How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
japhr.blogspot.com
japhr.blogspot.com
However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience.
The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other procedural knowledge. I really don't think it would work for anything in or above the intermediate range of content on any meaningful, commonly deep topic.
Just imagine whether the "Mythical Man Month", "Code Complete" or "Innovator's Dilemma" could have been written with this kind of approach.
I don't know about others but when I read a book, I sometimes realize the presence of an unavoidable slight bias towards believing the author and respecting his conclusions, that is unless I am already deeply knowledgeable about the subject and have my own strong opinions. It better be the case that the author is in fact trustworthy on the subject.
So I think the book reader probably will know that the author doesn't have years of battle tested experience but understand that the book is meant to be a good way for a beginner to get up to speed and get going with the topic.
This is akin to a layman writing a book on International Klein Blue, but having no idea of what other colors are out there. It's a form of a "blind leading the blind" situation.
Neither The SPDY Book nor Dart for Hipsters was meant to be a definitive guide on their respective subjects. They are 150 page intros and, as you say, probably well suited for this approach.
For Recipes with Backbone, we aimed for the intermediate / advanced audience. Again, I agree that I probably could not have gotten there in 3 months on my own. For that, I relied heavily on my co-author (Nick Gauthier), who is battle tested with Backbone.js. So, again, I think we are in agreement.
That said, even the intro books are living books. I plan on refreshing and adding as the technology evolves and I as become battle tested (I'm working on edition 1.1 of The SPDY Book now). So over time, I hope to get closer to the ideal tome on the subjects.
Do you, kind of like Sal Khan (of Khan Academy fame) feel curious to know more & more stuff, & then want to share your knowledge & understanding with the rest of the world, by writing books ?
Context : my comment above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904024
There is also a selfish aspect to it. By writing the best book that I am capable of, I learn this stuff much better than I would by playing around with it for a day or two.
Motivations and results feed each other and (hopefully) produce great results.
But more ephemeral topics benefit greatly from experience. When I was in the military, I benefitted greatly from the experience of my NCOs and much of what they passed on to me where things that would have been very hard to put into a book or discover through any process other than experience.
But I suspect most technical topics fall into the former category rather than the later.
For the publisher, if know the author do not have professional background, should not publishing their book. Because that means risking a lot.
But then by the same argument, would you not trust Sal Khan's Khan Academy videos, since he himself has experience in only a few of the many areas, he researches & then makes educational videos about.
I would tend to agree with you : as a rule, people need to be experienced in a discipline/area to produce high quality content in that discipline/area. People like Sal Khan are the few & rare exceptions to this rule.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
"Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis.
[0] http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...
How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?
It has far more to do with creating a habit than anything specific about this 'chain'. The book "Switch" covers this really well, you basically have a limited amount of self-control to use each day. Habits do not tap the self-control bank.
So in my case, I really want to make working on my sideproject a priority. For a while I tried to work on it as much as possible, but I failed to really motivate myself often.
Now I have a chain going. Everyday I wake up before work and do something. Whether its 5 minutes or 3 hours, everyday I boot up my computer and make a little bit of progress. The alarm goes off and a couple minutes later I have my dev tools open and a bowl of cereal in front of me and I'm working, no thought required.
I notice my progress has improved dramatically because of this.
to extend your example, a chain in the morning before work and a completely different project/chain after getting home from work?
Brilliant insight. Great advice.
He's still working extremely hard as a standup comedian. In interviews I've heard him say that he likes to keep his routine 90% the same, refining it from show to show, while still adding some new stuff. I watched a one hour show on youtube from 3-5 years ago, and I saw him live less than a year ago here in Sweden. Almost all the material had changed, which tells me he's still working hard. In general, these type of people don't just retire - this is their life.
And other things too. Some of the stuff in that list was nearly as good as "Seinfeld", and some of it was terrible, but he's been around.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings
I'm not saying one causes the other, but Seinfeld was very good with his system, it led to a very, very long-running TV series, and he didn't follow it up with another series.
How or whether this has any effect on any projects you might do you have to decide for yourself.
This is debatable. The way I remember it, it was a clunker.
[0] http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=beemovie.htm
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
[2] http://io9.com/5747305/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-m...
But I agree that the Seinfeld hack's greatest strength is also its fatal flaw: Once you do break the chain, all the motivation it provided bursts like a bubble. You've got to somehow motivate yourself to build up another long chain to not break. Until then you're on a "one more day won't matter" slippery slope of sloth.
My startup -- http://beeminder.com -- is trying to get the best of both worlds: stay on a "yellow brick road" to your goal every day. You have to maintain a certain overall average every day but you can build up a safety buffer that allows you to, say, take the weekend off without relinquishing that psychological momentum.
a.) The longer the chain, the less willing you are to break it, the more you learn not to let superficial things (like the futility of starting a new 3000-day chain) get in the way.
b.) The longer the chain, the more you've achieved your result, and the less you need the chain. If that result didn't happen, then you should reconsider the chain in the first place (as per my point above.)
Example of a.) As of today I have not missed a day of running in 485 days. After finishing a 100-mile ultramarathon 3.5 weeks ago, I got out and hacked together a 1-mile run the day after. Super painful, and took me 15 minutes, but it was an honest jog, and it counts. If my streak was much less than 460 days (at the time), I would not have continued the chain.
example of b.) The result of the chain? It helped me to finish a 100-mile ultramarathon, even at 6'6" 285lbs. If I have to break the chain tomorrow, and its length keeps me from ever starting a new chain, well - look at what I accomplished. I'd say it was worth it. And I suspect Seinfeld would agree regarding his chain.
At some point I abandoned it, but I can't remember what caused me to break the habit. I might have more luck with an iPhone app that kept the chains in my face more often?
One of my current commitments is to write 1000 words each day.
I just love all those semi-useless graphs and stats you can generate if you wish.
Completely Free too (it shows around 5% of people as donating something).
You have to log in to use it.
Worse, it the login has to be Facebook, Yahoo, or OpenID.
No fucking way am I going to sign up for any of that shit, or let them track me as I visit sites I'm interested in.
No thanks!
To be sure, I could know more. But I think you're being dismissive by characterizing this as superficial.
If I buy a book on SPDY (or any technology), it is likely because I want to use it in a production/live environment.
I want to buy a book on technology from someone who has run a live system, and got the battle scars one gets from doing so; who has learnt from the experiences, which they can then share.
When it comes to technology, one can research all they like about it, but until you have practical _experience_ in a live environment, I would call it 'superficial'.
(From the blog post it is not clear; if you have run all these technologies live then I agree, your understanding is not superficial)
I think that depends on who the audience is. If you're a CTO at a company that's up and running and live and you're beginning a deployment of something new, then yes, you need an overview rooted in hands-on experience. But if you're a guy who just wants to learn something new because "I might use this in the future" or "I'm just evaluating this" or whatever, a book which is based only on theory/research can be wildly useful if it helps you shortcut the learning curve to learning the tech. Actually, if it helps you shorten your own learning curve, it's beneficial in either of those scenarios, in a sense.
So if you move your hand to write three sentences about Django, you're already in the 2% (totally made up) of producers on the internet. Hell, if you blog consistently for a month straight you're in the top .5% of bloggers.
The fact is doing something, anything, is worthy of some admiration. People that would try to detract from your work are often the 98% of never-have-beens.
(a) any good?
(b) selling?
There's a huge difference between writing a good book and sticking a couple of notes together. Anyone read the books in question?
EDIT: I didn't see that one of the books was published - search on Amazon gave nothing and all I could find was a buy-my-book landing page. Sorry about that.
I've also seen it recommended in several threads so I'm guessing (b) is also satisfied.
The thing I like best is that you now have a time capsule for your professional life. You can look back and see exactly where you came from and where you went, which is more than most of us can say. I have a hard time remembering what I was doing a month ago!
Keep it up, and I look forward to seeing what technology or library you tackle next!
Still get close to 20K pageviews/month in the main blog even though I barely post anymore, which is cool, and the result is the same as your blogging and books...sharing what you learn with others.
Now I'm taking on a new subject/blog. I will try to use your method. Thanks!
A more mundane example: my brother took a photograph every day for a year. Not a big deal, no particular subjects or goals, but getting that one picture a day was paramount. With some editing & on-demand publishing, result was a very nice coffee-table book of intriguing eclectic photos.
Same idea. Pick a topic, dive in, write/record for an audience, do it with passion and consistency and detail, the result is awesomeness. The more you strive the awesomer you get.
Current status (I just looked): 2 years in, 2700 hours done, and he just shot his first sub-80 round of golf.
I guess two problems with that are A) I am unfortunately not that "gullible" as far as believing that there will really be dire consequences if I don't produce a certain amount and B) as far as I know there is no public for me who would care if I suddenly declared that I was going to produce one new feature every day no matter what or whatever. I have no twitter followers and no one ever really read my blogs and generally posts on sites like reddit are autobanned. The closest I could do would be to go on Facebook and almost everyone on there is family. They would probably react the way they usually do to my Facebook posts which is "wow, I forgot that guy was on Facebook? He is so weird" with an addition of "who cares".
Also, its easier to write one article a day than it is to say push a major feature per day. Also it is easier to measure and break off writing goals than software goals.
I don't have a problem doing work every day, but I do feel like some days are vastly more productive than others. Not sure what goal I could have per day other than X amount of hours of actual work.
I know Nick IRL. He had previously toyed with the idea of doing a book. I can't speak for him, but I think he signed up after seeing what I did with The SPDY Book. It worked out well IMO. He took the more in-depth ones, I took the more foundation recipes and then we proof read each other.
Personal experience: this is exactly how I learned Ruby on Rails as a non-programmer. I had an idea for a project, so I tried reading books and tutorials for months. Nothing stuck. It just didn't make sense. I couldn't translate the words I was reading into code. So I said "screw it" and started hacking away at my project, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. Progress was slow obstacles were rampant, but it turns out those obstacles are easy to overcome with stack traces and google/stackoverflow!
A few stories to illustrate:
1. I had a few friends that made it a point to learn a new technology every day of the month and blog about it. In the end, the friends had learned quite a bit, and even though they only had cursory knowledge of the subject, the structure allowed them to succeed at their goal to have a more general knowledge in their discipline.
2. I have another friend that started writing an application with the point for it to be the central product of a great new startup. This friend is not only intelligent, but very capable in the whole stack, self-organized, and I would have expected him to succeed. However, he lost interest in the end before go-live. there were competitors, and I think he lost the vision that he had in the beginning. He could still finish the product, but now he has another job. I credit this to lack of structure, which is not his fault; I've gotten no where near as far as he did on a myriad of ideas for products.
Yep, I agree. As long as you are able to find problems to solve. Personally, this doesn't work for me because I am not able to come up with problems unless the present themselves in something I'm working on. I can read 100 books on a subject, but if I can't apply the knowledge or imagine how I can apply it, it doesn't stick. Just different ways of learning, I guess.
That's closer to my approach. I thrive when given a never-ending stream of unique problems to solve, as I work through a project. But sitting down and going through some structured course or book or whatever can quickly become very boring to me. I like to just jump in with both feet and sink or swim.
That said, both approaches have value and I think it's more of a continuum than a binary dichotomy.
I found this article to be really inspiring. I guess I can see how some people may think Chris is just stroking his own ego, but I did not read it that way at all. First and foremost, I took from this article that a key to feeling great about yourself and your accomplishments is to actually do stuff, all the time. It's a simple concept that I'm sure we're all aware of, but this article really hit it home for me.
As a direct result of this article, I am inspired to do stuff, even if that stuff is considerably less awesome than what Chris accomplished last year.
I start with a personal response via blog post: http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-chains-and-being-awe...
The only thing I take issue with is the comment that the author has more than quiting smoking to show for it, he has 3 books.
as a former smoker, who hasnt smoked in 20 months, I can assure you that the struggle never ends, whereas once the book is finished, you can move to the next project.
I still rely on my 20 month chain once in a while to remind myself that I can do and continue doing the impossible... but the battle to quit smoking, is a constant one, and pays off for the rest of your life... the battle to write a few books is hardly comparable.
This is pretty awesome. The best way to ensure that you truly understand something, is to attempt teaching it.
This is a technique I am starting to use in my quest to be more awesome too...doubt I will write a book, but you never know.
To put the foot on the other shoe, however, the last person I ever want to learn from is someone who is learning for the sake of teaching. Such knowledge is usually the thinnest of veneers.
He who has just learned something, or is in the process of FULLY learning it....is usually better able to teach it, because they understand the challenges with learning it.
I can't tell you the amount of times I have had PhDs explain concepts to me in the most convulted way - using terms and language that just flies over my head, until I am explained the same concepts by a fellow student or a TA or something in the simplistic of terms.
It's easy, once we 'master' something, to forget how to empathize with those that have not and to get caught up in our own knowledge.
Happens to me all the time, so I am not just pointing fingers at everyone else.
I have found that when I force myself to remember what it feels like to not understand something I am teaching, I tend to be a better teacher because I break it down to the simplest unit. Most experts don't/can't do that.
A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming books...how horrible are they? Quite horrible...many of them. Some are good - and the ones that are, tend to stand out from the crowd. It's not because they are any less of an expert, it is usually because they can empathize with the reader more.
Perhaps. Or perhaps they're at the point where they think they get it -- they understand it -- and they start espousing their wisdom to others prematurely? Only they have some fundamentally wrong ideas about the thing they just started to learn. This is the story of almost every developer's apprenticeship since the beginning of time. Heck, it's the story of the world (the whole "I was a better parent before I had children" thing. And of course the most you'll ever know is in the first year of university, before you learn how much you don't know).
A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming books...how horrible are they?
I'm not sure how that is a case in point given that the overwhelming majority of programming books are written by people trying to gain credibility through authoring as a surrogate for actual code (indeed, isn't this what this submission is about?) -- it is hardly dominated by experts since, what, the 70s?
The software development how-to field -- and this has only been made worse by the whole self-publishing trend -- is dominated by apprentices. It is the guy who has laid his first brick telling the world how to be a mason. No thanks.
But I don't think they are saying they are learning for teaching's sake (what's wrong with that anyway). They are interested in the topic. But, having to put what you learnt into words for someone else, makes you crystalize your understanding. It reinforces what you learnt. Makes it stay more permanently in your brain. So it enhances your learning. Plus, answering questions raised by your readers makes you delve deeper. Just my opinion.
And if you proclaim upfront that you are learning while blogging/teaching, your readers are free to read or instead find a well known expert and read their book/blog. Amazon reviews, blog comments etc. also tell you what you are getting.
I have heard others say that when they want to learn something, they ultimately teach it and I have seen one of them live it. And I will say it works. She may not be The Expert on the topic, but her knowledge and passion grows everyday. I have been intending to put this in practice myself, high time I did!! Tonight!
I am curious as to how you kept yourself motivated over the past 366 days.
At best, it could be an intro saying "this is what they're trying to do"; but you can also cover that in a blog post, right?
The core of Dart is surprisingly stable -- the team is doing a really solid job of not yanking the rug out from under developers' feet. Sure, I could have stopped at one blog post, but I ended up with 90 and still feel like I have more in me.
In the end, I was pleased with the result. But I might be biased :)
I set myself a target of writing one good blog post a week about a year ago, with the target of having 52 posts in a year. Right now, I have about 31 with 1 month to go - I am pretty pleased with that, especially since I have been on at least 4 weeks holidays through the year where I left my laptop firmly at home.
This is exactly why we started writing a blog. It has kept is learning and recording new information everyday.
Pretty impressive to see the blog author publishing books on topics he knew nothing about a year ago.
What I have done is taken a printout of the same and marked on it everyday.
I was reading about a woman in Cambodia who escaped from torture and near death with her two children and survived in the jungle for 3 years. They never stayed in the same place two days in a row and ate nothing but roots and bugs.
Despite this mother's best efforts, her youngest child starved to death and died in her arms.
A few years later, she founded a safehouse for depressed women who had been raped and tortured like her.
Now SHE is an awesome person and I respect her a lot more.
A lot of the "accomplishments" I read on HN like raising VC money or blogging for a year straight is weaksauce in comparison.
My answer is no - not every has to be the hero. If one's a decent one, it's great already in itself.