Do the Hardest Thing
justinjackson.ca
Do the Hardest Thing
1–10 of 58 posts
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#2In the current era of urge to make things faster/more, that article felt refreshing. Good things take effort and time to create, and it is not something bad, it's just the way the things become good.
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#3In the current era of urge to make things faster/more, that article felt refreshing. Good things take effort and time to create, and it is not something bad, it's just the way the things become good.
(Author of the post here) I think the key point is that even bad businesses take time and effort to create!
The distinction is between "low-hanging fruit" ideas ("Let's start a cafe!" "Let's start a WordPress theme business") and "high-value, high effort" ideas ("It's 2003. Let's build VoIP software.").
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#4In the current era of urge to make things faster/more, that article felt refreshing. Good things take effort and time to create, and it is not something bad, it's just the way the things become good.
(Author of the post here) I think the key point is that even bad businesses take time and effort to create! The distinction is between "low-hanging fruit" ideas ("Let's start a cafe!" "Let's start a WordPress theme business") and "high-value, high effort" ideas ("It's 2003. Let's build VoIP software.").
Sure, I agree. I was more about encouraging to not be afraid of something hard.
Today's narrative pushes people to try vibe code as much ideas as possible, even in parallel, but I don't think it's a fruitful approach. One should not be afraid of doing something non-typical (hard) if they belive in the idea. And if you believe, dedicate some quality time for it. If you don't believe - why bother even with prototypes?
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Author of the post here) I think the key point is that even bad businesses take time and effort to create! The distinction is between "low-hanging fruit" ideas ("Let's start a cafe!" "Let's start a WordPress theme business") and "high-value, high effort" ideas ("It's 2003. Let's build VoIP software.").
Sure, I agree. I was more about encouraging to not be afraid of something hard. Today's narrative pushes people to try vibe code as much ideas as possible, even in parallel, but I don't think it's a fruitful approach. One should not be afraid of doing something non-typical (hard) if they belive in the idea. And if you believe, dedicate some quality time for it. If you don't believe - why bother even with prototypes?
100%
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Author of the post here) I think the key point is that even bad businesses take time and effort to create! The distinction is between "low-hanging fruit" ideas ("Let's start a cafe!" "Let's start a WordPress theme business") and "high-value, high effort" ideas ("It's 2003. Let's build VoIP software.").
Sure, I agree. I was more about encouraging to not be afraid of something hard. Today's narrative pushes people to try vibe code as much ideas as possible, even in parallel, but I don't think it's a fruitful approach. One should not be afraid of doing something non-typical (hard) if they belive in the idea. And if you believe, dedicate some quality time for it. If you don't believe - why bother even with prototypes?
Agree.
But the tricky part is how much you believe in the idea. It is hard to be faithful to the right idea. One is influenced by other people, especially one's boss if it's in an corporation.
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#7Liked this post a lot, well done! Definitely appreciated that it was a site that actual has a unique design, and isn't just another Medium article...
A book on a similar subject that I don't see mentioned very often but which I quite enjoyed as "Tough Things First" by Ray Zinn [0]. Not the most popular one, but really down to earth and approachable ideas. Kind of like PG's "do things that don't scale," just applied on a broader timescale.
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Author of the post here) I think the key point is that even bad businesses take time and effort to create! The distinction is between "low-hanging fruit" ideas ("Let's start a cafe!" "Let's start a WordPress theme business") and "high-value, high effort" ideas ("It's 2003. Let's build VoIP software.").
Sure, I agree. I was more about encouraging to not be afraid of something hard. Today's narrative pushes people to try vibe code as much ideas as possible, even in parallel, but I don't think it's a fruitful approach. One should not be afraid of doing something non-typical (hard) if they belive in the idea. And if you believe, dedicate some quality time for it. If you don't believe - why bother even with prototypes?
Well what if you take on an extremely ambitious project like writing a programming language complete with DAP step debugging, a full LSP, etc, etc?
That takes a lot of quality time to just figure out the right syntax and semantics, let alone having to figure out how all of these complex pieces fit together!
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#9[deleted]
Re: Do the Hardest Thing
#10I learned this lesson kind of by accident. I've told this story before but I think it's relevant.
When I dropped out of college the first time around in January 2012, I assumed that my career options were extremely limited. I knew I needed a job, so I applied to pretty much every wage-labor job I could find: McDonalds, Lowes, Starbucks, Aldi, Publix, etc. Almost as a joke to myself, I sent exactly one application to a software developer position on Craigslist for a Flash, Foxpro, and Coldfusion developer position.
The only company that called me back was the software job. I interviewed there, got the job, and thus my career as a software engineer was kicked off.
In hindsight I realized something: the less qualified you are for a job, the more likely a company might be to overlook a lack of qualifications. McDonalds and Aldi and Starbucks have lots of qualified people applying for these positions, meaning that they can be very picky with who they hire.
Now compare this to Flash/Coldfusion/Foxpro developers in 2012. I didn't know any of these at the time particularly well...but to my benefit neither did anyone else! As a result, they didn't get a ton of applications meaning their selection pool was tiny, meaning that they basically had to take whomever they could get.