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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)

#71

Post by 55555 »

> I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way].

To me it's even more inspirational that Feynman misremembered basic things about physics he understood better than almost anyone. He achieved so much, and yet fundamentally was human and imperfect. Any curious smart mind can achieve something great.

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

#72

Post by spion »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #69
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 d…

It also really depends on what you find cool, there are different ways to look at things. For example if I think of pipelines as these execution graphs that run on their own and make sure your artifacts end up in the right place, then its really fun. CI systems that visualize this make it even more interesting.

A little combination of the right personal interests and perspective goes a long way towards building up resilience to deal with the ugly bits.

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

#73

Post by baremetal »

alskdj21 wrote: post #60

Intrinsic motivation does lead you to better places. Programming was such a breeze before, I enjoyed it. But now, as I start to build a portfolio, anxiety creeps up. "Should it be like this or this? Man, this doesn't feel right." I admit my way of thinking is flawed, which I'm also working on. But it really is different when your goal is to enjoy the process than to please prospective employers.

Just chunk it out. Review and reflect. And then iterate. Doesn't have to be perfect the first time.

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

#74

Post by mmcnl »

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…

Not everybody is Feynman ofcourse. You have to accept the risk that giving freedom for creativity won't end up with anything useful.

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

#75

Post by baremetal »

jacobmischka wrote: post #50
practicalpants wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Feynman was that different in this masculine or promiscuous respect from many of that era's greats... Schrödinger, von Neumann, Einstein, to name a few. Feynman at least writes extensively about his deceased wife. I imagine you would not enjoy reading history too much as the 21st C Western first world attitudes on these topics are pretty unique compared to any other time.

I do enjoy reading history, and I'm not even turned off by knowing that he did and enjoyed those things. I just got tired of listening about it for what seemed like about half of the book when I was expecting a memoir of a Nobel prize winning scientist.

surely youre joking...

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

#76

Post by mmcnl »

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…

You could argue that having fun is the end goal of things. Why do we do things that we consider important? Why is it important? Somewhere down the line everything we do should enable someone having fun. If not, then why bother?

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

#77

Post by leephillips »

benrbray wrote: post #52
jackdawed wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I like this way of looking at the problem, I wouldn't have thought of this! I think this relies implicitly, too, on incompressibility of the fluid, no? As well as surface tension? Otherwise, we might imagine the fluid having less density at the bottom, while occupying a circular cross-section of the same area.

It does rely on incompressibility, but, to this order, does not include surface tension.

The water faucet puzzle that interested me as a student was after the water had reached the sink and begun to spread out radially from the stream. Have you noticed that there is a circular boundary where the layer of water suddenly changes depth?

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

#78

Post by bloopy123 »

This is a good example of how you can escape from procrastination too.

And I think also a reason why so many side projects go unfinished.

It’s also an interesting phenomenon i realized whereby when you are working full time you long for time to work full time on a clever idea you have. But when you have time to work on this idea full time you don’t want to do it. But then the feeling returns when you again don’t have time to work on it.

I realized that working on something for fun can help you segue back into what you should be working on.

But it seems it only works as long as you don’t have grand plans for it becoming a business or a great industry-changing discovery. You must maintain that it’s only for fun. To see what can be done.

I like the word “play” vs “work on”.

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

#79

Post by noisy_boy »

schindlabua wrote: post #66
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…

Speaking as a person with kids, I get into many things but with exceptions of very simple/small stuff, mostly nothing gets done and there are lots of stuff in various stages of incompleteness. It also depends on your level of procrastinating. Doing all these things also has an effect on sleep because I only get time once everyone has gone to bed.
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