Reinventing Yourself
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Do you need an echo chamber of motivation to keep yourself motivated? That's fine! I think there's a real and useful effect to doing that.
I'm put off by things like this in this (and other's) post, however:
- Everything is a mentor. $METAPHORS
- When can you say, “I do X!” where X is your new career? Today. (Don't lie to yourself. Find out the requirements to get started and go do them. Painter? Buy paint and canvas. Now you're a painter. Programmer? Install the language and a text editor, compile a program. Now you're a programmer. Doctor? Yeah, don't lie to yourself; you need a bit more for that. Some titles are worth the wait and the work)
- Reinvention will boost every healthy chemical in your body: serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin. (A scientific claim. Is there data to support this? Where is it?)
- What if I’m shy? Make your weaknesses your strengths. Introverts listen better, focus better, and have ways of being more endearing. (As I was corrected by someone else a while ago, introversion != shyness)
- What if I get depressed? Sit in silence for one hour a day. You need to get back to your core. If you think this sounds stupid then don’t do it. Stay depressed. (Or, get advice from someone that's qualified to treat depression or other mood disorders. If an hour of quiet time fixes it, it probably wasn't depression.)
Disclaimer: I'm not financially successful.
Congratulations on your blog post/book full of platitudes and cliché. I hope this is not the height of your accomplishment. When you're done being dismissive of the struggles of others, I hope you can write a book about humility.
As a generally happy and content person in the middle of a "reinvention", even I found this post absurd.
To people who are actually in that process, this seems like regurgitating the obvious. Imagine if there was an article in the Scientific American that consisted of a list of 100 items on "How to do Science", among which are "Keep pen and paper ready, you might have to write stuff down" or "The process can take several years, depending on what kind of science you do" or even "Don't give up if science seems hard to you". That'd be really, really absurd. Technically every fact is right, but really, really absurd.
If the article is to be trusted on the general timeline (yay, I'm almost hitting year 5...so where's my cash?), at any point after year 3, it'll be absolutely useless. After 5, you'll be wary of those who promise you pies in the sky, through reinvention, or reincarnation, or rekindling of your chi.
Good idea. Unfortunately my favorite story is Lord of the Rings, which is too long to type, but I suppose I could type out a chapter. But for now I will be satisfied with a quote:
"If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world."
The Lord of the Rings is 473k words. [1] If you type it out at 50 wpm, that's 157 hours, or about four work-weeks of typing.
That's a lot if you're just fucking around. But if your goal is to write your own successful epic, burning a month or three on really thinking closely about each word is a reasonable investment against the 5 or so years you'd spend writing that epic.
I feel like I should mail you a beer or something.
Also, you can't just reject your brain. It's not a tool, it is the boat in which YOU sail. If you treat it like the enemy, like a piece of shit you hate, you will be on the losing side, you will drown. The only way is to learn how it works and take control of it, slowly and methodically...
It takes five years and a studied lack of passion to fake being good enough to make money from it. It takes a lifetime and genuine passion to be good enough to advance the state of your art.