Life is Short
paulgraham.com
Life is Short
1–10 of 452 posts
Re: Life is Short
#2This is probably my favorite thing pg has ever written. He's right in so many ways, but my favorite is just his reminder of "don't wait."
Re: Life is Short
#3Mr Graham, I respect you and you've accomplished more that I will in my life, but I sincerely hope that this essay against "bullshit" and "arguing online" isn't you declaring that you'll be "bubbling" yourself after your last essay was met with wide disagreement.
It's possible that sometimes, no matter how smart you are, your experiences have been limited in a way and you're missing a part of something everyone else sees. And if thats the case, it's not something to be afraid of or to shut yourself off from.
Anyway good luck!
Re: Life is Short
#4> The "flow" that imaginative people love so much has a darker cousin that prevents you from pausing to savor life...
I'm glad he pointed out this seemingly small detail. This took me a very long time to understand.
EDIT: It reminds me of another great post by Paul Buccheit. It's so important to have the 'heroes' of startup culture explicitly spell out these values:
> I worry that perhaps I'm communicating the wrong priorities. Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. What's most important is that we are good too each other, and ourselves. If we "win", but have failed to do that, then we have lost. Winning is nothing.
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.fr/2012/03/eight-years-today.ht...
Re: Life is Short
#5Life is very long - TS Eliot
Re: Life is Short
#6I'm a more productive engineer now that I have small kids than I ever was before. I don't have time for bullshit. I don't build my own PCs, I buy Macs. I don't waste time building some over-architected nonsense on a side project, I ship the MVP. When I do take time away from my kids I maximize it by learning three or four new technologies, patterns, or libraries at once.
When you realize how short time really is you ruthlessly cut bullshit.
Re: Life is Short
#7Mr Graham, I respect you and you've accomplished more that I will in my life, but I sincerely hope that this essay against "bullshit" and "arguing online" isn't you declaring that you'll be "bubbling" yourself after your last essay was met with wide disagreement. It's possible that sometimes, no matter how smart you are, your experiences have been limited in a way and you're missing a part of something everyone else…
I didn't read it as him suggesting that he'd stop writing, just that he'd make a conscious effort to stop defending himself from online attacks. I agree that it would be terrible if he quit writing his essays.
Re: Life is Short
#8This is probably my favorite thing pg has ever written. He's right in so many ways, but my favorite is just his reminder of "don't wait."
This is my least favorite. I respect his advice on startups, but little else. This sounds like the stuff Oprah used to say.
Re: Life is Short
#9Great post, thanks.
Today I also was thinking about how it sucks to getting old. I'm 32 but I see how I'm getting older, my friends getting older and youth looks much brighter :) Value your life and time, young people, enjoy your bodies, don't risk your health, make more love, travel more :)
Re: Life is Short
#10Mr Graham, I respect you and you've accomplished more that I will in my life, but I sincerely hope that this essay against "bullshit" and "arguing online" isn't you declaring that you'll be "bubbling" yourself after your last essay was met with wide disagreement. It's possible that sometimes, no matter how smart you are, your experiences have been limited in a way and you're missing a part of something everyone else…
I'm sure he's well aware of the critizism. I think this is mostly about the random hate one gets for doing original thought.