I really enjoyed this, thanks for sharing. My takeaway is don't be afraid to put an unreasonable amount of time towards something.
It reminds me of PG's essay "The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius", which is like a hack on this idea. If you're obsessively interested in something, you're bound to spend an unreasonable amount of time on it.
Taking it even farther, there's a Revisionist History episode on the song Hallelujah, who's original version took over two years to write. The two components to "experimental" genius: time and iteration.
What about them, who embraced the grind, spent unreasonable amount of time, money and effort, but were not successful? Doesn't that look so obviously incorrect in retrospect that we make jokes about those people?
According to the article, ignorance (of the complexity) is one of the best conditions when starting large projects.
I have heard anecdotes from people finishing large projects that they would have never started had they known how hard it would have been.
Not everyone can turn their ignorant mind on and will always think about all sorts of problems at the start of a project, but perhaps it helps to not get intimidated or blocked by them and get into a mindset that "we'll cross that bridge when we get there".
The is a real opportunity cost when completing these 'large projects' that often becomes visible at the very end of the endeavour. Ignorance can be a bliss - ignorance can be devastating. At the end you need to decide on case by case basis what is the best attitude in order to proceed in the best interest of all stakeholders.
As far as I can tell, reading documentation - not in snippets, to remember the details of something you know how to do, but top-to-bottom, to learn capabilities you didn’t know existed.
Start with ignorance, but then make the schleps as conscious and explicit as possible?
People literally assemble jigsaws and exercise on treadmills in their spare time. Repeatedly! So it seems that even the most apparently mechanical tasks can be made interesting with some creative engagement.
In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and - SNAP - the job's a game -- Mary Poppins
There is an army of people with weird hobbies that keep this world running. The people maintaining OpenSSL, the Open Street Map contributors, the people who maintain lists of countries and time zones, and so on.
I think that the pendulum has swung too far the other way: Startups that get funded are disproportionately trying to solve some annoyance. There's no room for whimsy or lovable products (like Apple and Blackberry were early on). There's no room for disrupting an entrenched player with an agile team. No. Solve a pain point or no funding for you.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 52.0 ms ] threadIt reminds me of PG's essay "The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius", which is like a hack on this idea. If you're obsessively interested in something, you're bound to spend an unreasonable amount of time on it.
Taking it even farther, there's a Revisionist History episode on the song Hallelujah, who's original version took over two years to write. The two components to "experimental" genius: time and iteration.
http://www.paulgraham.com/genius.html https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/hallelujah/
What about them, who embraced the grind, spent unreasonable amount of time, money and effort, but were not successful? Doesn't that look so obviously incorrect in retrospect that we make jokes about those people?
I have heard anecdotes from people finishing large projects that they would have never started had they known how hard it would have been.
Not everyone can turn their ignorant mind on and will always think about all sorts of problems at the start of a project, but perhaps it helps to not get intimidated or blocked by them and get into a mindset that "we'll cross that bridge when we get there".
Otherwise you might fall in the trap thinking just because a problem is hard, it's worth starting a startup to solve it.
* AWS permissions management, and IAM in general.
* Data cleansing and data governance at scale.
* IoT costing and specifications.
* Rural broadband, in all its forms and associated problems. This one is especially close to the heart for me in Wisconsin.
* Negotiate best offers on service renewal.
People literally assemble jigsaws and exercise on treadmills in their spare time. Repeatedly! So it seems that even the most apparently mechanical tasks can be made interesting with some creative engagement.
In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and - SNAP - the job's a game -- Mary Poppins
Blessed be their souls.