Ask HN: What lessons you learned in 2011
As 2011 comes to an end, I'm working on a blog post about what big lessons entrepreneurs, hackers, bloggers learned this year. My focus is around technology, entrepreneurship, web, etc. Give me your thoughts.
Just social web interactions such as replying to posts and helping people on sites such as server-fault (with a discreet link in your profile) can generate a substantial flow of users to your websites.
And the best thing about this flow of users is that they are more likely to find value in your website than the average person which would be directed from paid advertising.
You can see it everywhere, we always want to jump and skip to solution, skip the process and get to result, skip the learning and get the work done in most cases its a very bad idea.
See in personal life, we were always trying to make ourselves better but, where does it goes nowhere, you don't know what you are trying to become better at.
I think we need to relearn the basic problem solving, we have forgotten with so much noise and fast moving world. 1. Understand the problem 2. Define the problem. 3. What are various approaches and solution to the problem. Understanding them pros and cons. 4. Applying and finding the optimal solution. Refine the solution over time.
Also agree with delwin
This applies to entrepreneurship, but not, I believe, to other more "creative" fields, like art/music/etc. Fine arts are judged much more on the fundamental idea behind the work rather than the execution. For example, with the exception of mainstream music, excellent records are released all the time that have sub-par mastering/production.
Although very admirable, should've Sergey Brin (or Google) given more - how much is Wikipedia worth to Google?