Encourage others to take impossible risks.
Theire failure and corpses build a bridge to your success.
Try to see obnoxious "You-can-do-it-talks" not as ego-pumping, but as leveraging of stupid people into free R&D.
Do not be first, find others who are stupid enough to develop and research for you- invest just enough, to become a goto adress once they are desperat- skin the carcasses.
Be the general in the fifth row of the army, who will be painted as victorious, while all those "inspired" men, are laying dead and dieing at his horses feet.
Some people have bad motivations, but that is not true for everyone saying these things.
I had no choice, I couldn't do anything but start a business, I was a failure as an employee because of how I looked at life and the process of building/creating. I was always at odds with my employers to make things work better. (I was told to work slower and less hard because I made others look bad sigh)
So what do you say to someone like me? I need to hear "you can do it" because even though I am inclined to do it anyways, it's still really hard to build your own business.
This kind of information is incredibly helpful (encouraging) for me in my situation at this point in time. For many others it's not good advice.
You couldn't pay me enough to have a boring 9-5 job where you clock in every day and do the same thing for 20 years that you're not really that great at. Some people have a built in character for taking these kinds of risks. I actively turn down investment money to fight my away from lifestyles that you have described. Everybody dies, even the guy safe in his treehouse, next to the water cooler from a heart attack built up of years of pointless stress worrying over someone else's dream.
> Do not be first, find others who are stupid enough to develop and research for you- invest just enough, to become a goto adress once they are desperat- skin the carcasses.
This strategy has an actual MBA term--it's called the "fast follower".
Basically, the first guy proves the market and takes all the arrows. The second guy reaps the vast majority of the profit in the space.
It's why semiconductor companies are so stagnant, for example, and simply buy each other rather than generate genuinely new, interesting products.
Lol this way you will never start because guess what when 4 people ahead of you die, you will just turn back. You are not good to walk on their corpse. Imo this is totally wrong way of doing anything.
Sounds like a depressing fantasy painted as brutal reality. Maybe an enticing belief for those of us here who are also depressed, but just a fantasy nonetheless.
Similarly, try to convince people that competition is inherently unfair, and that it shouldn’t exist. They will either become apathetic or invest their effort into trying to undermine competition itself, making it far easier on everybody else who’s focused on competing.
> Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.
--- Jake the Dog [1]
Maybe not exactly on-topic, but ever since I heard this quote it's been my mantra whenever I'm learning something new. For example I took a beginner's hip hop dancing class last night. A younger me would have been very embarrassed at how uncoordinated I was. That embarrassment probably would have kept me from going back to the class. That mantra helps me remember that it's natural to be bad at first, and you simply have to be at peace with the fact that you're going to suck for a while if you're ever going to actually build the skill.
Somewhere in my career I realized this as well and it has been incredibly helpful.
I call it "embrace the suckiness". When faced with a problem that seems impossible because you lack so much knowledge you are just going to have to accept that you suck for a little while. You have to stay calm and break the problem down into smaller problems and start trying the most retarded things you can think of. Sure, you'll struggle. And yes, half of what you try is going to be worthless, but you're acquiring knowledge and understanding at every step. Eventually it'll all make sense. You have to stay confident that there's light at the end of the tunnel. Solving tough problems and learning new things is all about persistence.
I can't express how important this mindset is for me. It's so statisfying to know that I can handle any problem thrown at me and I won't freak out or me give up. I just keep sucking until I don't.
It's exceptionally hard to start when the end results (i.e. other more experienced people) are so graceful or impressive. It makes the beginning seem like such a farce. Like going to the gym and deadlifting an empty bar beside someone pulling 5 or 6 hundred pounds off the floor.
Congrats on taking the first class! I forced myself to do something similar after a nasty breakup, and the first 4-6 classes were brutal. Then I finally got the hang of it!
So I've seen this advice before and I do see it's value, but it doesn't quite work for me.
I know that sucking when you're new at something is expected and merely a step towards the goal, but that doesn't stop me from still feeling inadequate.
The knowing/feeling dichotomy is something I struggle a lot with, and I haven't quite found the solution to that yet.
The question is prepare more vs take a shot. Rules of thumb advocating one versus the other are abound. Sun Tzu extols the virtue of more preparation to defeat the enemy before engaging, while also recommending the warrior that does not load his supply wagons twice nor wait for a second group of reinforcements. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, Faint heart never won fair lady etc.
So there is advice advocating both, what to do?
I find that when you have an endeavor with several essential areas, example with a triathlon you need to swim bike and run to complete it. Similarly for a business you need a product-service and you need customers to sell it to etc. Then the best approach is to get your toe wet in each area to get a feel for what is involved. So a mistaken approach is to spend all your time building a product that you think is good enough before starting to talk to customers. You need parallel efforts so that you can determine the right ratio of effort in each area to succeed. In war you would prepare your army but you would also have a few guys harassing the enemy to feel them out...
It depends on what are the consequences for failure. In war, lack of preparation means death of your men at minimum, and the collapse of your nation at worst. In training, failure makes you stronger.
It's a good argument for managers to create a working environment where employees are not afraid to fail. I absolutely agree that starting early is the best and fastest way to learn. Too many people avoid it because of the negative consequences for making mistakes.
Its almost as if reality is really complex and pithy slogans are useless for anything other than grandstanding because each situation needs to be appraised on its own terms
In the world of software, I think this counterpoint definitely applies. When faced with a new problem, especially when greenfielding, I sometimes have the impulse to just jump in and start writing code. Almost every time that I succumb to that impulse for a complex problem, I discover weird edge cases and lots of little issues which could have been avoided by further contemplation at the drawing board. Stated in a similar format: a lot of refactoring can be prevented by a few extra hours at the whiteboard.
It's perhaps worth keeping in mind that Kleon is giving this advice about writing books, and that in context, this isn't "you can do it" pithy advice of the sort that DayDollar's comment is mocking. The quote from David McCullough seems to be at the heart of his point:
"When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it’s when you start writing that you really find out what you don’t know and need to know."
You do have to do some research; you don't charge into your project with no plan. But not only does trying to make the Most Bestest Completest Plan Ever end up being a form of procrastination (see all those folks who've spent years doing worldbuilding for their great epic fantasy novel but still can't tell you what the protagonist's character arc is, or possibly even who the protagonist is, period), it turns out that once you start actually working on the project you get a much, much better sense of what the plan needs to be. You figure out what to write in that part of your outline that says "subplot about Gail's past starts here". You start figuring out more about what the Thing your [Insert Thing] as a Service startup actually needs to insert and so on.
Exactly. People somehow mis-read this as generic advice perseverance porn or something like that when the original essay is just about starting something like an essay/noel (while feeling underprepared) vs. justifying delays through excessive research
I've always taken this approach. Before I wrote KSCrash [1], I didn't have a CLUE how crash managers worked. In fact, here's my first implementation of a crash handler [2], which did EVERYTHING wrong. I ended up innovating a number of things that were thought impossible at the time, but are commonplace today (such as tapping into the Mach error handlers).
It was the same for the Musashi 68000 emulator [3]. Before I wrote this, I had no experience with emulation other than playing one of the Pac Man emulators in the 90s, and yet the first iteration outperformed the x86 assembler core in Mame by 15%, and thus replaced it in the next version.
6 months ago, I didn't have a CLUE how ieee754 floating point worked. Now I've developed a floating point compression algorithm [4], which is being used in Concise Binary Encoding [5], also something I've never tried before.
You absolutely should try diving into things before you know what you're getting into. Even if it doesn't turn out the way you wanted, you're in for one hell of a ride, and what you'll learn is priceless.
Struggled with this a lot when I started studying foreign language.
I spent way too much time deciding between Turkish, Russian or Japanese and trying to justify my decision with arbitrary metrics of usefulness.
In the end I went with Japanese as I had the most interest in the culture, but then ran into another phase of paralysis by analysis in determining the most efficient study methods.
Finally bought a "recommended" textbook, instead of endlessly searching for the perfect learning resource and just got to it
I'm going through this now; I've wanted to learn Esperanto for awhile now, had similar experience going through YouTube trying to find the most optimal way of learning it, looking at reviews of different methods, when in reality I would have been better off choosing virtually any of the tutorials out there and just going with it.
To those curious, I've settled on Duolingo just because I realized I should just choose something, and it's free.
You don't really want to waste your time trying to understand why you made a choice.
If you're like me and like learning through trial and error, then try to think of it this way.
When you are trying to choose between several different methods to learn something, you're probably going to pick the most efficient method that you could understand.
If you've decided to study with "free" study tools or a free textbook, then you're probably going to pick the one that you have the least knowledge about.
Some people need a push to dive in, because they'll never feel ready. That's whom the article uses as examples.
OTHER people though, they know that, from where they are at now, they'll be past the "challenged" stage and be put into the "fear" response - overwhelmed, unable to make progress forward because the anxiety is crippling. The constant pushing from those who have been in the first group just makes the people in the second group feel worse.
We should all consider if we're delaying for good/effective/self-helping reasons, or if we're doing so for bad/ineffective/procrastination reasons, and then we should act appropriately.
And no one should shame anyone for their choices. Maybe the choice is wrong, maybe we're identifying ourselves as having the wrong quality of reasoning...but who would know better than ourselves?
Imposter Syndrome sucks - but the reality of it is no reason to cripple yourself by diving into situations you know you aren't ready for, and then flailing and validating the feelings you had.
I think the message of this article is a good one, perhaps not always applicable depending (of course) on the individual scenario and circumstances, but a worthwhile message nonetheless. I think a large part of whether or not it applies is the risk assessment. If the risk is extremely great should failure occur and there are not major time constraints, preparation should be careful and considered. As the idiom goes, "Fortune favors the prepared".
Many, like myself, have been struck by this particular paralysis of analysis, stuck in a studious stupefaction of research and preparation, in part due to fear of failure and in part due to never feeling prepared enough. My particular case is of pursuing the Red Hat Certified System Administrator certification. I have yet to take the exam, but have put in a fair bit of time of study with books and with online resources (some of which were paid subscriptions, like LinuxAcademy). Of course, the stakes aren't extremely high - if I were to fail, I'd be out $400. Not a huge amount of money but not small change either. Needless to say, I still want to get the certification but have yet to motivate myself to commit to it. Suffice it to say, I'm one of those people that thrives and prospers under deadlines, whether said deadlines are artificial or are a true limitation on my window of preparation.
I'm also preparing for the RHCSA! It's grueling but now that I'm getting close I feel way more confident in Linux. I'd always heard it was the "entry level" cert (which is technically true) but at least in my eyes it really means something. It's not something you can cram for and wing and still pass.
Agree 100%. You can research the market, see who else is out there in your line of work, ask questions, make plans....but to make progress you just get something out there and let it loose on users and potential customers.
However this quote is referencing writing, and the author is primarily in print. Getting started is definitely key, but the kind of work being referred to here isn't typically experimented and iterated on once it's published.
This can potentially fatal for the career of a junior engineer. For personal projects it’s fine, but taking too much risk or too big a task on without clear boundaries can make you look like you can’t deliver or learn too slowly.
Unless I really trusted my boss I wouldn’t try this :(
Perfectionism and analysis paralysis are common obstacles to progress. Also fear of failure. In June of this year I decided to learn music theory and to play piano, almost on a whim, and write a blog post daily about what I learned that day[1]. I've named this year-long project "Poseur to Composer".
I'm almost halfway through and realise I have no innate abilities in music. Fortunately the application of music is very broad and there are many kinds of composers, so I can still achieve my goal. Also taking a lot of personal analytics with DailyDiary.com that I can learn from once the project is over.
man, this is so true. I have been working on a side project off and on for 5 years. sometimes I take months off, other I take 1 year, just to wait for right time...
This month I said f*ck it and started to work on it again.
I can’t agree more. The process of struggling through the doing part is one of the best ways to learn the subject matter. Read up on the fundamentals and get started.
That depends on your area of activity. If others have to pay for your failures with their time, money, health or lives, this is just somewhere between ruthless and unconscionable.
[+] [-] DayDollar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobertRoberts|6 years ago|reply
I had no choice, I couldn't do anything but start a business, I was a failure as an employee because of how I looked at life and the process of building/creating. I was always at odds with my employers to make things work better. (I was told to work slower and less hard because I made others look bad sigh)
So what do you say to someone like me? I need to hear "you can do it" because even though I am inclined to do it anyways, it's still really hard to build your own business.
This kind of information is incredibly helpful (encouraging) for me in my situation at this point in time. For many others it's not good advice.
[+] [-] friendlybus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsder|6 years ago|reply
This strategy has an actual MBA term--it's called the "fast follower".
Basically, the first guy proves the market and takes all the arrows. The second guy reaps the vast majority of the profit in the space.
It's why semiconductor companies are so stagnant, for example, and simply buy each other rather than generate genuinely new, interesting products.
[+] [-] cryptozeus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fellow_human|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SquishyPanda23|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] oneshoe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sophistifunk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AmericanChopper|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaycebasques|6 years ago|reply
--- Jake the Dog [1]
Maybe not exactly on-topic, but ever since I heard this quote it's been my mantra whenever I'm learning something new. For example I took a beginner's hip hop dancing class last night. A younger me would have been very embarrassed at how uncoordinated I was. That embarrassment probably would have kept me from going back to the class. That mantra helps me remember that it's natural to be bad at first, and you simply have to be at peace with the fact that you're going to suck for a while if you're ever going to actually build the skill.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8YiTeU9XU
[+] [-] photonios|6 years ago|reply
I call it "embrace the suckiness". When faced with a problem that seems impossible because you lack so much knowledge you are just going to have to accept that you suck for a little while. You have to stay calm and break the problem down into smaller problems and start trying the most retarded things you can think of. Sure, you'll struggle. And yes, half of what you try is going to be worthless, but you're acquiring knowledge and understanding at every step. Eventually it'll all make sense. You have to stay confident that there's light at the end of the tunnel. Solving tough problems and learning new things is all about persistence.
I can't express how important this mindset is for me. It's so statisfying to know that I can handle any problem thrown at me and I won't freak out or me give up. I just keep sucking until I don't.
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|6 years ago|reply
But yeah, you have to start somewhere.
[+] [-] wsinks|6 years ago|reply
Glad you aspire to be more like Jake the Dog.
[+] [-] Doxin|6 years ago|reply
I know that sucking when you're new at something is expected and merely a step towards the goal, but that doesn't stop me from still feeling inadequate.
The knowing/feeling dichotomy is something I struggle a lot with, and I haven't quite found the solution to that yet.
[+] [-] riazrizvi|6 years ago|reply
So there is advice advocating both, what to do?
I find that when you have an endeavor with several essential areas, example with a triathlon you need to swim bike and run to complete it. Similarly for a business you need a product-service and you need customers to sell it to etc. Then the best approach is to get your toe wet in each area to get a feel for what is involved. So a mistaken approach is to spend all your time building a product that you think is good enough before starting to talk to customers. You need parallel efforts so that you can determine the right ratio of effort in each area to succeed. In war you would prepare your army but you would also have a few guys harassing the enemy to feel them out...
[+] [-] derialstrazus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeulike|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulryanrogers|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eindiran|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrowland|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] an_d_rew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuzzfactor|6 years ago|reply
It's possible to outperform other laboratories by accomplishing both regardless.
Working harder AND smarter has its unforseen advantages.
[+] [-] rfrey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipotle_coyote|6 years ago|reply
"When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it’s when you start writing that you really find out what you don’t know and need to know."
You do have to do some research; you don't charge into your project with no plan. But not only does trying to make the Most Bestest Completest Plan Ever end up being a form of procrastination (see all those folks who've spent years doing worldbuilding for their great epic fantasy novel but still can't tell you what the protagonist's character arc is, or possibly even who the protagonist is, period), it turns out that once you start actually working on the project you get a much, much better sense of what the plan needs to be. You figure out what to write in that part of your outline that says "subplot about Gail's past starts here". You start figuring out more about what the Thing your [Insert Thing] as a Service startup actually needs to insert and so on.
[+] [-] kpennell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstenerud|6 years ago|reply
It was the same for the Musashi 68000 emulator [3]. Before I wrote this, I had no experience with emulation other than playing one of the Pac Man emulators in the 90s, and yet the first iteration outperformed the x86 assembler core in Mame by 15%, and thus replaced it in the next version.
6 months ago, I didn't have a CLUE how ieee754 floating point worked. Now I've developed a floating point compression algorithm [4], which is being used in Concise Binary Encoding [5], also something I've never tried before.
You absolutely should try diving into things before you know what you're getting into. Even if it doesn't turn out the way you wanted, you're in for one hell of a ride, and what you'll learn is priceless.
[1] https://github.com/kstenerud/KSCrash
[2] https://github.com/kstenerud/Crash-Manager
[3] https://github.com/kstenerud/musashi/
[4] https://github.com/kstenerud/compact-float
[5] https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-binary-encoding
[+] [-] tentboy|6 years ago|reply
I spent way too much time deciding between Turkish, Russian or Japanese and trying to justify my decision with arbitrary metrics of usefulness.
In the end I went with Japanese as I had the most interest in the culture, but then ran into another phase of paralysis by analysis in determining the most efficient study methods.
Finally bought a "recommended" textbook, instead of endlessly searching for the perfect learning resource and just got to it
[+] [-] tombert|6 years ago|reply
To those curious, I've settled on Duolingo just because I realized I should just choose something, and it's free.
[+] [-] downvoted|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergothus|6 years ago|reply
OTHER people though, they know that, from where they are at now, they'll be past the "challenged" stage and be put into the "fear" response - overwhelmed, unable to make progress forward because the anxiety is crippling. The constant pushing from those who have been in the first group just makes the people in the second group feel worse.
We should all consider if we're delaying for good/effective/self-helping reasons, or if we're doing so for bad/ineffective/procrastination reasons, and then we should act appropriately.
And no one should shame anyone for their choices. Maybe the choice is wrong, maybe we're identifying ourselves as having the wrong quality of reasoning...but who would know better than ourselves?
Imposter Syndrome sucks - but the reality of it is no reason to cripple yourself by diving into situations you know you aren't ready for, and then flailing and validating the feelings you had.
[+] [-] FillardMillmore|6 years ago|reply
Many, like myself, have been struck by this particular paralysis of analysis, stuck in a studious stupefaction of research and preparation, in part due to fear of failure and in part due to never feeling prepared enough. My particular case is of pursuing the Red Hat Certified System Administrator certification. I have yet to take the exam, but have put in a fair bit of time of study with books and with online resources (some of which were paid subscriptions, like LinuxAcademy). Of course, the stakes aren't extremely high - if I were to fail, I'd be out $400. Not a huge amount of money but not small change either. Needless to say, I still want to get the certification but have yet to motivate myself to commit to it. Suffice it to say, I'm one of those people that thrives and prospers under deadlines, whether said deadlines are artificial or are a true limitation on my window of preparation.
[+] [-] freedomben|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geniium|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrowMeAwayOkay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdcravens|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] algaeontoast|6 years ago|reply
Unless I really trusted my boss I wouldn’t try this :(
[+] [-] thrifter|6 years ago|reply
I'm almost halfway through and realise I have no innate abilities in music. Fortunately the application of music is very broad and there are many kinds of composers, so I can still achieve my goal. Also taking a lot of personal analytics with DailyDiary.com that I can learn from once the project is over.
[1] http://poseurtocomposer.com/
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] asdfman123|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kureikain|6 years ago|reply
This month I said f*ck it and started to work on it again.
[+] [-] nbrempel|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] masterrobot|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradgnar|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] m463|6 years ago|reply