How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
japhr.blogspot.com
How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
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Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#2Jerry Seinfeld used this exact technique to become a great comic. As told by software developer Brad Isaac when he asked Jerry for career advice[0]:
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
"Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis.
[0] http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#3This is fantastic. Another method to "tricking yourself into being awesome" (also called learning) is to jump right in and start working on a project. Like the author, you'll come up with loads of questions that need answering, and if your project is going to be successful, those questions must be answered. Otherwise your project/startup will die.
Personal experience: this is exactly how I learned Ruby on Rails as a non-programmer. I had an idea for a project, so I tried reading books and tutorials for months. Nothing stuck. It just didn't make sense. I couldn't translate the words I was reading into code. So I said "screw it" and started hacking away at my project, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. Progress was slow obstacles were rampant, but it turns out those obstacles are easy to overcome with stack traces and google/stackoverflow!
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#4I spent many years doing something similar, blogging about what I had just learned (no posing of questions, though). I posted once or twice a day in two blogs and what I learned wasn't so much via the content as it was via the research and curation skills I taught myself. To me, research is all about staying committed to the information I am looking for, yet being flexible in my approach (something I learned growing up with a computer, ie, a problem needs solving so I look at all the ways to solve it).
Still get close to 20K pageviews/month in the main blog even though I barely post anymore, which is cool, and the result is the same as your blogging and books...sharing what you learn with others.
Now I'm taking on a new subject/blog. I will try to use your method. Thanks!
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#5Very inspiring stuff. A friend of mine once told himself he'd never be stumped by the same question twice and held himself to it. It's amazing what simple habits can do if you give them time.
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#6This is a great way of working. I just wonder if the books are:
(a) any good?
(b) selling?
There's a huge difference between writing a good book and sticking a couple of notes together. Anyone read the books in question?
EDIT: I didn't see that one of the books was published - search on Amazon gave nothing and all I could find was a buy-my-book landing page. Sorry about that.
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#7This is a great way of working. I just wonder if the books are: (a) any good? (b) selling? There's a huge difference between writing a good book and sticking a couple of notes together. Anyone read the books in question? EDIT: I didn't see that one of the books was published - search on Amazon gave nothing and all I could find was a buy-my-book landing page. Sorry about that.
Did you miss this part: "The Pragmatic Programmers"?
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#8I think you're patting yourself on the back too much.
I was reading about a woman in Cambodia who escaped from torture and near death with her two children and survived in the jungle for 3 years. They never stayed in the same place two days in a row and ate nothing but roots and bugs.
Despite this mother's best efforts, her youngest child starved to death and died in her arms.
A few years later, she founded a safehouse for depressed women who had been raped and tortured like her.
Now SHE is an awesome person and I respect her a lot more.
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#9This is a great way of working. I just wonder if the books are: (a) any good? (b) selling? There's a huge difference between writing a good book and sticking a couple of notes together. Anyone read the books in question? EDIT: I didn't see that one of the books was published - search on Amazon gave nothing and all I could find was a buy-my-book landing page. Sorry about that.
AFAIK many folks have a dream of getting a book published, not gettting it to be a best seller. (Probably getting a book published means less in the digital age but still a cool thing to have done.)
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#10Super story!
This is exactly why we started writing a blog. It has kept is learning and recording new information everyday.
Pretty impressive to see the blog author publishing books on topics he knew nothing about a year ago.