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Comment by Revisor | Hacker News Reader

I'd argue that writing a blog is not exactly a doing. Much less blogging about getting rich.

Well, see, over here "getting rich" means earning millions in a few years through sheer entepreneurial perspiration. Over there, it means eliminating debt and reducing expenses, building up a nice, six figure retirement account over a lifetime of frugality and careful saving. Get Rich Slowly.

Which the author is doing and helping others do through his blog. I think it's definitely a doing.

I'd say it depends on what your goals are. If you want to build a following for your blog then it is definitely doing, but if your goal is to lose weight or renovate your home, then it is talking.

Would he be known as a "doer" if he were known to have renovated his house and lost weight?

He means writing about renovating his home and writing about losing weight not the actual losing of the weight. So if he did do that and wrote about that then I would say yes he is a doer.

He also wrote a book: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Missing-J-D-Roth/dp/0596809...

I tend to agree with you, though.

Writing isn't doing? I think J.D. would be surprised to learn that he makes a living by not doing.

Writing a web app is doing. Writing a blog post about writing a web app is talking.

I don't know J.D and I don't know the blog. If he makes money off of talking about doing, good for him.

That seems like a very narrow concept of "doing" which presumes that writing is an unproductive activity.

This may be true for programmers (whose most productive work is generally unrelated to writing), but is untrue for writers.

I agree, but that's one reason I disagree with the original post, because the two blend together in fairly complex ways. Sometimes, thinking about things, mapping out possibilities, comparing alternatives, etc., without doing any of them, is itself productive. For example, Alonzo Church mostly theorized about what computers could do, came up with a bunch of thought experiments, proved some things impossible, discussed why other things would be possible, etc., but never really got on with the business of actually making computers do much of anything. But that's fine, because his main contribution was precisely the thinking & talking--- giving us a better understanding of what computers could do, not actually making computers do any of them, was his thing.

You could phrase it as "productive talkers", whose talking is important, versus "unproductive talkers", whose talking is just hot air, but that starts to get close to being a tautology: the bad kind of talking is bad.

Why on earth not? Also, do you have a blog to show for that you wrote in your non-doing time?

Would you say Stephen King or other writers are also not doing anything? What about teachers?

A blog and a novel are different things entirely, and he's written many novels.

Whether writing a blog is "doing" depends on the blog (obviously, I suppose).

But this kind of moots the original point. Human beings are social animal who communicate with language. By that token, the leaders and creators in human society use language to accomplish things, to "do". So most doers and the most effective doers are talkers along with those who are less effective - "just talking".

Mentioning "doing instead of talking" can sound good though - it be can effective talking in some circumstances.

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