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Comment by langsoul-com | Hacker News Reader

This approach works if the stuff you want to get done also is very enjoyable.

Nobody wants to wash the dishes, do maintenance or clean up, but it has to be done.

The question is how does this work for things you want to get done, but it's hard.

Say I want to make some form of rubber duck app, but with an AI voice. The idea is great, I talk my programming ideas and she'd respond back, giving an illusion of listening. However, it's way more work and less immediately enjoyable than a game of Dota 2.

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Isn’t washing dishes one of the few instantly rewarding actions available in todays’ workspace?

The feeling of warm water running over your hands, the immediate change, the purity that you create, the complex pattern of light reflecting in the water drops, the sound of it…

To me, this is an immensely pleasant activity.

Sure, if I’m in a rush, I just load the dishwasher and jump to other things, but otherwise this is a great time to relax and meditate.

Compare that to waiting while the CI pipeline is chugging through over and over, only to end up with frustrating disappointment that another test started to fail, or that something has stuck in the cloud house-of-cards again

Man honestly, washing dishes was one of my favorite activities in the mid of the covid pandemic. It was like a therapy, where I would not be caring about looking at any screen or listening to all the (valid) drama.

You just described how to get many unpleasant things done - look for what is pleasant about the task. Also related is take pride in what you do, and being present in the moment.

This is polar opposite of my experience. The unenjoyable ones are precisely the tasks that I will never complete unless I am very kind and forgiving to myself. Beating myself bloody with "but it has to get done" is an exercise in hopeless futility.

On a similar note, I get a lot of "chore" tasks done by basically just being impulsive about them: if I have a free 15 minutes before a meeting or after breakfast or whatever and I'm feeling high-energy I'll just pick something off my long household to-do list and do it then. The results aren't all that consistent but everything gets stochastically done eventually.

We are talking about enjoyable projects. Dota 2 might not be a project (unless you plan to become a pro).

Doing something out of passion is a value in itself that should not be ignored. In music this is what often differenciates the true geniuses from those who are just very good: passion. If you have to sit down and practise an instruments for hours a day it totally helps if you are passionate about the instrument. It helps when you care about the music you are playing and how you are playing it. All of that can be reached via discipline as well, but there might be something lacking in the end.

What is the difference between someone playing the same thing for 8 hours out of passion and another one playing the same thing for 8 hours out of discipline? It doesn't feel like work to the former, while it might drain everything out of the latter.

Passion is definitely not what distinguishes the very top classical musicians with the tier below.

At the very high end it’s talent, recognisable brand, and having something to say to the world.

At the very top, everybody works hard, but only a few are selected to have solo careers.

Passion comes and goes, it's an emotion. To maintain passive 9-5, 5 days a week seems near impossible.

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