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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

#541

Post by focus2020 »

whiddershins wrote: post #479
mritchie712 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, there someone still needs to sell the art. I'd imagine it's the artist until you're a massive success.

No amount of success insulates you from tons of annoying and tasks and interactions. The only way to insulate yourself from that would be to be completely unsuccessful. But then you would have to be either extremely poor, which is exhausting, or make/have money another way, which is likely to be a huge distraction. There is really no solving for this.

DonKnuth comes to mind.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#542

Post by shafyy »

mattjaynes wrote: post #89

If you haven't read or listened to this book yet, I highly recommend it: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work[1] It's a collection of daily routines of many famous and prolific artists. The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazin…

Like the Jogging Baboon from Bojack Horseman says: "Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_Mn-qRKjA

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#543

Post by animal531 »

mattjaynes wrote: post #89

If you haven't read or listened to this book yet, I highly recommend it: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work[1] It's a collection of daily routines of many famous and prolific artists. The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazin…

I recently watched a video made by an indy game dev (a field I'm currently also trying out). He spoke about his day, but then dropped a comment that some days he only worked 2-3 hours.

But currently here in South Africa things are a little dicey, it's the middle of winter and I'm probably sleeping more than I should.

Even so I'm trying to work as many hours as possible on my own project, but some days that turns out to be only 2-3. At the very least I'm tracking my hours and expected release dates, so I have some idea of the scope involved.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#544

Post by theshrike79 »

jnovek wrote: post #63

This was exactly how we built OwnLocal before we quit our day jobs. In a sense, it was very easy because when you don't know how big the problem is, everything feels like progress. Now I see 40 barreling towards me and it's hard to just do a little bit every day. Because I have experience, I can form a much bigger picture of an idea in my head and it's hard to peel off a tiny bit and make that feel like a success. Th…

> I always overspec projects because I can easily guess what demons lie on the horizon.

What opened my eyes was stories on HN about projects that were little more than a glorified webform that sent an email at first. User volume was so low that it was more cost-effective to have a form send the email and have an actual human do the task manually.

When the project picked up (proving the concept had actual clients), they started automating the process at certain pain points, eventually ending in a fully automated system, which did exactly what it needed and nothing more.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#545

Post by luckyandroid »

tigershark wrote: post #390
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #77

Adding a little bit of extra productivity to every day is great advice. The challenge can be finding the time, which means you need to subtract time from some other activities. Trading sleep for extra productivity is a losing game in the long run. It’s much better to swap out some time waster activities like watching TV or, yes, browsing HN. It can be tough to reduce time spent on vices, but after the habit is establ…

If you really work hard at your day job you just don’t have enough energy at the end of the day if you have also a family to care about. It’s a great advice for when you are young, it’s pretty much useless when you value the time that you spend with the people that you love much more than any amount of money.

If you have no energy at the end of the day, the answer is to find time in the morning. Get up earlier, go to bed earlier.

If you find your time in the afternoon isn't productive but you find it fulfilling to be around the people you love and that's enough for you, then you don't need productivity advice and this kind of reading isn't for you.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#546

Post by mritchie712 »

hanche wrote: post #528
xapata wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, generally that's the gallerist's job. They take 50% of the revenue.

But first the artist has to get a gallery to show his work.

exactly, I'd imagine artists spend a good bit of their time schlepping around convincing galleries to display their work.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#547

Post by agent008t »

biztos wrote: post #519
zuhayeer wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also learning a new language

I'm doing this right now, and at about Month Four I was happy to find myself "talking" in the new language, although the conversations would probably be cringeworthy to anyone but my teachers. This is without much immersion (due to lockdown then traveling), and the instruction is online, and I've been a lazy bum about additional study. It's made me pretty optimistic about learning new languages in general, and I'm 50…

You probably already know this, but Anki (or other spaced repetition methods) is amazing for retaining what you have learned efficiently.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#548

Post by d4rkp4ttern »

iamricks wrote: post #278
kabdib wrote: post #58

Reading one paper a week is 520 papers a decade, and there's your "Oh wait, I've seen a solution to this problem before..." superpower as a senior dev. Not your only one, but one that's easy to acquire.

Whats the best place to search for and read papers?

You can go to Semantic Sanity and set up feeds of papers which you can seed with example papers. I’ve found some great (I.e. highly relevant to my projects) ML papers this way

https://s2-sanity.apps.allenai.org/cold-start

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#549

Post by bakuninsbart »

fbelzile wrote: post #495
mattjaynes wrote: post #89

If you haven't read or listened to this book yet, I highly recommend it: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work[1] It's a collection of daily routines of many famous and prolific artists. The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazin…

Someone mentioned a book called War of Art [1] here on Hacker News which I went out to buy and read. The author, Steven Pressfield, describes it as some metaphorical "Muse" (God of Art) that helps inspire your imagination when you set aside some time to do work. I loved that line of thinking since work can't happen if you don't show up. It motivated me, as indie dev that works from home, to make a concerted effort to…

This reminds me a bit of the etymology of genius, which at first was something you had, a protective/tutoring spirit. Over time the meaning changed more to something someone is, like naturally intelligent and driven.[1] Stroke of genius is still one of those phrases using the old definition, and in the modest amount of situations were it happened to me, it did feel like something coming from outside of me.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/genius

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#550

Post by Broken_Hippo »

mattjaynes wrote: post #89

If you haven't read or listened to this book yet, I highly recommend it: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work[1] It's a collection of daily routines of many famous and prolific artists. The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazin…

You are under the impression that art sells itself?

Most artists I know - the ones that sell, anyway - need to socialize. They spend more time trying to sell art than they do making it because the work bits are the selling. So much of this is "soft sells": Engaging a community, curating one's image, and so on. But most folks have a day job, which is generally true of dead artists as well (so many weren't rich in life).

Socializing is part of the work.

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