Drugs. LSD and Adderall.
Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
41–50 of 55 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#42I have an interesting story about inspiration. Fresh out of Brigham Young University, a man named Stephen Hales was having trouble figuring out a logo for his design agency, Stephen Hales Creative. He had spent weeks working on concepts for the logo but nothing felt right, until one day he was getting into his car when he accidentally spilled a drink of coffee or something similar. When he looked at the ground where…
>silhouette of a bearded man clutching at his scalp
Can you show the logo?
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#43Watching people bungle through life and then go all emo Skywalker. "I can't, it's too hard." Try or try not, etc. I want to be the person that makes people feel that anyone can do anything in their life. I'm a blundering idiot. If I can do it, you can too.
>"Try or try not, etc. "
You mean: "Do or do not; there is no try".
You got a Trekkie to fix your Star Wars quote!
Though I definitely agree with the sentiment of what you were trying to say. I don't find myself any less of an idiot than most people around me. It's just that I sat down, self-inspected, and made the necessary improvements. I guess some would say that that sort of thing ultimately does make you less of an "idiot" than others, in that 'introspection' is the thing that separates the two.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#44I have an interesting story about inspiration. Fresh out of Brigham Young University, a man named Stephen Hales was having trouble figuring out a logo for his design agency, Stephen Hales Creative. He had spent weeks working on concepts for the logo but nothing felt right, until one day he was getting into his car when he accidentally spilled a drink of coffee or something similar. When he looked at the ground where…
>silhouette of a bearded man clutching at his scalp Can you show the logo?
Maybe this one? http://www.halescreative.com/
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#45I have an interesting story about inspiration. Fresh out of Brigham Young University, a man named Stephen Hales was having trouble figuring out a logo for his design agency, Stephen Hales Creative. He had spent weeks working on concepts for the logo but nothing felt right, until one day he was getting into his car when he accidentally spilled a drink of coffee or something similar. When he looked at the ground where…
>silhouette of a bearded man clutching at his scalp Can you show the logo?
A quick Google search revealed this page - http://www.halescreative.com/ - I think that's the logo the parent is referring to.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#46What inspires me is fear. Fear that I'm stuck in a dead-end job that won't give me any options or marketable skills. That I won't be able to pay for my children's education, that I'll be a burden to them when I retire. And most of all, the fear that if I get hit by a bus today I leave them with nothing. That drives me to work harder, keep improving my skills and stay on the lookout for projects that will make me valu…
As much as I'd like to chalk my motivation up to ambition, I'm just as scared as you are. That's what keeps me working on products in my (limited) free time.
We'll make it though.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#47Freedom for me/security for the people close to me, I guess. I was one of the lucky few who made a lot off Bitcoin, and paid off my dad's mortgage with the profits. I think I work harder now than if his house had ended up being foreclosed, as now I realize what an outlier that opportunity was.
It's becoming increasingly hard to find inspiration for the things that conflict with my personal ambitions(school, getting an internship at a megacorp etc), I regret to admit. As I'm typing this I'm sitting in my last networking lecture of the semester, and it's difficult to find inspiration to pay attention to this to say the least ha. If I'm working on a freelance project I actually care about, I will work at 100% for days at a time without any need for external contributing factors. I'd be content at a startup living out of my car working 16 hours a day coding/moving boxes/anything for peanuts(I mean as long as everyone else was doing the same of course), but I want my parents and other immediate family to be financially secure.
I guess it's hard to find inspiration until I'm willing to sacrifice to attain whatever goal I have in mind. I first went the business route, wanted to become a quant and wore suits with the rest of 'em. I then realized that if I really wanted something, I wouldn't have to watch corny youtube videos to motivate me to go do it.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#48All of mine successful projects was created while learning new thing. I did learn Portuguese and can't find flashcards tool that I like, so I create mine, did learn to play piano and needed some way to practice sheet reading skill, so I created tool for that. I am also wine maker and in need of one analytical tool and found out that it costs 30k, amount I can't afford (or even justify for business my size) so I found…
Your last sentence is the story of my life.
I jump from topic to topic depending on what I'm currently interested in, then I think of a way to incorporate coding, then I put in some effort to get something working and as it progresses I become less and less interested.
I suspect burnout. Let me know if you have any ideas.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#49Re: Ask HN: Where do you get your inspiration from?
#50Inspiration comes in fits and spurts. The main cause of that is because ideas happen when different hunches or problems I have meet interesting opportunities or enabling circumstances. When that happens I get an idea and I work on it.
I find ways to maximize my exposure to new ideas. I read novels, poetry, and plays. I read humanities-focused introductions to new areas of maths that I haven't yet explored or histories on the maths-related discoveries that I had no previous exposure to. I then dig in deeper to subject matter that I find interesting or am curious about... or are fundamental. I play quite a lot and make one-off programs that have no function or purpose; often inspired by phenomenon I've read about. I keep journals of my explorations so that I can recount the threads that led me to particular ways of thinking and see where I am missing out: I then seek out the gaps. I meet new people in different fields and have no shame interrogating them about their ideas, passions, and inspirations. Sometimes you just need to stand on a desk.
Update: I have the advantage, now, that most of the CS fundamentals have been burned into my brain and I have a lot of experience writing software... it's almost reflexive now.