Ask HN: What are your sources of inspiration and motivation?
I was wondering what other members of the HN community found as sources of inspiration and motivation. Maybe it's a book, a quotation, a poem, an image, a movie, a project you worked on, etc.
For example, I've always enjoyed this poem by E. Dickinson - a concise recipe for being honest to yourself and persevering.
"Lad of Athens, faithful be To Thyself, And Mystery— All the rest is Perjury—"
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lad_of_Athens,_faithful_be
My hope is that this thread will become full of good sources and discussion.
Thanks!
87 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] thread0.99^365 = 0.03
This one thing always motivates me to put the extra effort in everything I do. Good luck mate :-)
I upvoted anyways though, because it really is beautiful.
1: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html
2: https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu02sene#page/n7/mo...
That being said: Realising your spheres of control and the limits of control helped a lot with anxiety. Stoicism is kind of like math. It's a concept to life a life. It's worth nothing if you only read the texts. You have to practice and ingrain the concepts. Well you even have to really understand the concepts. I did neither. It's still comforting and calming to read the ancient texts.
It helps with anxiety as it helps to put things in perspective. As it challenges you to conquer your fear.
As for depression... I can only speak for myself but but reading the ancient texts helps you to realize your role in the world and to bring back your unrealistic thoughts into productive ones. Albert Ellis used stoic philosophy as a building block of CBT. Reading the originals is always worth it.
As for the perspective on emotions: Yes. Stoicism has some very radical views on emotions. I'm not a stoic and I don't want to be one but basically the overall idea is to act despite emotions. Don't ignore them, don't suppress them but accept them and act despite them.
It's difficult and it's not a cheesy solution to all your problem. But it's worth a read. It's the foundation of Christianity so it's not that far away from western society. Don't take it as religion. Read it critical in the historic context and read other books but I've found it worthwhile.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/019...
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
NB I suspect i like this because of the Mandela connection with one of the all time great rugby stories.
Actually at the moment - I'm finding this mountain biking video rather inspiring - mainly because of the music and wonderful scenery that I've climbed/walked (rather than cycled) over:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ_IQS3VKjA
Get action. Do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.
Scholars have interpreted this quote, and Teddy's overall crazed drive as his way of staving off depression.
And from his counsin, FDR:
There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
A few others that I've collected off of HN comments:
Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which way works better. - John Carmack
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. - this, or some variation of this, was used in advertising for Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition
1) What are the most important problems in your field? 2) Are you working on one of them? 3) Why not?
[1] http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaIvk1cSyG8
I seriously I find that kid's enthusiasm inspirational. Sure, maybe learning to ride a bike is really no big deal, but the euphoria of having truly mastered something new is incredible.
I totally agree with you, for me it's the euphoria of seeing it work, after days or weeks of poking and reading and prodding and reading some more and scratching your head and re-reading the same things.
That light-bulb moment is addicting, that's what keeps me going.
Edit: There also seems to be a little bit of correlation between how long it takes to make it work, and how great it feels seeing it finally do it's thing. That can be a source of encouragement to take on a project that's a bigger than your previous one.
Being the 21-year-old guy who didn't learn how to ride a bike when growing up I am, this has actually motivated me to do exactly that, as a start.
* Explosions in the Sky
* Mogwai
* This Will Destroy You
* The American Dollar
* Tycho
"It started with functional programming, one of the academic topics which has been discussed since the 60s but never took off."
You seem to frequent HN, so surely you must be aware that functional programming actually took off in the end - just now. In the last 5 years it went from something that people would give you strange looks over mentioning, to The Hottest Thing in programming. "Functional" is now synonymous with awesome and something people brag about (whether they understand it or not is another thing, but that's how things are with fashion).
Functional programming is an amazing tool, but I found it super hard to program real world applications. Object oriented programming is much more useful for that, because it represents more effectively the world that we live in, which is composed of objects that talk to each other.
Yes, functional is now cool and awesome and hackerish. Nothing wrong with that. However, while it does make you smarter (since it gives you a new viewpoint and is a new skill), it does not mean that you need to apply it everywhere.
I'll add that us in HN live in a bubble and what we read here is not representative of real world. Of all programmers I know only two really know and have successfully coded stuff with functional programming. So... It has not taken off in my opinion. There seems to be more eyes looking at it, or maybe people using it are more vocal so we read more about it.
Or, if you prefer a shorter version with music:http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QmD6QwI9nXA
"When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard."
which is part of a pg comment on an HN thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512096
Same with the ideas - I have tons of ideas, enough for decades of coding. Unfortunately most of these fun things eat up a lot time. Browsing Reddit is fun, but not productive at all.
Inspiration: High quality work in pure and applied mathematics, physical science, and music.
This is an awesome Saturday question! Recently, I wrote a blog post about how to capture motivation and turn them into actions.
Here it is: http://blog.bottega8.com/capturing-moments-of-motivation-and...
The mere thought of wasting this alignment of circumstance always spurs me to action.
I saw technology as one way to help address this complex problem. I took a bunch of night classes in CS, and I'll be graduating with a Masters in CS from a full-time program in May. I wish I started down this path earlier because there is so much to do, but I guess that's how life is. I've found that I am happiest when I am giving to and empowering others, and the technological revolution we are currently living through enables us to do this at an amazing scale. I feel very fortunate to be alive at this time in history, and to have had a path in life that enabled me to find Computer Science. This is what motivates me to work relentlessly every day.
In peace, Mike
the American Dream was not a possiblity for everyone
and
it is very difficult for her
No rational person thinks it is easy in the United States to go from being low-income to high-income. But hopefully also no rational person thinks it is "not a possibility for everyone" as you first said.
I went from a very low-income family to very high-income myself, so I know it is possible.
There are plenty of rational people who believe that and I'm certain they could provide you with convincing arguments for their stance.
That's actually one of the things that originally drew me to computer science--code is inherently democratizing. It only takes a small, core group of people to build something world-class, provided that core group knows what the hell they're doing. Unlike just about any other field out there, software is something anyone can create. And as hardware has become more commoditized and virtualized, the barriers to entry have been reduced almost purely to knowledge and effort.
"Recorded in Seattle at Reciprocal Recording by Jack Endino for $600."
I read that after Nirvana had already gone on to be one of the biggest bands in the world. But here was their first commercial album, where they started out & just before they made Nevermind, and the cost of making that first album was so much less than I'd ever thought. It made things seem possible, that you can start with whatever you have. It meant you couldn't blame a lack of money; if you had $600, you could make an album. Nirvana taught me to bootstrap.
It gives me the motivation to work towards a goal which lies tens, hundreds, maybe a thousand years in the future.
Seeing this video puts my own selfish needs and feelings in perspective, and inspires me to do my little part in making humanity just a little bit better.
As for reading, a few things popped into my head in no particular order:
The Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino
Emerson's Essays, particularly "Self Reliance"
Biographies of people like James Clerk Maxwell and Tesla
If, by Kipling
Any of Bucky Fuller's books
And really, just look around at what people are doing in our industry. Our peers are a constant source of inspiration. I see what some of my friends are doing the field of IoT and it makes me want to get up every day at 4am and hack until my fingers fall off.