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Stop Acting Like You're Famous

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Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#111

Post by matheusmoreira »

pat64 wrote: post #17

I’m going to hard disagree with this. A lot of the enjoyment I get from creation is the process of others enjoying what I’ve built. Further more, building for others is great for building out areas you’re weak or inexperienced in. Like, I was poor on the accessibility front until I found the thing I created resonated with the visually impaired folk.

Yeah. I've been a lone programmer for a long time. It's very difficult to maintain focus and motivation. Sometimes it feels like it doesn't matter and that there's just no point to it all.

Yet people somehow find my work and tell me what they think of it. One day I came to HN and saw my project on the front page. At first I thought someone else had had the same idea as me. Then I started getting emails about it, about my website. Every time it happens it's incredibly motivating. It feels like I finally reached out to someone.

Making things just for yourself and your own enjoyment can be a very lonely activity and you might find yourself with some kind of audience anyway even without trying. That experience can change everything.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#112

Post by mns »

sph wrote: post #30
zjp wrote: post #25

I recommend against Grammarly because I like when I see peoples' idiosyncrasies and it's little fuckups that move language forward.

I defiantly do not want to see people's typos move the language forward, especially when it's native speakers always making the same silly mistakes, for some reason (could of, they're/their, your's, etc.). I do like non-native speakers translating and incorporating their local sayings into English prose.

But that's how languages evolved and will keep evolving. Whatever you take now as rules and whatever you write now thinking to be correct, was probably a mistake, shortcut or misunderstanding ages ago.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#113

Post by keithalewis »

resource_waste wrote: post #105
humbleferret wrote: post #95

Ash's main takeaway is solid — Immerse yourself in hobbies or creative pursuits without being overly concerned about external validation or the potential for monetary gain. Other takeaways that stuck with me were: — Finding enjoyment in the process of learning and improving your own skills is crucial. — Setting personal goals can help fuel growth. — Sharing your work with others is a way to receive feedback and learn…

200 years later, people rewrite Nietzsche.

Or the more practical, and hilarious, J. P. Donleavy. "Scrub your floors!"

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#115

Post by Springtime »

> Anything you do or create will probably receive little to no attention, so stop optimizing for a non-existent audience [...] The most egregious thing you can do with any activity is daydream about how you can make money off of it [...] In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it.

I don't understand the equivalence the author is ultimately making in suggesting that creating something with polish is expecting to make money (and fame) from it. Yet notice all the things in the blog post are creations that are exposed to the internet (photography blogging, releasing a program online, making a website), rather than private, non-published hobbies which literally have no audience.

Some prefer to make things polished/more complete as they want others to enjoy something more and polish makes it more accessible/usable/meaningful, or because it's a reflection on them (whether using an IRL identity or even a pseudonymous one) and part of their enjoyment of the process.

Since we all know the audience is whoever will come across it, once something is released in the wild. Might be an audience of one, or many. Which isn't to say people need to care about the output of hobby but I disagree that money/fame is the only motivation in improving something.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#116

Post by egeozcan »

Springtime wrote: post #115

> Anything you do or create will probably receive little to no attention, so stop optimizing for a non-existent audience [...] The most egregious thing you can do with any activity is daydream about how you can make money off of it [...] In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it. I don't understand the equivalence the author is ultimately making in suggesting that creating somethi…

I think if you like polishing things than do so. As far as I could understand, the point is not doing it with the expectation of any recognition.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#117

Post by bloak »

d--b wrote: post #84

Ok the most important sentence in this essay is its subtitle: “Advice for myself around leisure activities” Personally I am no perfectionist at all, but I don’t see the fun in making stuff myself that I could otherwise buy. I took up sewing, not because I want to sew the perfect shirt, but because men’s fashion sucks. That said, I sew stuff I can wear. So it needs to look at least as good as what I could buy. I don’t…

> Maybe that would be my advice in taking up hobbies: aim to be better than the worst people who do it professionally.

Then I hope you don't count sports as hobbies because being better than the worst people who do it for fun is a stretch goal if it's me doing any competitive sport.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#118

Post by Narciss »

keiferski wrote: post #65

I haven’t studied the topic enough, but it would be very interesting to see when this dichotomy of money-making vs. self-interest really embedded itself into the act of creation. Somewhere during the Industrial Revolution, I suppose. But I also think the default mode of “art as self expression” plays a big part, and that’s more early-mid 20th century. Because when you read about creators during say, the Renaissance,…

Whilst visiting Florence, I found out that Michelangelo is broadly considered the first artist to set his own price for his work.

Before him, the patron would go “I need this cathedral painted” and the patron would also decide how much to pay the artist (generally they’d be paltry sums). With Michelangelo, the patron would go “I need this cathedral painted,” and Michelangelo would go “sure, that’d be 400 golden florins, take it or leave it.” There are stories of him not delivering his work when the patron decided to change the price after the fact.

On the topic, I think that if the “money-making” bit is defined broadly enough, then it merges very well with self-interest. Like if someone asked me to make a remix of a song, but then how I’d do that is left completely up to me, it’s a broad enough task as to feel like I’m in control. At that point, there’s very little of the feeling of “I’m doing this for money.”

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#119

Post by rndmio »

Springtime wrote: post #115

> Anything you do or create will probably receive little to no attention, so stop optimizing for a non-existent audience [...] The most egregious thing you can do with any activity is daydream about how you can make money off of it [...] In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it. I don't understand the equivalence the author is ultimately making in suggesting that creating somethi…

I would suggest you don't understand the equivalence because it's not there. They aren't saying that creating something with polish is expecting to make money off it. They're saying when you start a new hobby or interest forget about trying to tailor your output to an audience that doesn't exist and focus on skill. Maybe you really want to produce something polished, but the reasoning for that should be for your own development and edification not because you want it to appeal to others. Prioritise what makes you happy and gives you enjoyment not what you think other people want.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#120

Post by blowski »

mapreduce wrote: post #110

Why is it so that every so often one of these feel-good LinkedIn-style posts make it to the front page? Is there so much demand for banality on this site? I come here to read good tech articles or articles that stimulate my curiosity and it is sad to see these articles upvoted to the top when so many other good articles at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest continue to languish.

Simplicity bias, kind of like "bikeshedding". A large number of people can read this quickly, agree with it, and upvote it. Whereas articles about optimising machine code for the Apple Silicon CPU, or "Risks to the Glen Canyon Dam" are a lot more niche.

Personally, I follow specific people who regularly submit interesting content, and pay less attention to the homepage.

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