Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

japhr.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 118 posts

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#71

Post by nathanbarry »

mr-ron wrote: post #68
anthony_franco wrote: post #2

Jerry Seinfeld used this exact technique to become a great comic. As told by software developer Brad Isaac when he asked Jerry for career advice[0]: He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll h…

http://chains.cc is a good gui for this

Wow, this is a really good UI. Having designed something similar with Commit I think did a really good job!

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#72

Post by utnick »

ozataman wrote: post #69

I applaud the author for his tenacity. There is no doubt that kind of discipline produces results, both in terms of work product and personal advancement. However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience. The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other proc…

Generally I agree, but the topics of his books (SPDY, Dart, and backbone ) are all extremely new technologies. Like they have all been released only in the past year. Very few people have a ton of real world experience with these.

So I think the book reader probably will know that the author doesn't have years of battle tested experience but understand that the book is meant to be a good way for a beginner to get up to speed and get going with the topic.

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#73

Post by mindcrime »

guynamedloren wrote: post #3

This is fantastic. Another method to "tricking yourself into being awesome" (also called learning ) is to jump right in and start working on a project. Like the author, you'll come up with loads of questions that need answering, and if your project is going to be successful, those questions must be answered. Otherwise your project/startup will die. Personal experience: this is exactly how I learned Ruby on Rails as a…

Another method to "tricking yourself into being awesome" (also called learning) is to jump right in and start working on a project. Like the author, you'll come up with loads of questions that need answering, and if your project is going to be successful, those questions must be answered. Otherwise your project/startup will die.

That's closer to my approach. I thrive when given a never-ending stream of unique problems to solve, as I work through a project. But sitting down and going through some structured course or book or whatever can quickly become very boring to me. I like to just jump in with both feet and sink or swim.

That said, both approaches have value and I think it's more of a continuum than a binary dichotomy.

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#74

Post by sireat »

nathanbarry wrote: post #66
anthony_franco wrote: post #2

Jerry Seinfeld used this exact technique to become a great comic. As told by software developer Brad Isaac when he asked Jerry for career advice[0]: He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll h…

This is a fantastic method. I wrote an iPhone app around this concept: http://thinklegend.com/commit One of my current commitments is to write 1000 words each day.

I can highly recommend 750words.com if daily writing is what you are after , lots of those little psychological hooks to keep writing.

I just love all those semi-useless graphs and stats you can generate if you wish.

Completely Free too (it shows around 5% of people as donating something).

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#75

Post by its_so_on »

mangodrunk wrote: post #62
its_so_on wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only one problem. When you do break the long chain you're out for the count. When was the last time you heard anything from Seinfeld after his long-running eponymous show was cancelled? How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?

It wasn't canceled, he chose to stop the show, and at the time it was the most viewed show [0]. They offered him a lot more money but he decided to leave on a high point [1]. After having one of the most successful shows of all time, he went on to create a successful movie (Bee Movie) [2] and continues to do stand-up. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings [1] http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/26/seinfeld/ […

Sorry, I thought everyone knew this, I didn't pay attention to the connotation of "cancelled", since it was still cancelled. (Like, if a band's show is cancelled, it's often because of them). What I was getting at is that Seinfeld had a phenominally long TV-show run, which is extremely demanding of anyone, let alone its eponymous main character. He did not then do another long-running TV show, which would have simply been this unthinkable commitment. (This is how I'm interpreting it).

I'm not saying one causes the other, but Seinfeld was very good with his system, it led to a very, very long-running TV series, and he didn't follow it up with another series.

How or whether this has any effect on any projects you might do you have to decide for yourself.

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#76

Post by reddit_clone »

mangodrunk wrote: post #62
its_so_on wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only one problem. When you do break the long chain you're out for the count. When was the last time you heard anything from Seinfeld after his long-running eponymous show was cancelled? How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?

It wasn't canceled, he chose to stop the show, and at the time it was the most viewed show [0]. They offered him a lot more money but he decided to leave on a high point [1]. After having one of the most successful shows of all time, he went on to create a successful movie (Bee Movie) [2] and continues to do stand-up. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings [1] http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/26/seinfeld/ […

> successful movie (Bee Movie)

This is debatable. The way I remember it, it was a clunker.

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#77

Post by nathanbarry »

sireat wrote: post #74
nathanbarry wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fantastic method. I wrote an iPhone app around this concept: http://thinklegend.com/commit One of my current commitments is to write 1000 words each day.

I can highly recommend 750words.com if daily writing is what you are after , lots of those little psychological hooks to keep writing. I just love all those semi-useless graphs and stats you can generate if you wish. Completely Free too (it shows around 5% of people as donating something).

I'll check that out. Thanks!

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#78

Post by bking »

This is a wonderful story about how impressive your willpower is. Everyone has the desire to be great, and most people can see the rough path they must take. But, the hardest part for everyone is keeping the willpower to continually push themselves to work towards that goal every day.

I am curious as to how you kept yourself motivated over the past 366 days.

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#79

Post by eee_c »

ozataman wrote: post #69

I applaud the author for his tenacity. There is no doubt that kind of discipline produces results, both in terms of work product and personal advancement. However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience. The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other proc…

I think we're actually mostly in agreement :)

Neither The SPDY Book nor Dart for Hipsters was meant to be a definitive guide on their respective subjects. They are 150 page intros and, as you say, probably well suited for this approach.

For Recipes with Backbone, we aimed for the intermediate / advanced audience. Again, I agree that I probably could not have gotten there in 3 months on my own. For that, I relied heavily on my co-author (Nick Gauthier), who is battle tested with Backbone.js. So, again, I think we are in agreement.

That said, even the intro books are living books. I plan on refreshing and adding as the technology evolves and I as become battle tested (I'm working on edition 1.1 of The SPDY Book now). So over time, I hope to get closer to the ideal tome on the subjects.

Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

#80

Post by courtewing »

I'd say this in the original article's comments, but apparently it does not allow anonymous comments:

I found this article to be really inspiring. I guess I can see how some people may think Chris is just stroking his own ego, but I did not read it that way at all. First and foremost, I took from this article that a key to feeling great about yourself and your accomplishments is to actually do stuff, all the time. It's a simple concept that I'm sure we're all aware of, but this article really hit it home for me.

As a direct result of this article, I am inspired to do stuff, even if that stuff is considerably less awesome than what Chris accomplished last year.

I start with a personal response via blog post: http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-chains-and-being-awe...

Post reply on HN