The Power of Starting Again | Hacker News Reader

The Power of Starting Again

blog.ericfrisch.com

86 pointsmemorable24 comments

Open articleView on HN

I couldn't help but think of Leonard Cohen's Anthem, one of my favorite songs:

> The birds they sing, at the break of day

> "Start again" I heard them say

> Don't dwell on what has passed away

> Or what is yet to be

> ...

> Ring the bells that still can ring

> Forget your perfect offering

> There is a crack in everything

> That's how the light gets in

Strong words for the hope and promise of a new year. Happy New Year to all!

Love this. Thanks for engaging, and Happy New Year!

'In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few'

It took me years to break out of rigid thought processes and patterns and get out of my comfort zone. If I feel like I'm leaning into rigid thinking, I deliberately break out of that.

That could be anything from learning a new programming language, or trying out a new Linux distro (I have learned a lot just by trying out different distros).

In terms of TODOs, I batch tasks into 'marathons' and 'sprints'. If something is going to need small iterative steps spanning a whole year, then I organize my TODO to suit that. If something needs speed and sprinting, again, I organize my life around that. Too many are doing sprints for what should be a marathon, and doing marathons for what should be sprints.

Love the "marathon" and "sprint" language. I've definitely been prone to biting off too much of something and then getting frustrated when it doesn't go smoothly. Chunking large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks has been helpful.

Every moment is new. You an always begin again.

> 'In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few'

This is a great quote. Once one knows how to do something the "right" way it becomes very difficult to do it any other way. That said, perhaps true expertise isn't about knowing the correct solution to a given problem, and is rather about realising that problems themselves can be changed in order to permit different, more desirable solutions.

I think one of the most common ways in which programmers fail is by immediately accepting a problem as a given and jumping into the solution space. So often we will come up with a perfect solution to a stated problem, when a slightly different problem has a 10x cheaper / safer / faster solution.

And that's the reason 10x programmers exist!

I sometimes get support questions in the form of "I need feature X". I ask "what problem are you trying to solve." They tell me, and I say "oh, just do this" and the problem is solved.

Or as the Dude puts it: “My thinking about this case has become very uptight.”

Searching for that quote, I found this Reddit post which seems to fit with the discussion of this thread, too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dudeism/comments/k5bkhf/my_thinking...

This arguably touches on one of the most important aspect of being an adult. Our education system is designed to ignore it. Most interesting things in life are difficult. Difficult things mean you will fail many times. One of the most important habits you can learn as an adult is recovery from failure. This means looking at failure in analytical way - to get feedback from it, adjust, retry.

Great insight. It can be easy to give up on things that don't come naturally. Sticking with the hard stuff and learning from failure is a way better path forward.

Growth mindset and resilience are now parts of the Australian public school curriculum.

Somewhat ironic given the low opinion teachers themselves have of our education departments :-)

I remember getting a new lease on life with Factorio when I gave myself permission to start again as much as I wanted. Before that I would overcommit to every base, thinking that the "real game" only began after you get past the bootstrap phase, but in fact there is a lot of joy in just putting marks on the page.

Also, having things be small enough to fit in your head, as things tend to be at the beginning, is a boon for learning. I thought the early game was pointless, but in fact working with small factories made me realise that there were foundational practices that I had yet to learn which helped me to level up significantly at the game.

Great insights, thanks! Definitely agree on the value of starting small - that has broad applications.

The time based badges are a great help here. If you try to get one, you have to restart all the time. It's at least a great perfectionism unlearning tool.

Maybe I should apply the lesson on some of my personal projects. Say at the start "this project should take X days", and if it's obvious it won't, restart or redesign.

This sort of reminds me of this story:

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Make_a_Mess,_Cle...

...a non-standard but apparently effective way to progress in a game.

Yes. After missing a streak, gamified apps should adapt their feedback metric from current streak to cumulative days over a meaningful period (week, 1-3-6 months, year) to encourage resuming the habit.

I really like that idea. And it ought to appeal to developers, since they have an interest in keeping users engaged with the app.

There is a ancient Chinese teaching which translates to: if I could learn to play like a child, (so we live without baggages).

I think it succinctly summarizes the mindset that we should always have.

> Missing a few days or even longer isn't failing. Refusing to start again is.

Timely. Thank you.

I'm very glad it was helpful to you!

Heard a nice interview with Tara Brach on meditation. It's not about never losing focus on your manta or particular technique, it's about noticing when your focus has wandered and starting again. So don't beat yourself up, but be grateful you have the opportunity to practice starting again...

That's a great parallel. Returning to focus is key within meditation, and the same can be applied to the practice, itself.

Thanks for sharing my post, memorable! I've really enjoyed the conversation here around this topic.

consistency is key! if you get off kilter and miss a couple days, brush it off and start again!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com