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Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

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Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#101

Post by chrisco255 »

EpicEng wrote: post #92
BossingAround wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generational division is also nothing new. This is a person of generation X talking about a problem of the same generation (i.e. X). > Please don't respond to this if you disagree, just give it a down vote so the discussion stays on topic. Down vote trolls, not people you disagree with. Down voting for disagreeing leads to negative experience with the whole discussion platform.

>Down vote trolls, not people you disagree with. Down voting for disagreeing leads to negative experience with the whole discussion platform. Using downvotes to disagree has always been ok (and encouraged) on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

That's a thread from 12 years ago. HN is obviously a different community now than it was then. One problem on HN is how quickly a discussion item will fade or disappear due to excessive downvotes.

And for example, unlike Reddit, you can't downvote items on the main page, just comments.

I'd be curious to hear an updated discussion on this, but I've seen salient points being downvoted into obscurity simply because it accrued a lot of downvotes, and I'll find myself upvoting posts I disagree with just to keep the post alive.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#102

Post by arvinsim »

rtkaratekid wrote: post #55
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

I agree with you and I can’t say for sure but I think it’s even worse in the next generation as well. I’ve talked with/tried to mentor more than a few but usually one gets fed up with the other because of this very issue. I knew a girl who wanted to be an astrophysicist. She could’ve done it too. But she started rock climbing (I was mentoring her), and eventually gave up college so she could be a climbing guide becau…

Maybe a good rule of thumb is to sit down, do an instropection on all the things you love and identify the one that assures the most financial stability and security.

Choose that thing as your job and make the rest your hobbies.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#103

Post by specialist »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #64
rtkaratekid wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and I can’t say for sure but I think it’s even worse in the next generation as well. I’ve talked with/tried to mentor more than a few but usually one gets fed up with the other because of this very issue. I knew a girl who wanted to be an astrophysicist. She could’ve done it too. But she started rock climbing (I was mentoring her), and eventually gave up college so she could be a climbing guide becau…

Off-topic, but the following had me thinking: >"However, I’m not the most social of person, and I’m rarely on social media other than here so I could definitely be wrong." Do you people of the HN consider HN as a social media? I personally don't, to me it feels more like an aggregator of knowledge and useful opinions. The way I read HN is that I first look at the comments, and then based on that decided if I'll read…

Today's HN fills the hole in my heart where BIX, CompuServe, and my own old BBS network used to be.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#104

Post by vikramkr »

rtkaratekid wrote: post #55
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

I agree with you and I can’t say for sure but I think it’s even worse in the next generation as well. I’ve talked with/tried to mentor more than a few but usually one gets fed up with the other because of this very issue. I knew a girl who wanted to be an astrophysicist. She could’ve done it too. But she started rock climbing (I was mentoring her), and eventually gave up college so she could be a climbing guide becau…

The next generation after millennial - they're like 18 right? That doesn't sound like a generation thing that sounds like a teenager/young adult thing. And I think the hippies in the 60s were way further on the "follow your heart" thing than teenagers now, and a lot of them grew up to be like conservative bankers or whatever.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#105

Post by currymj »

rtkaratekid wrote: post #55
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

I agree with you and I can’t say for sure but I think it’s even worse in the next generation as well. I’ve talked with/tried to mentor more than a few but usually one gets fed up with the other because of this very issue. I knew a girl who wanted to be an astrophysicist. She could’ve done it too. But she started rock climbing (I was mentoring her), and eventually gave up college so she could be a climbing guide becau…

maybe climbing was the better career move.

if astrophysics is anything like most of academia, there are a lot of low-paying, unstable short-term positions as everybody scrambles for the few permanent jobs. i'm sure there are a lot of astrophysicists struggling to survive in adjunct/lecturer/lab assistant positions who wish they had just gotten a normal job that pays more rather than pursuing what they love.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#106

Post by asdfman123 »

Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

This isn't advice so much as one person advertising his own professional status. But this article hits upon a good point:

> To the experts, what looks like hard work from the outside, is play from the inside.

People who are obsessed with "motivation" point to people like Elon Musk who work extreme hours, and recommend others do the same. But they have cause and effect backwards.

You start working insane hours when your own personal talents align with society's rewards, and you are blessed/cursed with ambition that demands to be satisfied.

Elon Musk didn't start off saying, "I'd rather spend time with my family and play video games, but I'm going to start working 80 hours a week to get rich." No, it started with a spark within him. How did it get there? I can't say.

They say talent is rare, but I don't think that's true. I believe what is rare is the intersection of talent and ambition.

I've been on both sides of this -- I've been very ambitious, and I've been not very ambitious in different parts of my life. It's hard to work your butt off when you don't feel particularly ambitious, and it's hard not to when you do.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#108

Post by EpicEng »

chrisco255 wrote: post #101
EpicEng wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Down vote trolls, not people you disagree with. Down voting for disagreeing leads to negative experience with the whole discussion platform. Using downvotes to disagree has always been ok (and encouraged) on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

That's a thread from 12 years ago. HN is obviously a different community now than it was then. One problem on HN is how quickly a discussion item will fade or disappear due to excessive downvotes. And for example, unlike Reddit, you can't downvote items on the main page, just comments. I'd be curious to hear an updated discussion on this, but I've seen salient points being downvoted into obscurity simply because it a…

>That's a thread from 12 years ago. HN is obviously a different community now than it was then.

Yes, pg doesn't make a point of reiterating it every year. Is the community really different? I've been around for some time and I haven't noticed. dang is a mod/admin. Here he is repeating it again a year and a half ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996858

So we have a community manager repeatedly saying "yes, this is intended", and a random user saying it's not. The downvote button on articles is a completely separate issue.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#109

Post by lazyant »

"I decided to work on a side project last weekend." not to be an idiot but author should wait a few months before writing any strong conclusions; if he's anything like me he may get bored of the side project in a few weeks. There's nothing wrong with that, we had our fun and learnt stuff but this "follow your passion" theme is framed the wrong way imho.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#110

Post by dorkwood »

Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

> You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish...

I disagree with this, and I'm curious what long term goals you might have that aren't aligned with whatever it is you're doing now.

How do you suggest a millennial choose a "long term goal they really want to achieve" in the first place? In my experience, goals grow out of a person performing an activity and having a desire to master it, but you appear to be suggesting that a person start with a goal in mind and then work on doing things they aren't motivated to do with the hope that the goal will be worth it in the end. That, to me, sounds like a recipe for depression.

Now, I'm not suggesting one should avoid doing anything difficult. Learning hard things is difficult, after all. The problem, in my experience, is that people are initially curious about something, but then tell themselves they can't do it. That they don't have the brain for it, or whatever it is. They're curious about something and so they make an attempt at it, but they don't do a very good job, and so they say to themselves that they aren't good enough and then they quit. This, to me, is where resilience is necessary. This is where it's necessary to do something even though it's hard. But resilience to do something you don't even want to do in the first place because you've set some arbitrary far-off goal for yourself? That seems like a gamble to me.

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