How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead
codinghorror.com
codinghorror.com
See also: This blog post by Julien Smith "The Short and Sweet Guide to Being Fucking Awesome" (2011) http://inoveryourhead.net/the-short-and-sweet-guide-to-being... and also the free kindle book "The Flinch" (late 2011) http://www.amazon.com/The-Flinch-ebook/dp/B0062Q7S3S/ref=sr_...
I do think its good to overcome the shortcomings hamstringing your happiness.
Still; There is a striking similarity between Atwood's and Smith's blog-post, besides the central message. Both refer to a big success in their own field (Stackoverflow / Best selling book). I'm wondering if they would've reached their "serenity of awesomeness", if it wasn't for this ...
While we might find personal fulfillment, we are still just a bunch of animals around the watering hole, suspiciously eyeing the beast next to us while we take a sip.
His podcast discussions with Joel... geez!
His first attempts are often... bad. When he wrote about the MVC pattern countless people quickly started correcting him.
Any time he writes anything about crytpo or security it quickly ends up with red lines through it, and a correction, and then correction gets stricken out and there's a second correction, but to his credit he does not de-publish any of that. He keeps it all out there.
He is 100% correct only on fundamental issues. Have tests, have a build server, use source control, but not visual source safe. Those topics all have value to novices.
I guess I'm trying to say that's Jeff's work has made him more notorious than awesome in my mind.
Making a backup plan takes away effort from your goals and makes you more likely to fail and need your backup plan.
I don't remember if this is from a famous quote, a blog post, HN discussion, or a video. I've found it to be true in some situations.
Yes, and false in others. We don't hear as much from the people that shoot for the moon and fail because they tend to keep quiet about it and slink back to their boring jobs and lives, if they still can.
Personally I'd like to hear more about the failures around here because the relentless cheerleading sounds phony and you can learn at least as much from the failures as the successes.
But I agree that it'd be nice to hear of lessons learned from more of the failures. Something is wrong when the majority of startups fail, but the majority of the popular blog posts are about success, or are from those who have succeeded.
And now time for a shameless plug. To avoid the survivor bias, I started my blog when I quit my job: http://alexshye.wordpress.com/. If I flame out, it will be documented on the inter webs :)
I did the same thing myself a year ago. I've already got a long list of things I'd do differently if I started again today.