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There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me

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Re: There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me

#3

Post by PaulHoule »

Something people forget is that we have a finite learning capacity and learning just for the sake of learning can wreck your mental health.

I can read hundreds of pages a day but if I do this on a sustained basis it overcharges my brain and I have problems with anxiety and can't sleep. A modest dose of video games helps me chill out since I am working with the same patterns over and over again and not needing to sort through a lot of stuff.

In the book "Have Fun at Work" it says that people can read about 60 pages of technical stuff a day.

I have standardized on Java for a programming language. I've put a huge effort into making peace with Maven, Spring, and my IDE. I have a framework that deals with a lot of the BS when you do command line apps so that I can bang out little apps almost as fast as a Python programmer can.

A lot of my getting there has been getting in the habit of reading the same stuff over and over again until I know it like the back of my hand. For instance I went through a year of hell with Maven and Spring because I was working on systems where whenever somebody had a problem they looked it up on StackOverflow. Nothing was ever done the same way twice and builds and configuration was a continuous source of frustration.

After reading the manuals for those products cover to cover multiple times I understand them in a holistic way, I use them right, and I can understand what is happening when people do strange things.

There are certain areas where I am pushing the start of the art and learning a lot and frankly that means I am working on certain things and I think as little as I can about Javascript frameworks and the like. For instance I think Clojure and Ruby are both cool languages but I don't have time to look up how to find the length of a String and stuff like that so I only write Ruby to configure Vagrant.

Re: There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me

#4

Post by smacktoward »

This sounds like the tech equivalent of FOMO, "fear of missing out": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

> If I am going to build this in React.js (which I totally should do) then I’ll spend less time in Visual Studio and more time in Sublime Text. Before I can start, I should first verify that my Sublime color scheme is up to par.

The problem is the leap from "I'm going to be spending time in Sublime Text" to "my Sublime Text environment must be perfect before I can get started." I used to have the same problem, constantly fiddling with my tools to try and get them Just So. It was an enormous time sink.

Eventually what helped me get past it is learning to be OK with the idea that your tools are sub-optimal, because they will always be sub-optimal, no matter how much time you spend bikeshedding them. There's always one more font, one more plugin, one more color scheme. You're always one step away from perfection, no matter how many steps you take.

(If you want to get philosophical about it, we humans are all imperfect creations too, right? So it makes sense that our works, the things we make, would be flawed as well. Perfection is not a quality of things made by human hands, no matter how skilled those hands are.)

So the only way to be productive is to take a sort of Zen attitude and learn to be OK with imperfection. Accept your tools as you accept yourself, flaws and all.

It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao te Ching (http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.h...):

   Fill your bowl to the brim
   and it will spill.
   Keep sharpening your knife
   and it will blunt.
   Chase after money and security
   and your heart will never unclench.
   Care about people's approval
   and you will be their prisoner.

   Do your work, then step back.
   The only path to serenity.

Re: There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me

#7

Post by slimetree »

Steve Jobs said something I think about a lot: "focus is about saying no." He was talking about what to work on in a company, but it extends without loss of generality to individuals. The world is presumably always going to be a fascinating one with an infinite supply of different ideas. Make a conscious effort to take what matters and go.

Re: There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me

#8

Post by steven2012 »

This is really just a matter of maturity and discipline. The OP is unable to say "No" to themself. Having discipline is being able to power through the boring stuff because you know it's important.

OP does not need ADD drugs, all they need to do is commit to finishing a task, and not to pick up anything new until the current task is completed, no matter how "fun" the other tasks seem.

Re: There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me

#9

Post by tashoecraft »

Since you mention that you are interested in creating for the sake of a business, That is what I am going to focus on.

Since you are a developer, you are focusing on setting up your environment, what language it should be written in, etc. All things which have little to no true impact on getting your business up and running as quick as possible.

Focus on the idea, don't setup anything and don't code a single line. Think through what you want to build. Why do you want to build it? What features are you going to be your stars and what are the alternatives for your product.

Your bogging down in setting everything up. Think through your ideas and when the right one comes along, then get started.

Re: There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me

#10

Post by Heliosmaster »

What helped me was stopping to think "ooh, X is shiny, I want to try that" but rather focusing on problems I had to solve, thinking "Oh, I could build an application to solve my problem Y.. why don't I try to do it with X?".

I never got anything finished, until I started being very pragmatic and not learning for the sake of learning.

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