71–80 of 112 posts
Watch what happens. Appreciate even the tiniest things, breathing, that you might observe or do. Be especially grateful that we don't have any problems. I strive for mediocre. Remember that the TAB key on your keyboard stands for: Take A Break.
Get some product management courses. Alternatively, partner with a product manager, they usually have a bunch of ideas. I always want to make new products, but I have the opposite problem: I need devs that are motivated enough and are willing to create new products in uncertain environment.
Don’t wait for creativity to happen. Cultivate it. Make it happen.
> I lack the creativity to come up with "just for fun" projects
I disagree, primarily because I felt this way about myself for many years and later realized how wrong I was. My issue was that I had misconceptions about what creativity is and where it comes from. I felt like it was just supposed to happen, and that if it didn’t, that said something about my inherent abilities. I’d see other people creating things as if the ideas just flowed naturally, and assumed they just had special brains. And even when those ideas are just flowing, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone without a lot of other factors in their lives all enabling that flow of ideas.
Creativity doesn't always just happen on its own, but can be cultivated. More of a mindset and a way of being than some intrinsic trait that you have or you don’t.
Locking yourself in an empty room sounds like the worst way to spur ideas to be honest. My brain doesn’t get going until I’m moving. Long walks, bike rides, hiking, kayaking. Surrounding myself with new things, the beauty of nature, people who challenge me, trying new software, seeking new experiences for the sake of them.
Creativity for me is the result of my other pursuits in life. When I’m not doing those things, I’m stuck in a rut, even if those things have nothing to do with what I’m trying to create.
> Am I just hard-wired to be mediocre? Have you considered the possibility that you're actually clinically depressed? Working on the assumption you are male, I think a lot of guys don't realise that low-grade depression looks like this for a lot of us. Especially getting towards mid-life. One thing I would suggest is to embrace boredom. Cover up your television, delete your streaming video apps, cut back on social me…
can we stop diagnosing unknown people based on a 2 paragraph post on HN? the obsession with finding a label for all sorts of mental states is crazy. I agree with the rest of your post though
I didn't say "you are depressed". I said "have you considered that you might be...". When did that become diagnosis?
FWIW I said "clinically depressed" to draw the specific distinction between colloquial use of the word "depressed" meaning "down", and the medical notion of depression that covers this sort of stuff -- long term loss of direction, low self-esteem negativity etc.
It's just a suggestion to consider the whole picture and maybe seek advice.
If I think about everything that I don't have an opinion about, it's things that I don't understand very well. For example, car washes. I do not care what a car wash tunnel has, if it is brushless or not, if it uses some fancy shampoo or not - I have zero opinions. I can never find motivation to want to go redesign it, fix it or develop software for it.
But something like Github's pull request review? Oh boy. It's absolutely insane that you can not comment on an unchanged line in a file you are reviewing. If someone changes a function call 3 out of 4 places, and you want to leave a comment on that unchanged line of code saying "Hey, you forgot to change this too" - guess what? You can't. In my opinion, this is insanely moronic. An opinion like this can easily motivate one to want to go fix a thing or build a thing. (I don't want to solve this problem for other reasons, but that's unrelated to this discussion).
How do you form opinions? I don't know, but my guess is that listening to opinionated people with good taste really helps. Dan Norman's book "The Design of everyday things" [0] is one example of a very opinionated work. Bryan Cantrill of Oxide is also often very opinionated on system design, and his podcasts and talks are really fun [1]. When Steve Jobs was talking about just anything, he couldn't help being opinionated af [2]. I love "In praise of Shadows" by Junichiro Tanizaki where he just talks about experiences but you can tell he is deeply opinionated [3].
I don't know how one can develop good taste. Being around art, music, movies, people who obsess over details, people who care, people who expect perfection and accept nothing less - I believe there's some sort of osmosis where you just absorb aspects. I believe surrounding yourself with fantastic art, hiking through majestic trails, chilling with inspiring people - all help reset your acceptance of mediocrity down to 0. I am convinced that this is essential.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTVfAMRj-7E
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdplq4cj76I
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Praise-Shadows-Junichiro-Tanizaki/dp/...
I’ve been really enjoying Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” because of how he reframes creativity and the act of creation. Don’t wait for creativity to happen. Cultivate it. Make it happen. > I lack the creativity to come up with "just for fun" projects I disagree, primarily because I felt this way about myself for many years and later realized how wrong I was. My issue was that I had misconceptions abo…
Climate! Listen to the Volts podcast ( https://volts.wtf ) … I’d say about half of the episodes make me want to quit what I’m doing and beg the guest for job at their startup. Climate solutions is a wide-open field, jammed with entrepreneurs and scientists going head-on with tough scientific, engineering, sociopolitical, and business problems, with pretty much everything on the line. The stuff people are working on r…
Do you have any good examples on the software side? (Not saying the other things aren’t important, just outside my wheelhouse)
I’ve been really enjoying Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” because of how he reframes creativity and the act of creation. Don’t wait for creativity to happen. Cultivate it. Make it happen. > I lack the creativity to come up with "just for fun" projects I disagree, primarily because I felt this way about myself for many years and later realized how wrong I was. My issue was that I had misconceptions abo…