Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985) • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by buffalobuffalo » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

swat535 wrote: post #137

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…

This is exactly why the more I think about it, the more I just want to git-push-heroku-goodbye and be done with it. I don't care about setting and maintaining AWS instances, docker containers and jenkins. The older I get, the more I realize how precious my time is and now I have very little patience for anyone or anything that wastes it. This is also why I've basically cut off all social medias from my life (except H…

I still use Heroku for almost all my personal projects. I stopped for a while, but they now allow you to dockerize your projects and push them to their registry. They also allow you to have multiple apps with access to shared resources. Those two changes have made it much more flexible than it was back in the early days.

You never realize how much configuration of AWS is like pulling teeth until you stop.

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

#192

Post by MattRix » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #102

SamPatt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your child still young? Because as children age you're able to reclaim some of your life back. At least, if you don't fall into the trap of them living a packed schedule themselves. I've got three, the eldest is now old enough to babysit the rest if needed. With a consistent bedtime and family nearby to care for them on occasion, my wife and I do get some spare time. We mostly choose to spend that together but we…

7. Yes I know, it gets better. That's still going to be 10 years off my already too short life. And how I envy the idea that living close to family would save you time instead of draining some.

As a parent of two kids who are both past that age, I feel like your perspective on this is all wrong. You’ve given 70+ years to someone else. And you haven’t lost those years at all, since presumably you also have a meaningful day job (and if not, that’s not your child’s fault).

It sounds like you and your partner should work on splitting the load more. You don’t need both parents to look after the kid constantly, you can often take turns. Kids can also watch TV and all kinds of stuff. They also have earlier bedtimes, giving you even more free time.

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

#193

Post by jacobmischka » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

svat wrote: post #162

jacobmischka wrote: post #7

I read (listened to, technically) this book a few weeks ago because I've always been inspired by the idea of Feynman and didn't know much about him. Honestly, I actually like him less after having read it. As I guess I should have expected, because its subtitle is "Adventures of a Curious Character", it's unfortunately for me filled with many more random personal anecdotes, often involving naked women, prostitutes, g…

One thing to remember about this book that is easy to miss is that it's not a memoir or autobiography in the usual sense. You may have seen this book, and its sequel, What Do You Care What Other People Think? , described as being "by Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton" or "edited by Ralph Leighton" or "as told to Ralph Leighton". It turns out that it was not written as a book, but his friend Ralph Leighton (son of th…

That explains a lot, I did not know that. Thank you, that changes my opinion a bit.

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

#194

Post by Oras » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

moksly wrote: post #190

Oras wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear! I wish one day the dev community will understand that its never about the tools and more about the delivery. The customer does not give a monkey if the backend is node, go or PHP. You do not impress anyone by using React, redux, amber, angular ... etc. All people care about is a solution to a problem they have. However, from my experience, this is not a popular opinion among developers.

Isn’t the development community sort of there? I mean, most things are still run on PHP, and honestly, I recently saw an open source “forms for the public sector” thing build in Drupal, and now I’m wondering if we’ll ever need another custom programmed form for our web facing applications. Yet if I go back to my non-management dev friends and talk about this, they are all like “eeeew, what about X and Y” and I’m just…

> Yet if I go back to my non-management dev friends and talk about this, they are all like "eeeew, what about X and Y" and I'm just like, but neither the citizens or my IT operations staff gives two shits about any of that.

That's exactly what I meant. I remember arguing with a colleague who over-engineered a simple ORM table by having 3 classes. One was just an empty class, the other was an empty interface, and the third was the actual class. When I asked why did you make it this way? He said: "What if we decided to use Mongo later?

Technically he was right but practically, he was wrong! I saw this overthinking and over-engineering pattern across many in-house dev teams. But this is just my experience, and I'm not judging what is right and wrong from devs point of view. Every decision has its context, but I saw how these complications affecting the delivery and customer experience badly.

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

#195

Post by Trex_Egg » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

_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 as Wisdom

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

#196

Post by MattRix » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

moldavi wrote: post #160

pomian wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An aside for future or present dad's (and all Parents.) There is so much joy and learning that happens with raising kids, that I think the secret is not fight it, but enjoy it. Almost sounds cliché, but embrace the experience. From the very beginning to when they are adults, to experience a window into your own life, a window into the world. These windows allow you to explore your surroundings and relationships with…

How do you let go of the things you want to do? I like to think that my side project is something only I could do, that the world needs but doesnt know it yet... so the thought of giving it up sends chills through me. You seem to have a really nice outlook on things so I'd really appreciate any hints on how to reconcile this and get to where you are! (I dont have any kids yet)

You can still do side projects when you’ve got kids. You just have to treat your priorities seriously, which usually means having to give up most of the netflix/social-media time. You also have to realize that in a two parent household, you don’t usually need both parents looking after the kids, and it’s better for both of you if you take turns (for your sanity AND for your free time).

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

#197

Post by mrobot » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

I found an article which points out some negative things Feynman's did that i was not aware of. It is an interesting take by a woman who was essentially driven away from her natural direction in science by bad behavior of men in academia, and i sympathize with it. I really liked the original article posted here, though, and respect the way Feynman looked at the world.

https://caltechletters.org/viewpoints/feynman-harassment-sci...

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

#198

Post by Trex_Egg » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

bloopy123 wrote: post #78

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…

>> 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 totally get this feel(of procrastination on things) in all of my endeavors. I will try to work only for fun to get on with it. Is there any element that might sustain fun for the very end or any other secret sauce to it?

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

#199

Post by kirse » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

Do things that don't matter.

I've been thinking about this recently and realized that my brain is capable of drawing an incorrect conclusion about the "mattering-ness" of something based on limited data, typically a feeling arising from personal values.

The thing is, everything we do does matter, and it's one of the reasons why the Bible instructs us to "walk by faith, not by sight". On the cosmic scale of things, we don't have all the information to truly calculate whether something does (or does not) matter. In that regard, choosing to live as if what we do always matters seems like the preferred and life-giving approach.

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

#200

Post by 01000101 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

Oras wrote: post #194

moksly wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the development community sort of there? I mean, most things are still run on PHP, and honestly, I recently saw an open source “forms for the public sector” thing build in Drupal, and now I’m wondering if we’ll ever need another custom programmed form for our web facing applications. Yet if I go back to my non-management dev friends and talk about this, they are all like “eeeew, what about X and Y” and I’m just…

> Yet if I go back to my non-management dev friends and talk about this, they are all like "eeeew, what about X and Y" and I'm just like, but neither the citizens or my IT operations staff gives two shits about any of that. That's exactly what I meant. I remember arguing with a colleague who over-engineered a simple ORM table by having 3 classes. One was just an empty class, the other was an empty interface, and the…

For some reason the first time I do something I always over engineer it... it took me a lot of self growth to take feedback like yours seriously and not get defensive of my “what-if” thought patterns.