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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

I will repeat my standard advice for writing more: lower your standards, and allow yourself (in fact force yourself) to publish things despite knowing that they could be better if you just changed a few more things...

Also, write about things you've learned and projects you've built: both of those are topics where you aren't expected to provide shining new insight never seen before online: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/

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Love the overall message, and you’ve obv got the HackerCreds to back it up, but I’ll throw an obligatory “what does it mean to force oneself to do something?” IMHO the idea that you can ‘force’ yourself to do things puts a moral/normative element in the discussion that does more harm than good. It makes one feel like they somehow chose failure, when it inevitably arrives.

We all agree that are limits to self control, otherwise people would force themselves to work all the time, or not be depressed/anxious, or snap out of ADHD - or, hell, not to feel grief. “Encouraging”, “welcoming”, and “promoting” the defeat of perfectionism-based procrastination seems more helpful in the aggregate, IMHO

Force may be too hard a term, but basically I mean that you should bias towards publication even when you're not yet happy with what you've written, and constantly remind yourself that publishing content that isn't 100% perfect yet is a virtue that should be celebrated. The alternative is a folder full of drafts and never publishing anything at all.

Fair enough, well said! I'm fighting a philosophical battle that's somewhat orthogonal to publishing writing, so "it's a virtue" is already a win for me.

For any passers-by who might not realize, this kind young man is a recent (?) celebrity in the AI space for publishing quick, no-nonsense takes on the cutting edge of open-source LLMs. So he's got the receipts to back up this claim, lol

Ship just before you feel it’s perfectly ready is how I do it. Your instincts are tuned to protect you, and you have to be willing to thank them for their input but ship anyway to prioritize learning by doing.

But this is not shipping things half-baked. It’s recognizing the point where your standards are wasting energy more than adding value.

This is so true.

My old man told me - Tell fear I am aware of you, but I will do it anyhow

(sorry if the intent is lost in translation from native language to english)

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