, or (in the case of In my opinion) allow for some disagreement to your point.
Totally agree with #2: "Actually I will go even further and tell you that-" can be eliminated. "I will share a personal example with you." Well, just go ahead, I'll be able to follow along.
#6 is great, and I'd go one further and have someone you trust (or pay somebody to) proofread as well, especially if it's not your native language.
The problem with "they can stink up the joint" is that writing that relies on adverbs and adjectives does stink up the joint. Jazz musicians can break the rules because they both know the rules and understand the rules. Beginners can't break the rules because they don't know when broken rules are ok.
You have to learn how to write without adverbs and adjectives before you can know when to "be judicious in your use of them". Our natural inclination is to use them constantly (see, constantly). Learn how to write without them then the occasional use of them will strengthen and empower your writing.
scotch_drinker accurately described my sentiments. Generalizing the points he made, I'll say two (and half) things:
1. Up the level of your writing a bit. It's currently in ripped jeans and an Ed Hardy shirt (have'nt?!). Don't go full black tie, but at least get a blazer and clean pair of jeans on. See here: http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Colloquial-%28Informal%29-Writi...
2. (a) Have one point (your thesis), and make sure (virtually) every sentence is directly related to it. You had far too many distractions. The fact that you were a "negger" and some people benefited from being one is completely irrelevant.
2. (b) Make sure very sentence is strongly related to your thesis. E.g. if you want to show how it's a nice day, don't say you went for a walk, tell me you went to the beach. An example from your post would be the great implementers you mentioned. Mentioned fewer implementers, but when giving one, expound a bit, and show the reader how much it related - or is applicable - to your thesis.
Since you asked for it... the 'bro' style makes the thing unreadable. Not to mention the 'lol!'s that felt like they finished every sentence.
After seeing that you were here asking what's wrong with it, I decided to go back and actually read it. You make a good point, but it's lost in the froth of meaningless words.
I realize you might be cultivating a persona or trying to use rhetoric to support your argument, but in my view those actions weaken it. You have a good idea: 'Don't waste anymore time thinking, get out there and do it.' But, I think you'd be much more effective if you consolidated your argument and did away with the attitude.
Hi nodemaker! I think the problem lies in the fact that you're shooting for sort of casual, young American dialect, but haven't fully grokked all the quirks of it (yet). So it ends up seeming a little like a simulation thereof.
Also, I think punctuation and grammar are ironically even more important in informal writing. With writing that emulates speech, readers are hearing a "voice" read to them in their head, and mistakes are like breaking character (unless they're deliberate, but that requires knowing the rules backwards and forwards to begin with). Compared to formal writing, the voice is not as important as the content, and so mistakes are easily glossed over. Also, commas and ellipses and such are really important (IMO) for emulating the pauses and inflections of normal speech, and so when they're missing, it sort of seems like an uncanny valley that's not quite right.
For what it's worth, I'd like to disagree with that sentiment. I don't find the informal style of the article overbearing. While I'm generally not a fan of the dudebro-speak I didn't get too tripped up on it in your article. There are a couple of minor spelling and punctuation mistakes but I'm not a spelling Nazi either so it doesn't bother me.
The part that actually slowed me down was the "These great people were implementors" argument. After a couple of sentences I was saying to myself "OK I get it, now get on with it".
Linux and Hurd is not a bad example. It's pretty apt. One is still unfinished since the 80's and the other is at version 3+ and being used in a plethora of OSes. Good example, my friend.
I wouldn't call the writing atrocious but I can see how the first half, while entertaining for sure, awkwardly segued into the real message.
Thanks, he made some strong points. I transcribed the most relevant part:
If you don't want to run out of ideas, the best thing to do is not to execute them
You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do them right
Then they stay around in your head like brain crack
So no matter how bad it gets, at least you have those "good ides" that you'll get to "later"
Some people get addicted to that brain crack
and the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed
and they imagine it on a beatiful platter with glitter and rose petals
and everybody is clapping, *for them*
but the bummer is must ideas kinda suck when you do them
and no matter how much you plan, you still have to do something for the first time
and you're almost guaranteed the first time you do something it'll blow
but somebody who does something bad three times still has 3x the experience of that other person who's still dreaming of all the applause.
when I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out in the world asap
cause I certainly do not want to get addicted to brain crack
I didn't agree with the xkcd, and I don't agree with this post either.
Look, everyone likes epiphanies. If you're reading HN, you probably like them more than most people. I don't think this is a bad thing. Yes, it's important to be producing. Yes, you need feedback on your ideas from reality. But this is only true if we have ideas to begin with. The widely accepted startup methodology---start small and iterate---is just a process for generating epiphanies.
If we're "stumbling from one epiphany to another," we're not acting on them, or we only see part of the picture, or we just haven't gotten the right one yet. Despairing that rather than our methods, it's us that's broken is both unfounded (really? You've had every epiphany ever?) and unhelpful.
The girl in the comic is known to deploy cruelty for her own amusement; I think the author had excellent insight into the newbie pickup artist's mind, and gave his character a response calculated to strike at the core of the would-be Casanova's psyche.
A specialization to make your words more powerfully targeted:
The widely accepted startup methodology---start small and iterate---is just a process for generating epiphanies >based in reality<.
A deletion to make your words more powerfully generalized:
I think the author had excellent insight into the newbie pickup artist's mind, and gave his character a response calculated to strike at the core of the wanna-be's psyche.
"The longer they [those with the "good" ideas] wait, the
more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea
should be executed, and they imagine it on a beatiful
platter with glitter and rose petals."
It's a simple discussion about implementation. Not sure what you're arguing against.
I guess I focused too much on the comic. You're right, the post does a good job of stressing the importance of implementation.
But it also dismisses the value of ideas too glibly. Bill Gates may have been "some dude who liked writing interpreters and funny games," but that is miles ahead of some dude who liked making marijuana sculptures. The ideas were what made the difference.
It doesn't seem odd to anyone that we're reading a post describing the author's epiphany that epiphanies are useless?
I really like this post for the guy's writing. The point he is making isn't exactly novel, but the way he says it is so down to earth and conversational that I felt like he and I were talking about it over a beer. Because so many bloggers are condescending or preachy, I'll read a post and nod my head and move on with my life without really lingering on whatever topic. I understand but from a kind of 3rd person perspective as if x topic applied to y people but not necessarily to me.
Now that I go back and read it again, I can't decide if the post actually did that to me, or I read it wanting to believe it would.
Just because you state something as if it is fact does not make it so. Do you personally know Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, James Watt, or Albert Einstein? Probably not. So how do you know what motivated them?
Even if you did, business rules are like looking through a prism. They seem great from one angle, and then when you view another angle you realize the previous one was just an illusion. Likewise, business rules sound great when forcefully delivered, but if you ponder them for a little while longer, you realize there are not only a few exceptions, but many, many exceptions.
I think the bigger problem that you are getting at is that most people come up with an idea, and then when they don't see immediate success, move onto something else that seems more promising. More often than not, the successful people commit to a single idea they are passionate about, and see it through because they believe in it and have a long-term vision for what they want to create. If your goal is to be a millionaire before you are 30, well that is a tough goal and if you don't see instant success you panic and shift to another idea and another idea. Instead if you encounter a real problem and you say "I'm going to solve this no matter how long it takes," you are probably a lot closer to success than most.
I think Andrew Carnegie said it best when he said "No man can become rich without himself enriching others."
The problem is that constant replaying incredibly awesome ideas in you head until you get bored with them is much more pleasurable than actually making the effort to attempt to build it, watch it how horribly it came out and then watch it crumble or go utterly unnoticed. Even if you succeed it sometimes turns out less pleasurable than it was anticipated.
You can either get pleasure by running the idea on your internal neural network or run it in cruel physical reality and get pain.
Some articles tell you to dream big. Some articles like this one tell you to dream smaller and learn how to execute on your ideas.
The real problem is in understanding how to match the ambitiousness of your ideas to the level at which you are able to execute. Everyone is different and most people are better at one vs the other.
Difficulty in finding that sweet spot seems to be the real source of difficulty that motivates blogs like the one being discussed in this thread.
>The real problem is in understanding how to match the ambitiousness of your ideas to the level at which you are able to execute.
Start small, build bigger and more ambitious over time. If you wanted to become a runner, you wouldn't start with trying to run a marathon the first time your feet hit the pavement.
you are right. so right that it often goes unnoticed. The perfect impedance matching of our skill and idea and work is both nearly impossible and key to huge success. Rest of the people keep wasting ( including me ) some very good skill over totally unrelated task and never understand why they did not make it.
> You look like you're going to spend your life having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally figured out whats holding you back and how you can be productive and creative and finally turn your life around. But nothing will ever change. That cycle of mediocrity is'nt due to some obstacle.Its who you are.
This is precisely what I've realized about people and famous cliches like "you can do anything you set your mind to". The problem is that it's not true for most people. People's aspirations rarely match what their capabilities are. They do match in the case of the few who succeed, and that's who we hear these cliches from.
I wrote about this exact issue here http://andrewoneverything.com/life-is-exactly-what-you-make-... ("Life is exactly what you make of it - For most people, this is a bad thing"). There's a poem at the end of the post that exactly matches the sentiment I quote at the beginning of this post.
Yes but we rarely even know ourselves. We don't know our limits until we try to reach it. We don't know how far we'll get until we take the journey. We don't know if our ideas will work until we try it. You can only theorize about an idea so much, at some point the time for theorizing is over and the time for doing it begins. The trick is figuring out when that is. I think it happens very early....
What kind of mind game is this comic playing on me (or am I just doing it to myself)?
Reading the following part itself was an epiphany moment:
"...having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally figured out whats holding you back and how you can be productive and creative..."
Because I saw myself in that. I thought "Holy crap that's exactly...that's...so true...that's me! That's the problem!"
Then I thought "Damn it, the problem is that exact problem...Right now is just another one of those epiphanies. I need to stop this."
Which led to the thought "But how would I have become aware and known that was the problem if I hadn't had this epiphany?"
So the ultimate question I have for myself is: "Will this epiphany be any different? Maybe it actually can snap you out of the cycle."
So to ensure it isn't just another useless epiphany, I will tape this quote from the comic to my wall: "That cycle of mediocrity isn't due to some obstacle. Its who you are."
All the cycles end on the epiphany that cycles themselves don't exist. They are just pieces of an internal storyline you've been writing since childhood. The story is not optimized for your happiness, because you didn't even architect it. Try reinventing a suitable story for yourself from scratch.
Go ahead and skip the accomplishment part. Skip right to giving yourself success and happiness now. Time is the real resource at play here, so don't deplete by screwing yourself out of happiness every day instrospecting through these cycles. The only person that will/can give you what you want is you, and you have direct access to make it happen without the gauntlet you are imposing on yourself.
Or at least this is the direction I'd like to go...
Another lesson is to not rely on the opinion of the opposite gender (or the same, if you prefer...not that there's anything wrong with that) for your self-esteem.
Also, don't give too much weight to well-meaning writers who ask you to do more and dream less.
After all, we're no more than little grubby organisms clinging to a dirty, water-covered rock in a rather humdrum star system that sits on the edge of a pretty ordinary galaxy. Against that backdrop, even the Apollo program is not much better than your soon to be forgotten project.
Whenever I find myself down and my productivity low, I stop and think of how insignificant all this is, on a cosmic scale. We're here, and then we're not.
You'd guess that this thinking would make you feel nihilistic: what is the point of what I'm doing? Ironically, I only feel like that when thinking on a human scale, of life, of what I want to accomplish, of how unattainable it all seem in the moment. Then I step back, and I see that we are a spec in time and all this self-doubt and torture is unnecessary. At the end of this game, there are no winners. Enjoying the sport is your personal victory.
There are reasons why many many more people are 'dreamers and thinkers' and have tons of ideas. Because it's easy. Executing those ideas is much harder for most, as it entails actual effort, time, planning and most critically, endurance. I know I had my fair share of TONS of ideas, MANY of them started and very few actually finished.
Am I the only one that judges HN stories on an 'I regret wasting my time on this' scale?
As in:
Outcome A) working, take a break, visit HN, read linked post, regret wasting my time on terrible blog post, immediately think: I should be working right now, not reading about some supposed megalomaniac's personal problems.
Outcome B) working, take a break, visit HN, read linked post, judge my time well spent learning something of value.
In some form or another I value appraise all HN stories by this scale.
When the guy started talking about getting his feelings hurt by a stranger's nearly worthless opinion (why would you value a stranger's opinion so highly Mr. Megalomaniac?), and then getting wasted accordingly, I knew I was in for a real special read. When he followed that up by calling himself a megalomaniac, I bailed. And it is thus that piece of junk goes in the 'I regret reading any of this' category.
>why would you value a stranger's opinion so highly Mr. Megalomaniac?
I dont think you actually read my post carefully.That did'nt really happen to me.In fact I doubt it can actually happen to anyone since no girl would ever actually ever say something like that.
It was just the lines from the xkcd comic that I thought were insightful.
Know that the world will never reward you for the thousands of great ideas you've come up with in your spare time. Those pipedreams will follow you to the grave, and no one will speak of them when you're no longer around to do so. But the world will reward you for the one idea you managed to bring to life. Maybe you won't strike gold, and maybe you won't become a "rock star" fixture on the scene of your choice. But you'll have created something real. You will have turned your time into great personal meaning, and, hopefully, into value for others. And, if nothing else, you'll have learned that becoming good at the task is more important than what started the task. (To your point, being an entrepreneur isn't about generating brilliant ideas; it's about being brilliant at implementing ideas).
As an aspiring writer, I went through a solid portion of my twenties telling anyone who'd listen -- often women -- that I was a "writer." (I don't think I ever became cheesy enough to call myself an "artist," but that thought couldn't have been far from my mind at any moment). I enjoyed the status that this self-imposed job description bestowed upon me -- or, more accurately, upon my own self perception. But did I write a single work, significant or otherwise, in those ten years? No. Instead, I focused on my "day job," and continued to nurse the daydream.
Maybe something about turning 30 brought things into focus for me. Maybe Steve Jobs's passing, coupled with his quotes about the clarifying force of mortality, lit a fire under my ass. Maybe a few choice words from an ex girlfriend provided a necessary reality check. And maybe the delayed realization that Hank Moody's story on "Californication" is meant to be a cautionary tale, and not an ideal, shocked me into submission to reality. I'm not sure. But now I'm actually writing shit. And it feels good. The world may never care about the product of my effort, but it sure as hell will never care about my idle fantasies and unrealized concepts.