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It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

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Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#171

Post by overtomanu »

refenestrator wrote: post #159
maximus-decimus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, When it takes 5 minutes minimum to deploy my code changes to my vms to test, I lose all motivation. Momentum is really the right word and a workflow is just soul sucking.

Spend that time figuring out how to change it to unit tests in your IDE, or making the deployment lighter weight. Work on the meta-problem that makes your problem easier. After all, you've got time if the baseline is low-productivity. And the lessons learned are portable.

Not everything can be unit tested. Figuring out what ide is doing and writing a plugin for what you actually want to do.. How to maintain plugin across ide updates...it's the start of rabbit hole and may not be worth it sometimes..

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#172

Post by fuzzfactor »

allenu wrote: post #32

If we assume doers as being goal-oriented, then I can see it being easier to educate them in ways to help them get closer to their goals faster and more efficiently. On the other hand, someone who doesn't really care about the goal, isn't going to care as much about getting there sooner or in a better fashion. That said, I've found myself in both camps on various projects. When you're working on something where the e…

A real do-er is going to do something worthwhile even when there isn't a specific goal.

>projects were you don't care about the end result, are really brutal

Yup, better to have no goal than a misguided objective, if you can still have decent accomplishments occurring at a non-stop pace.

>it is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

Regardless, I'm going to continue to push to the max in both categories.

So what if it takes twice as much action.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#173

Post by lazide »

bsanr2 wrote: post #163
lazide wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there are people who are do-ers. Not everyone is wired the same. Personally I can’t NOT do things. Regardless of if I get paid, it works out, or I even get yelled at for doing it - I fix things, pull things apart and make them better, clean things up, learn, and solve problems regardless of the discipline. If I’m not doing those things, I feel terrible. If I do those things (and the more the merrier), I feel…

I'd be interested to hear the perspective of the people left in your wake. The cost of engaging with a strong-willed "do-er" is what happens when someone, by the do-er's measure, fails to keep up (or, god forbid, gets in the way). At that point, the do-er's productive ability has to be weighed against their capacity (or track record) for coercion or abuse. Steve Jobs comes to mind. If you've personally received pushb…

I consistently got top ratings from everyone I worked with as a leader and manager, and the issues I mention have been rare - and generally from those I’ve not wanted to be around because I didn’t agree with their approach or didn’t like their ethics. If that answers your question. Some of It is from clearly great pain they have been in, in the past, that had nothing to do with me, but was funneled in my direction when I did not fail like they wanted me to.

And I work hard to ensure what is done is the best that can be, and others don’t get hurt. Which, interesting enough, does involve a lot of meditation.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#174

Post by lazide »

snailysnooze wrote: post #154
lazide wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there are people who are do-ers. Not everyone is wired the same. Personally I can’t NOT do things. Regardless of if I get paid, it works out, or I even get yelled at for doing it - I fix things, pull things apart and make them better, clean things up, learn, and solve problems regardless of the discipline. If I’m not doing those things, I feel terrible. If I do those things (and the more the merrier), I feel…

> So far that includes networking, electrical (permitted, household and commercial), coding, welding, machining, commercial contracts, logging, real estate investment, piloting small aircraft, rock climbing, concrete work (inspected, residential and commercial), fathering 2 healthy strong and well adjusted boys, framing, hydraulic engineering and water delivery design, teaching and mentoring many strong leaders, besp…

Nope, I don’t care for killing. I did get top gun in the academy though.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#175

Post by jmchuster »

imbnwa wrote: post #91
dorkwood wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of 3D animation do you want to do? If you're talking about shaders, you might be doing yourself a disservice with the bottom-up approach. In my opinion, learning to use math functions as tools rather than having a deep understanding of how they work is an equally valid approach. I know several great WebGL developers who really aren't very good at math. Consider the following definitions of the dot product:…

> What sort of 3D animation do you want to do? This is perhaps where I go wrong, as I assume it's 'all the same thing'. I currently work on a web app that provides an editing interface for 2D animation with DOM objects (so, rectangles), so I have a notion of using matrices for camera transforms but the extension into 3D animation seems like another planet. I get what you're saying with the tool perspective, but I'm u…

So, it seems to me that if you already do 2D animation, then figuring out 3D should be something you almost think of as guaranteed. Like it's inevitable that you'd get it right if you put in the time, and then you just make some estimate of like, hmm, maybe 6 months, maybe 3 months, but I'm sure to have figured it out by then.

But I also think that this mindset is something that needs to be learned. Maybe it can only be learned by successfully achieving enough new skills adjacent to things you know. So doing so lets you gain the confidence you'll always figure it out given enough time, and then also maybe gives you a kind of mental pattern of ways to successfully do so.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#176

Post by lazide »

dcx wrote: post #170
lazide wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there are people who are do-ers. Not everyone is wired the same. Personally I can’t NOT do things. Regardless of if I get paid, it works out, or I even get yelled at for doing it - I fix things, pull things apart and make them better, clean things up, learn, and solve problems regardless of the discipline. If I’m not doing those things, I feel terrible. If I do those things (and the more the merrier), I feel…

That seems like extremely useful wiring; it's often an uphill climb for me. Do you have any sense of what is going on under the hood? Why do you feel good if you do these things / bad if you don't? Did this come factory installed, or did things happen in your life which set this in place? Also, do you feel this trait has made your life happy? I happen to know two people who have a similar trait. One, I learned, did i…

Hard to say frankly. Some of it is learned, some pre wired. When I was about 11, and at a friends house, his Dad came home in a rage and started beating him. I intervened, stood up to him (despite him being 2+ ft taller and about 120 lbs bigger than I was at the time and in a raging fury), and made him back down. I remember calculating the odds at the time he would snap and kill me vs back off at the time, and toeing the line I know I would likely get away with to protect my friend. I also remember looking directly into his eyes with cold fury as he raged. My friends Mom talked to my Mom afterwards because she was worried I would get myself killed. My mom made sure to let them know if the father ever did anything like that again, the Sheriff’s would be visiting and not in a friendly way. Both of us have always been that way.

I wouldn’t describe my life as easy - but it has been easier than a great many, and the traumas I’ve been exposed to I’ve handled better than most near as I can tell from this, and haven’t been made worse by it. I haven’t ever really enjoyed easy for the sake of easy?

If and when I feel that I pushed and did what I could, as hard as I could, that feels, at worst, ok. Usually even good? If I made a difference, did something I did not know or others did not know was possible, or helped someone in need and made a difference - that is even better. It is often hard to know the results of ones actions, but I do the best I can. Sometimes, you’re not allowed to know. During my EMT clinical rotations, I held the hand of and calmed an older man with obstructive stroke as they attempted to (and failed) to stent him, as I was the only one with the right type of blood pressure measuring equipment, and I wonder sometimes how he did. He was very scared, and rightfully so - but we aren’t allowed to follow up. His story is one of many I’d like to know, but never will.

When I don’t do the best I can, it feels like I’m wasting my limited time here, and that feels terrible, because I know often what could be. The further I diverge, or even worse, if I don’t live my values - being honest, working hard to make the right thing happen for everyone, learning and pushing myself to grow, facing harder truths or working to improve from mistakes or weaknesses I’ve discovered - the more it bothers me - at first, like a mosquito in the back of my mind, then like a knife in the gut if I refuse to listen.

When I live in line with my values, take care of what is important to me, that is - the right thing. It feels good. Even if it is brutally or emotionally hard work, it feels right, I sleep well, and I’m ready to go the next day.

Avoidance and denial is what hurts.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#177

Post by scns »

karmakaze wrote: post #137
zeroxfe wrote: post #107

I really think that action changes attitude faster than attitude changes action. Learning this the hard way in my 40s, it's been really life changing for me. Particularly when you're depressed, demotivated, find yourself procrastinating, etc. You can try this yourself -- the next time you're feeling demotivated, start with the smallest amount of tiny measurable action. If you can't get out of bed, move your fingers,…

My favorite way when I'm not up to doing something is to merely prepare an environment for the thing I'm not going to do right now in the simplest ways. Create a new empty directory not even thinking about its name. CD into it, leave a terminal tab in that directory. Maybe I'll copy/paste a config/makefile or something and search/replace the copied name with the arbitrary directory name. And so on. Some point along t…

I would recomend recommend adding the language specific .gitignore file.

(edit) https://github.com/github/gitignore

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#178

Post by dcx »

lazide wrote: post #176
dcx wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like extremely useful wiring; it's often an uphill climb for me. Do you have any sense of what is going on under the hood? Why do you feel good if you do these things / bad if you don't? Did this come factory installed, or did things happen in your life which set this in place? Also, do you feel this trait has made your life happy? I happen to know two people who have a similar trait. One, I learned, did i…

Hard to say frankly. Some of it is learned, some pre wired. When I was about 11, and at a friends house, his Dad came home in a rage and started beating him. I intervened, stood up to him (despite him being 2+ ft taller and about 120 lbs bigger than I was at the time and in a raging fury), and made him back down. I remember calculating the odds at the time he would snap and kill me vs back off at the time, and toeing…

Very interesting. I think I understand where you're coming from, and also why this is trait is not common.

The values you place focus on are particularly well developed, and it's helpful to see how important they are to you. I tend to default to a goal orientation, with values mostly "implied in" through choices of goals at various levels. I'm going to think about how I might use some of these ideas in my life. Thanks for taking the time!

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#179

Post by Uhhrrr »

This is similar to something he said in an interview long ago: "I think the ability to ship a product is far more important because someone who’s not very creative can have little bouts of creativity, but someone who’s not very productive doesn’t have a bout of productivity and ship a product. You just have to grind it out."
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