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Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

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Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

#121

Post by javert »

> A mentor has advised me not to become "boring" and wants me to try to stay entrepreneurial

Be what you want to be. Do what you want to do.

There is really no other option. You won't have the psychological energy to succeed any other way. Doing what someone else wants leads to a wasted life.

There is no such thing as "being boring." Boring is relative. Subjective. If you do what you want, you won't be boring to you, and that is all that matters.

The advice you've received, in this particular instance, is very toxic. Unless your mentor is saying: Don't do what is boring to you. Then, maybe it's valid.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

#125

Post by zoomablemind »

>...I'm in my late 20s, just started my career proper as a developer. I got into a big tech position, leaving behind startups and the chaos of my early 20s, for now.

Congrats on starting your career. Something has motivated you to choose the present path, I bet it's nothing random and was rather thought out.

Having a good start at your present age is a big deal, not only this gives you confidence and security, but opens up future avenues to pursuit happiness - be it in relationships or enterpreneurship.

Doubts will stay no matter how successful people are in their past choices. Just give yourself time to work out your present stage - this is a product of your planning! At some point you will have your new look on yourself and your priorities. And just as before, you'll figure out another plan for the next path.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

#126

Post by annyeonghada »

oxff wrote: post #94

> The body requires a lot of maintenance and has limited energy Weight training 3x week takes around 270 minutes. Add rowing / swimming 2-3 week for some 30 to 60 minutes. That's ~330 minutes a week, nothing.

Then you start adding commute and preparation and it's never 1-1.5 hours, it's 2-2.5.

Then you start taking into account that you hate physical exercise (I've tried group sport, gym, running, swimming, walking etc...) and you start treating it like a job and instead of being relaxing is another chore. So not only I'm doing something just for maintenance, but it feels like work (in my case, it is work) and while I'm sweating at the gym I'm not doing something I'm really interested in and after the supposedly beneficial exercise my mental energy is too depleted to do the things I really want to do.

I'm never been more miserable than when I exercise regularly: "nothing" you say, uh?

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

#127

Post by justinlloyd »

HellDunkel wrote: post #119
silencedogood3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comment! I find it even more moving in waterson style comic form: https://www.gocomics.com/zen-pencils/2014/06/23

Haha- ok. I love how he is nerding out on the dinosaur and next we see his girlfriend. This is not what happens in real life.

Au contraire, mon ami! This _is_ my life. I am the epitome of "stay true to yourself." Mostly staying true to myself has been flipping the table, saying "F this for a game of soldiers" and flipping the middle finger as I walk out the door. The journey has not always been comfortable. But this adventure that I hope never ends has been a lot of fun.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

#129

Post by HellDunkel »

justinlloyd wrote: post #127
HellDunkel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha- ok. I love how he is nerding out on the dinosaur and next we see his girlfriend. This is not what happens in real life.

Au contraire, mon ami! This _is_ my life. I am the epitome of "stay true to yourself." Mostly staying true to myself has been flipping the table, saying "F this for a game of soldiers" and flipping the middle finger as I walk out the door. The journey has not always been comfortable. But this adventure that I hope never ends has been a lot of fun.

Let me congratulate you for reaching „the epitome of staying true to yourself“ and for going to a place where no man has gone before.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

#130

Post by RonMarken »

Not everyone needs to be a 10x engineer that does everything all the time. It is good to take a step back and realise what you want to do.

In a technical sense one skill that can help realise these 'big daunting ideas' is to break the goals of a project into many 'micro-projects' that may seem more attainable in the short-term (ie. "I want to write some client/server application to do $X". Start by sketching out what APIs need to coexist in both sides, mock-up the business logic on paper, etcetera).

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