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Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

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Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#61

Post by [deleted] »

jackdawed wrote: post #42
bradrn wrote: post #16

> When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. Out of curiosity, does anyone know the solution to this problem? I wouldn’t even know how to approach it. (I’m an undergraduate physics major; I know nothing about fluid dynamics, but from Feynmann’s description I suspect that isn’t necessa…

I imagined it has to do with how the water coming out of a faucet is affected by gravity, and gains velocity. If you imagine two cross section slices, one near the faucet, and the other near the sink, the bottom slice is going faster than the top due to gravity. Another insight is that the amount of water (flow rate) passing through these slices remain constant. To keep the flow rate the same, it has to be narrower.…

[deleted]

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#62

Post by jmfldn »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #12

A couple of comments here focus on the ability to play -- which is important -- and on blue sky thinking, etc. All very important, true! But what really strikes me is how this situation Feynman was in is a perfect example of Deep Work. He could expore whatever his mind needed to explore, and do it for as long and in whatever way he needed. I'm pretty sure this is an often overlooked success factor for his Nobel win.

Very true. I guess in my original comment I meant to imply this in talking about blue sky thinking and following through on it. For me this is work which is original, out of leftfield, probably intrinsically motivated and which you have the time to follow through on deeply for a sustained period of time.

I definitely agree on this being a factor in his, and likely several other, Nobel wins

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#63

Post by rhn_mk1 »

Netcob wrote: post #44

Goal-oriented work, creativity and motivation definitely have a difficult relationship. In programming, I learn the most things simply by experimenting at home on my own. I'm thinking about switching jobs, so I wanted to learn some new frameworks and concepts to help with that, and I decided to make my personal projects a bit more "professional". Use continuous integration, focus more on web stuff, build and automati…

There is a sweet spot somewhere between the extreme of not using pre-built tools and drowning in them.

I've been following a similar path: automation and testing give me certainty and peace of mind when I'm working on bigger teams, so they should also improve my personal projects, right?

Well, the difference is that my personal projects are used only by me in limited ways, and I also don't have to worry that someone will break the build when I'm not looking. So the extra work making things super safe would not pay off that much.

Except when I feel I'm losing grip on what I'm doing, either from having to cover many use cases, not being experienced, unstable dependencies, or risk of data loss. That's when I set up CI pipelines for my personal projects.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#64

Post by jll29 »

Interesting how Feynman can be inspiring people long after his death.

He sounds as if he likes to talk about himself rather too much, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fair amount of exaggeration in his prose.

That said, if I made a list of dead people I'd like to spend a day with if I could, he'd sure be on it (as an aside, who [else] would you add to such a list?).

And he could be serious, too: despite being an outspoken atheist, he deeply loved his wife to the extent that he wrote a letter to her after she had passed away.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#65

Post by chris_j »

_ph_ wrote: post #57
chris_j wrote: post #24

This is one of my favourite anecdotes from that book. In recent decades, we've learned how important intrinsic motivation is, and this is a great example of it. My father was a massive fan of Richard Feynman and also happened to be extremely cynical about formal education. He believed that if you wanted to learn something, you had to take the initiative and learn it for yourself, rather than waiting for the education…

I think you need both. Formal education is great for "basic skills". Most people won't invent calculus on their own. Most of us learn reading and writing in a formal way. But equally, formal education is only half of what is needed to be good in a field of work. Then there comes the experimentation, the practise. All the knowledge that can't really be taught by a book. Sometimes a good teacher or mentor can help on t…

Wise words. I'm sure most of us would never have learned all the of the basics of mathematics on our own. Though I do remember Feynman claiming in the book that he'd come up with certain trigonometric concepts on his own and then had to un-learn the names that he'd created for them and learn to call them sin, cos etc. That was pretty mind-blowing.

I suppose the question for me is: how do you find the right balance between formal learning and the self-directed learning, experimentation and practice?

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#66

Post by schindlabua »

Netcob wrote: post #44

Goal-oriented work, creativity and motivation definitely have a difficult relationship. In programming, I learn the most things simply by experimenting at home on my own. I'm thinking about switching jobs, so I wanted to learn some new frameworks and concepts to help with that, and I decided to make my personal projects a bit more "professional". Use continuous integration, focus more on web stuff, build and automati…

Hah sounds like you described me perfectly. But I do have to say, ever since I'm programming full-time I seem not to be able to just code for fun anymore.

I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up.

(I can't imagine how it is for people with kids. How do you get anything done in your private life at all?)

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#68

Post by agumonkey »

nicbou wrote: post #34
jmfldn wrote: post #6

"The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate." This shows the extreme importance of blue sky thinking and allowing people to follow their whims sometimes rather than not starting something unless it fits into existing research goals and funding. This breakthrough all lead from an observation that had no apparent use beyond fulfilling a whim…

I learned my trade by playing. I suspect that many other people on HN also did. Now I do something very different, and that also came from playing, as did many of the skills that made it possible. I still write code, but it's entirely for fun. It's a completely different experience from closing tickets in an office. I do many other things that aren't very cost-effective, just because they're fun. They might not pay t…

I wonder how much is made by very simple emotions:

- playing - competition - noble obligations (helping someone else)

I keep looking at adult life in dismay because what people consider work would barely amount to 20 minutes of soccer when we were kids. We used to run wild for hours, hurt ourselves, attempt everything that could work and we kept asking for more. Can we plug that back into daily adult jobs ?

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#69

Post by fuzzy2 »

Netcob wrote: post #44

Goal-oriented work, creativity and motivation definitely have a difficult relationship. In programming, I learn the most things simply by experimenting at home on my own. I'm thinking about switching jobs, so I wanted to learn some new frameworks and concepts to help with that, and I decided to make my personal projects a bit more "professional". Use continuous integration, focus more on web stuff, build and automati…

Hm, it’s different for me. Since at work I don’t really do the Continuous Integration/Delivery stuff (or anything with “real infrastructure”), I find it very enjoyable to fiddle with it at home. There’s no pressure to accomplish anything and I can just leave it alone for months or even years before coming back to it.

There’s a nice side-effect, too: The CI definition documents how to compile the project. I recently dug out an old LaTeX “project” and there was nothing, no Makefile or anything. Had to look up everything again to get it to run (with XeLaTeX and Biber).

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#70

Post by slx26 »

bvsrinivasan wrote: post #11

The meta-principle is that in complex domains there is no straight line, well worn, "plannable" path to greatness. Kenneth Stanley calls it "The Myth of the objective" and has spent the last several years trying to formalize this idea (within AI as well) and get it more traction. Book -- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25670869-why-greatness-c... Talk -- https://youtu.be/dXQPL9GooyI

Very interesting talk, thanks for sharing, it really adds some weight to the intuitive idea showcased in Feynman's note.
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