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Follow boring advice

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Re: Follow boring advice

#71

Post by coder-3 »

Angostura wrote: post #67
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Could someone expand on "Do things that don't scale." - that seems somewhat counterintuitive.

It means doing things that you can do when you have 0 to a few users but that would not work beyond that. For example, Doordash validated their idea with posters and manually taking orders and delivering them themselves, no app, no drivers.

It is counterintuitive at first but when you think about it actually makes a lot of sense. When you're getting started you should focus on doing things to get started. Worry about scaling when you're scaling.

Re: Follow boring advice

#72

Post by bulletsvshumans »

Angostura wrote: post #67
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Could someone expand on "Do things that don't scale." - that seems somewhat counterintuitive.

When you only have 10 users, the easiest ways to please all your users is to do things by hand that make the experience of those users excellent, rather than worrying about creating systems that will only pay off when you have 100,000 users.

When reddit started out and had almost no user base, they had employees each impersonate a handful of different users to give the site a sense of a pre-existing community. When Dwarf Fortress was starting out, their sole developer would create custom ASCII-art scenes to send to every supporter above a certain dollar threshold.

Re: Follow boring advice

#73

Post by AlbertCory »

I have one really boring bit of advice (on public speaking) that many people refuse to believe is worth anything. Similar to what OP says, they imagine there's some deep secret, like "power poses" and body language, or eye contact.

It's this: know your subject inside and out, plus the answers to all the questions you're likely to get. When you're speaking, remember: you know the stuff, they don't, you want to communicate it. That's it.

You'll forget everything else with all that adrenaline roaring in your ears, anyway.

Re: Follow boring advice

#74

Post by rajangdavis »

Angostura wrote: post #67
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Could someone expand on "Do things that don't scale." - that seems somewhat counterintuitive.

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Re: Follow boring advice

#75

Post by ozim »

Angostura wrote: post #67
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

Could someone expand on "Do things that don't scale." - that seems somewhat counterintuitive.

Sending out invoices for example.

You can work on automating it and hooking various payment providers.

Integration with payment providers is a lot of hassle and engineering work. So when you have 5-10 customers it does not make sense to automate that.

Sending invoices manually does not scale of course - but that advice is given in specific context of company. Where you should focus on working on your product and not on automating invoices "because somewhere in the future it will be needed."

Re: Follow boring advice

#76

Post by mehwoot »

amelius wrote: post #2

Author should explain this: everyone can follow boring advice, so why aren't far more people successful?

Because the hard part isn't knowing what to do (the advice), it's actually following it day in, day out.

Re: Follow boring advice

#77

Post by kiba »

tekromancr wrote: post #42
kiba wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not really advice, so much as goals? Also, CICO seems to be actually incorrect from what I read on it. Body's more like a thermostat than a steam engine and will work against you such as burning calories slower as you eat less. If you really want to save money, then you need to think in terms of emotions and how to combat that rather than attempting to brute force it with willpower.

CICO is just physics; but you need to work BOTH sides of that equation. If you ONLY try to shift the balance to deficit by limiting intake, of COURSE your body is going to react to the new starvation environment. That's why you should moderately reduce intake while ALSO moderately increasing output (i.e. do physical activity)

Exercise also causes your basal metabolism to lower.

Re: Follow boring advice

#78

Post by kiba »

borroka wrote: post #40
kiba wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not really advice, so much as goals? Also, CICO seems to be actually incorrect from what I read on it. Body's more like a thermostat than a steam engine and will work against you such as burning calories slower as you eat less. If you really want to save money, then you need to think in terms of emotions and how to combat that rather than attempting to brute force it with willpower.

In fact one of the very common risks is to mix up goals and boring advice. Say, you wanna score in a soccer match: just receive the ball, get rid of defenders in case, and kick the ball in the net——which is both true and useless. Eating fewer calories is not happening in a vacuum. It means giving up food, which is, broadly speaking, the joy of life for many people. Exercising means committing to spend time in an envi…

Eating fewer calories is not happening in a vacuum. It means giving up food, which is, broadly speaking, the joy of life for many people. Exercising means committing to spend time in an environment and doing an activity that many do not like at all——it thus means going against their desires for months, years etc.

I love food. Wouldn't give it up for the world. I can also tolerate not eating anything for two days very well. It's not really going against my desire.

Ditto for exercise. The hard part is actually starting. Once you start, everything becomes easier.

Re: Follow boring advice

#79

Post by WalterBright »

AlbertCory wrote: post #73

I have one really boring bit of advice (on public speaking) that many people refuse to believe is worth anything. Similar to what OP says, they imagine there's some deep secret, like "power poses" and body language, or eye contact. It's this: know your subject inside and out, plus the answers to all the questions you're likely to get. When you're speaking, remember: you know the stuff, they don't, you want to communi…

Reminds me of all the trick advice on how to do well on the SATs. My advice is simple:

1. take all the math classes your school offers

2. read lots of sci fi books

That's what I did, and I got the SAT results I needed.

The other day I picked up a book on building vocabulary for the SAT. Flipping through it, I knew essentially all the words. I've never studied vocabulary in my life. I just read a lot.

Re: Follow boring advice

#80

Post by WalterBright »

I'll add another one that I repeat often on HN but is profoundly unpopular:

Take responsibility for your situation in life. Stop blaming bad luck, other people, fate, your parents, etc.

The advantage stems from if your situation is your responsibility, that means you can better your situation. A common thread I've found with happy and successful people I've encountered is that all of them have this attitude.

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