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The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

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Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#321

Post by AndrewKemendo »

tryptophan wrote: post #285
d_burfoot wrote: post #276

I feel like HN should have a special flag called "survivorship bias" that we can use to tag posts like this. For every project like this one, there are 1000 others where someone spent 15 hrs/week for 5 years, built something really cool, but never got any funding or traction. Now, that time was probably better spent on a cool project than on playing video games or watching TV. But you shouldn't think that consistent…

>For every project like this one, there are 1000 others where someone spent 15 hrs/week for 5 years, built something really cool, but never got any funding or traction. You're probably right, but care to name some examples? I can't think of a single blog or article about failed companies or projects.I think they would be interesting to read and dissect. It seems that people who have that sort of persistence and choos…

Ted Nelson's Xanadu is what comes to mind immediately for me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu

The Bulletball guy is a close second:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOw2yWMSfk

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#322

Post by xattt »

arnold_palmur wrote: post #262
telchar wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take away from your point, but from what I have read, the Grand Canyon was most likely not formed by little drops of water, but instead by occasional torrents of water. There is ~70 feet of boulders and detritus at the bottom of the Colorado River. Only a flood powerful enough to get all that material moving at once will erode the bottom of the river bed and carve the canyon deeper. The slopes and walls probab…

This is the quintessential example of a pedantic Hacker News comment.

What I get from it is that occasional cram sessions is the way to move boulders.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#323

Post by jstx1 »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #313

I learned this lesson in a completely unrelated domain. I started lifting weights seriously about two years ago. Since then, I've averaged at least 5 days of training per week and now my physique is that of a completely different person. The lesson is if you do something everyday for years, whether it's body building, learning a skill, or bootstrapping a company, after several years you will see outstanding results.

It's good to point out that it works with bad habits too - if you repeat behaviours that you don't want every day, you're making your life worse in a very reliable way.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#324

Post by dasil003 »

d_burfoot wrote: post #276

I feel like HN should have a special flag called "survivorship bias" that we can use to tag posts like this. For every project like this one, there are 1000 others where someone spent 15 hrs/week for 5 years, built something really cool, but never got any funding or traction. Now, that time was probably better spent on a cool project than on playing video games or watching TV. But you shouldn't think that consistent…

Sure, but there's also tons of people who worked full-time for years without anything to show for it, I'm not sure that short-term intense focus is any less subject to survivorship bias than long-term regular focus. I do believe that at least one of them is necessary but not sufficient for most types of "success".

At the end of the day, I think outliers (across all axes) is what makes for interesting articles that get upvoted, and so if you squint hard enough probably every article is subject to some kind of survivorship bias.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#325

Post by sebmellen »

d_burfoot wrote: post #276

I feel like HN should have a special flag called "survivorship bias" that we can use to tag posts like this. For every project like this one, there are 1000 others where someone spent 15 hrs/week for 5 years, built something really cool, but never got any funding or traction. Now, that time was probably better spent on a cool project than on playing video games or watching TV. But you shouldn't think that consistent…

I agree, but IMO that is missing the point of the post. For me, this lesson transcends software engineering and applies to nearly every quadrant of life.

Yes, progress does not guarantee success, but progress for its own sake is still worthwhile.

And even if your ultimate goal is to succeed, applying these principles makes the success more likely, which is most of what matters in any kind of entrepreneurial enterprise.

There's a great quote: "The harder I work, the luckier I get." Showing up every day is another way to create this luck, and if you do it consistently, you accrue a kind of compound interest on your work.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#326

Post by hutzlibu »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #248
dheera wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so maybe true effectiveness would be achieved by having a torrent of work once a week instead of a few minutes a day.

Both. I am naturally a very "torrent of work" kind of person, but I've learned that one approach isn't enough. Some problems require a bit every day, some torrents.

Also the torrent maybe only comes, if prepared through little drops here and there.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#327

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

munificent wrote: post #40

I've written two books over the past decade as well as learning some other skills and hobbies and this is absolutely the most vital lesson I've learned. There is an incredible power in simply pouring a little time into something every day over a long period of time. It feels like a superpower when you see it start compounding. The Grand Canyon was created by little drops of water bouncing off rocks for millenia. Cons…

I've had a solid green GH activity log[0] for years. I try to write some Swift every day.

Most folks seem to think it's fake. I have learned not to give a damn.

Some of the days with the fewest commits are actually the ones where I worked hardest.

[0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#github-stuff

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#328

Post by sebmellen »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #321
tryptophan wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For every project like this one, there are 1000 others where someone spent 15 hrs/week for 5 years, built something really cool, but never got any funding or traction. You're probably right, but care to name some examples? I can't think of a single blog or article about failed companies or projects.I think they would be interesting to read and dissect. It seems that people who have that sort of persistence and choos…

Ted Nelson's Xanadu is what comes to mind immediately for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu The Bulletball guy is a close second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOw2yWMSfk

Aha! But had the Xanadu folks showed up every day, they might have created something more than vaporware, and people might've used their software!

From the linked Wikipedia article:

> Wired magazine published an article called "The Curse of Xanadu", calling Project Xanadu "the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry".[3] The first attempt at implementation began in 1960, but it was not until 1998 that an incomplete implementation was released. A version described as "a working deliverable", OpenXanadu, was made available in 2014.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#329

Post by munificent »

dreamer7 wrote: post #263
dheera wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so maybe true effectiveness would be achieved by having a torrent of work once a week instead of a few minutes a day.

I think it depends on the activity. It's impossible to build any medium to high complexity software by working on it for 5 mins a day. But you can make a lot of progress by practising every day for very little time. For example, I've improved on my tucked planche progression by just leaning forward while holding a plank for 5 seconds every day.

> It's impossible to build any medium to high complexity software by working on it for 5 mins a day.

Both of the books I wrote, one of which includes two complete implementations of a programming language, were mostly written in sessions of less than an hour. Occassionally I get longer ones and very often they are much shorter.

Learning to task switch and suspend efficiently is also a really valuable skill that improves with practice. I have kids, so if I couldn't make progress while being interrupted, I'd never be able to do anything.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#330

Post by jfim »

CPLX wrote: post #150
kjerzyk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing what you used to learn cooking? My main struggle is recipe books that teach you the recipe rather than cooking. But I'd love to learn HOW to cook, not WHAT to cook.

Two recommendations that I think will be especially suited to the personality type that’s already matched to software development: 1) The Professional Chef - This is the textbook used in culinary schools. It’s advanced but it starts out from first principles assuming no prior knowledge and just methodically walks through literally every concept one could ever encounter. Not for everyone but if you’re the type that li…

> The Professional Chef

It's a great book. Most of the recipes do need to be scaled for home purposes (eg. soup recipes are one US gallon, mains are "makes 10 servings").

One of the neat things about the book is that many of the techniques illustrated end with "evaluate the quality of the finished product," which serves as a reminder to check what was done and how it can be improved.

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