Brandon Sanderson’s advice for doing hard things
calnewport.com
calnewport.com
Turns out that fellow was Brandon Sanderson, by far the most famous and successful author participating in the event. It was around the time he published his first Wheel of Time book. Everyone around me knew who he was and they were all starstruck, and horrified that I was so oblivious. I felt silly for failing to recognize him, but he was totally cool about it. He was gracious and kind, and very supportive of this small-time author. In spite of his success, he was so down-to-Earth that his advice is probably worth heeding.
P.S. what is your book's title? I'd love to check it out!
Disclaimer: The book was a bit of a fiasco, our website was an established property with an established audience, and the publisher insisted on taking the book design in a direction contrary to our values. I can recommend the content of the book, but its design makes me cringe to this very day.
And Brandon Sanderson, if you are reading this, thanks for being such a class act!
edit: If you really want a copy of the physical book, follow the breadcrumbs to get my email address,and I can mail you a free copy. I have a box full of them.
Going to add your site to my list of top quality sources, thank you for the site!
I’ve enjoyed coming across your website many times
I never actually read the book mostly because I tend to read ebooks and it doesn't seem to be available as one? Kind of curious about the exclusive content though.
The publisher really was a pain in the ass. In addition to what I already mentioned, they insisted that I be listed as the book's author, despite the fact that I only wrote about half of the content. I argued for the author credit to be "The [name of the website] Editors", but they ignored my input, claiming that books sell better when a single person is named as the primary author. In so doing they drove a wedge between me and my fellow authors.
IIRC, I watched "2020 Creative Writing Lectures at BYU"
It gets annoying to encounter the inevitable “If you do so well, how come you’re not rich or famous?” retort; which assumes that money and fame are the only metrics that count.
The simple answer is that I’ve never wanted to be rich; at least, not wanted it enough to put in the type of work it would take, to get there. I also see absolutely no value at all, in fame; other than as an avenue towards being rich (see “I don’t really want to be rich, badly enough to deal with the agita,” above).
I could certainly have helped others get rich, but people that want to be rich, have had such a difficult time, respecting my approach, that it has never worked out. Instead, I always end up working with organizations and people, to whom money is not a principal metric.
[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
Do you actually get that question? Sounds dumb since “hard things” and “things that will make you rich” are some sort of classic Venn diagram.
Seems like a waste of time to answer since asker doesn’t know logical syllogism.
I’m often accused of “sour grapes,” and “I’m just jealous.”
Makes for a fun conversation.
And yes, it is dumb.
Look at the various posts, here. Whenever someone talks about their company being a "success," they always mention valuations, investments, brand recognition, etc. Open-sourcerers always talk about how many stars their repos have, etc.
Schlubs like me are not really invited to too many VIP tents at Burning Man...
The software industry, for example is filled with people who are extraordinarily talented at math in high school and thus get into the good schools. There are exceptions where people find the passion to code later on in life, but by and large, the "cream of the crop" fits the definition of the former.
I suspect his organization, methodology, and work style are partially responsible for his success.
I kind of wish we had been able to lock Sanderson in a room with George RR Martin to finish Song of Ice and Fire before Game of Thrones went past the novels.
There are plenty of grimdark authors that would be far better suited to finishing GoT.
He doesn't like the series, disagrees with Martin's pessimistic take on humanity, and believes the content clashes with his religion.
Quote from him:
"….the point is moot, as I wouldn’t say yes to finishing ASOIAF, if asked. (And I don’t think they’d ask me.) I’d respectfully decline. I wouldn’t be right for the job for many reasons."
https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/4uwjq9/spoilers_eve...
Stephen King is famously a seat-of-the-pants writer, not knowing where his characters and settings are going to take him. He is also famous for reading constantly whenever he isn't writing or sleeping. Where other writers might avoid reading to avoid plagiarism or distraction, King eats books for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.
R.L. Stine is famous for cranking out hundreds of horror novels. I recall him writing that a good horror novel requires a good ending, so he actually writes the ending first to make sure that it does. In contrast to Stephen King, he always knows exactly where he is going and about in how many pages.
It took (the non-prolific and perfectionistic) Gustave Flaubert 5 years to write Madame Bovary, and he wrote that he worked from 1pm to 1am (presumably shifting to 2pm when he started spending an hour a day tutoring his niece.)
Neal Stephenson famously quit email to apply more of his time writing for a larger audience.
Assuming the first guess was Bethesda, what about the second one?
I base my understanding of generating internal motivation of of the WOOP model, academically known as implementation intentions with mental contrasting. Focusing on mounting my internal dialogue on simple if-then models is easier than running through the whole WOOP model.
I'd love to know of any mental heuristics others here use that help them effectively close the current state vs ideal state gap.
There's got to be some way using git log to get a rough approximation of 'lines changed per day' that you could represent somewhere like a histogram.
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...
But when picking a strategic goal, like a startup product, building a moat is advantageous.
I did Mathematics instead of CS before switching to CS. The maths in the latter was so easy in comparison. I should have always done the latter. I would have been where I am much sooner with a lot less heartache. There’s no moat with this degree. Other people find Algebra far easier than I did. It is pointless to go play where you don’t have home advantage.
And also, ultimately, the heuristic is good but heuristics aren’t always correct. That’s why they’re heuristics but not laws. I believe this is a heuristic.