Is telling AI to do thing, doing the thing?
The more I use AI to do the thing, the more it feels like I didn't do the thing.
Doing the thing is doing the thing
31–40 of 196 posts
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I'm tempted to print this post out and hang it for inspiration. But I guess that would also not be doing the thing.
I have bad ADHD and printed the strangestloop.io blog post out and put it on the wall by my work desk in Oct 2023 according to the printout timestamp. I still haven't done the thing in some meaningful areas, and the print has honestly kind of been dispiriting. I'm going to take this post as the prompt to take it down.
[deleted]
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#33"Doing it badly is doing the thing." This one works for me, and I've learned it from a post on HN. Whenever I feel stuck or overthink how to do something, just do it first - even with all the flaws that I'm already aware of, and if it feels almost painful to do it so badly. Then improve it a bit, then a bit, then before I know it a clear picture start to emerge... Feels like magic.
Except you do this in a corporate setting and they will stop you the second it works. And then you are stuck maintaining a barely working version forever. I learned this the bad way, but now I just lie and say it doesn't work until it's good enough for me
Everyone's threshold is different. I aspire to "move fast and break things", but more often than not, I obsess over the rough edges.
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess you understand this and are making a joke, but that "attack" would appear to be intentional (and motivating). I find that I don't have major issues doing a thing once I get started on it. The main problem is choosing from among many things that I could reasonably consider "the thing", and then feeling confident enough in that choice to start.
This sounds not too dissimilar to the release the POC to prod mentality. There are times where you obviously need to do the thing to understand the thing to see the process of doing the thing. This allows for breaking the process down into better steps. Just writing code to do things you think is doing thing but prove not to do the thing when actually doing the thing is common.
I'm talking about having completely different, unstarted, overall projects in mind.
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#35On the other hand.. planning, preparation and mise-en-place can help with doing the thing.
But only if you end up doing the thing (and avoid analysis paralysis)
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#36Is planning, like deciding how to position your troops in battle, doing the thing?
Planning is doing the planning thing, but it is not doing the battle thing.
And running the marathon is just running the marathon? I disagree. Big part of running the marathon is in the preparation. Weeks after weeks of training and not skipping a single session. The marathon itself is the tip of the iceberg; important but not the whole "thing".
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#37"Doing it badly is doing the thing." This one works for me, and I've learned it from a post on HN. Whenever I feel stuck or overthink how to do something, just do it first - even with all the flaws that I'm already aware of, and if it feels almost painful to do it so badly. Then improve it a bit, then a bit, then before I know it a clear picture start to emerge... Feels like magic.
"When in doubt, use brute force."
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#38I used to think this. Then I noticed how often "preparation" became its own infinite loop. At work we built something from a 2-page spec in 4 months. The competing team spent 8 months on architecture docs before writing code. We shipped. They pivoted three times and eventually disbanded. Planning has diminishing returns. The first 20% of planning catches 80% of the problems. Everything after that is usually anxiety d…
I think you may have slightly misunderstood the article. "Preparation" isn't mentioned explicitly, but by my reading it would come firmly under "is not doing the thing".
Getting everyone to fall in love with the thing is not doing the thing... learned this as a data scientist brought in to work on a project which ended soon thereafter. A team of 20 people spent 1.5 years getting people to love an idea which never materialized. Time was wasted because the technical limitations and issues came too late... it died as a 40 page postmortem that will never see daylight.
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#39"Doing it badly is doing the thing." This one works for me, and I've learned it from a post on HN. Whenever I feel stuck or overthink how to do something, just do it first - even with all the flaws that I'm already aware of, and if it feels almost painful to do it so badly. Then improve it a bit, then a bit, then before I know it a clear picture start to emerge... Feels like magic.
"Everything worth doing is worth doing badly."
Got me through many a rough spot.
Re: Doing the thing is doing the thing
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Planning is doing the planning thing, but it is not doing the battle thing.
And running the marathon is just running the marathon? I disagree. Big part of running the marathon is in the preparation. Weeks after weeks of training and not skipping a single session. The marathon itself is the tip of the iceberg; important but not the whole "thing".
It depends on your thing. If the marathon was just the motivation, your thing is running... if the marathon was the bucketlist item, it is the thing.