This was another amazingly inspirational talk. I highly recommend it to everyone. It's funny, emotional, well thought through and with everything going on in Prof Pausch's life at the time, one could only hope to leave this type of message to their family / children and the world.
The whole post is gold, but this is the best part:
The point of all this is that it doesn’t matter how many
times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost
get it right. No one is going to know or care about your
failures, and either should you. All you have to do is
learn from them and those around you because…
All that matters in business is that you get it right once.
Steve Yegge's "Math For Programmers" was one of the (too) few posts I've read that actually resulted in action on my part. It made me realize how much I had let my math skills atrophy since college, and I invested a substantial amount of time trying to bring them back up to scratch.
I send this as part of my "last e-mail" to students every semester:
This is the post that could but probably won't change your life: "There’s no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life)" http://sivers.org/kimo . I say "could," because most of you probably won't click the link; of those of you who do, most of you won't read the whole thing; of those of you who do, most of you won't get it; of those who do, most won't implement it. On the off chance that one out of 50 of you let this change your life, however, I'm sending it. Derek Sivers, who posted "There's no speed limit," also wrote a book called Anything You Want, [1] and reading it is probably one of the best ways you can spend an hour.
Why not send that at the start of the school year instead of the end? Maybe along with a challenge to learn your class material in half the semester. Or assign it as an optional reading assignment worth a small bonus % if they submit a brief plan on how they would apply the advice in that article in your own class.
Is the tone of your email what you really intend? To me it reads like "I'm probably wasting my valuable time casting pearls before you swine. But just in case even ONE of you is worthy, here is some good advice from Derek Sivers". I find it dismissive, bordering on contempt.
I can not watch Dick/Rick Hoyt's video without choking up. Whenever I am feeling down and feel that there is no way out, I watch their video for inspiration.
I personally think that this video of Team Hoyt has better details about the story behind their struggle.
Not a blog post, but a great 3 minute video about beginnings from zeFrank. I put the mp3 on my player so when I need a bit of inspiration to kick off something I get it going.
A lot of the links I've seen people post in this thread are the kind of stuff I used to see a lot more on HN. Sure, I enjoy the HTML5/Rails/Python/(insert buzzword) posts, but it's too bad that a lot of new HN members will miss out on awesome posts with titles like "it's not about the idea" or "just ship it" etc.
How come no one mentioned Steve Jobs and his commencement speech at Stanford? It is absolutely one of my favorites. I watch it everytime i feel that i could use a dose of motivation.
I hope to thank Paul for this essay in person at some point in life. This is singularly most important thing I've read that helped me turn my life around.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html
The whole post is gold, but this is the best part:
"The Stewart Method: How Not To Suck" -- http://www.shimweasel.com/2011/05/08/the-stewart-method-how-...
Chris Dixon's "Some lessons learned" -- http://cdixon.org/2011/09/28/some-lessons-learned
"Thrust, Drag and the 10x Effect" -- http://www.tempobook.com/2011/10/25/thrust-drag-and-the-10x-...
http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/12/16/building-super-sc...
http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/im-christian-unless-youre-gay....
The blog post by itself is absolutely amazing, but the followups are what really make it. Link to them after the blog post on the last page.
Men get very strong, when they sight something they can die for.
http://sivers.org/kimo
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761013
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2766060
"The Crickets Have Arthritis"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VrZE8MCnIA
http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/honesty0707?page=all
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers...
This is the post that could but probably won't change your life: "There’s no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life)" http://sivers.org/kimo . I say "could," because most of you probably won't click the link; of those of you who do, most of you won't read the whole thing; of those of you who do, most of you won't get it; of those who do, most won't implement it. On the off chance that one out of 50 of you let this change your life, however, I'm sending it. Derek Sivers, who posted "There's no speed limit," also wrote a book called Anything You Want, [1] and reading it is probably one of the best ways you can spend an hour.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1936719118?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761013
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2766060
And a lot of the things pg wrote. Not a single essay, more the overall picture he discribed.
Is the tone of your email what you really intend? To me it reads like "I'm probably wasting my valuable time casting pearls before you swine. But just in case even ONE of you is worthy, here is some good advice from Derek Sivers". I find it dismissive, bordering on contempt.
I'm just being honest in the e-mail.
Dick and Rick Hoyt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH943Az_lPQ
Derek Redmond, 1992 Olympics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZlXWp6vFdE
I personally think that this video of Team Hoyt has better details about the story behind their struggle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnrLv6z-mM&feature=relat...
"a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to do work worth about $3 million a year."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA
Technically it is a magazine article but I stumbled upon the repost of it on nerd fitness.
I still am not really interested in listening to him speak, but he is a very compelling writer.
Reject The Tyranny of Being Picked: Pick Yourself by Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/03/reject-the-t...
Cage of the Mind - http://www.cstthegate.com/davetrott/2011/12/the-cage-of-the-...
I hope to thank Paul for this essay in person at some point in life. This is singularly most important thing I've read that helped me turn my life around.