All this learning means nothing until you make something happen | Hacker News Reader

All this learning means nothing until you make something happen

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81 pointssivers22 comments

This is good advice. One thing that has plagued me is that I procrastinate actual (personal) work with reading blogs/books. This isn't always a bad thing in that I am learning something, but it can severely set me back on projects.

This is why I now set goals for myself of what I want to finish each month. I enjoy learning and reading as much as possible, but I now set those aside to make my "deadlines" for whatever project of the month I have.

   Whether your confidence is naïve, inspired or crafted - you need its high-horsepower engine to get uphill and go anywhere.

you don't need horsepower to get uphill, you need torque

Very nice - appropriate metaphor for what he's describing. If confidence is your torque, learning is your horsepower. But torque is what lets you accelerate.

Horse power = force*distance/time. Torque is cross product(Force, radius vector to point of contact). For our purpose just force. Since horse power has a force component in it, it can be used interchangeably with toque for the above purposes. I cant imagine an engine with zero horse power capable of producing any torque.

Again: It is plain wrong to say "you don't need horsepower to get uphill, you need torque". If you do not have horse power you cannot produce any torque. Horse power is the cause and torque is the effect. And torque is the cause, and uphill motion is the effect. So Horse power is the ultimate cause.

If we are going to nitpick with definitions, let us do it properly. Unless it is painfully obvious that I am hurting civil conversation here, a downmod is to be followed by a line of clarification.

if you are trying to go uphill, would you rather 200 horsepower and 200 torque or 200 horsepower and 140 torque

Notice we have a pedal in the car called acceleration. We do not have 2 pedals one saying "horse power" and one saying "torque".

Increasing the torque of an engine at a particular RPM is the same as increasing the power output at the same RPM. If you have experience with a stick shift, you notice that we shift to a lower gear to go uphill. We are simply changing the gear ratio. Now why do we do that? We want to make sure that all the hard work the engine is doing is transformed into something that moves us up the hill. If we do not lower the gear ratio, the tire will skid and some of that power will be transformed into heat and go useless (besides the real possibility of skidding into this side of the valley!) .

So we are not trading horse power for torque, rather we are making sure that we get all the power to convert into torque by using a low gear ratio. power --> torque ---> uphill. The thing that is causing the confusion is the low gear ratio, which has to do with Friction that the tire has with the road. Friction is the crucial component that transforms engine power capacity into torque. That's why we have treads in the tire. That is one of the reasons Army tanks and Bulldozers have continuous tracks, to increase friction.

"I can’t believe how foolish I was to start my first company. Just me in my bedroom with no experience, making a little website."

Just like Bob Moog in his basement, with no business experience, no business plan, no PR or HR department, no idea where he was headed, little idea of what happened before him, out in the middle of nowhere, tinkering his parts together, invited to conferences he'd never heard of, asking his customers what they wanted and actually listening.

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.

It bothers me that Derek conflates reading the advice of "business experts" with "learning". I think reading books like "What Got You Here Won’t Get You There" should be considered entertainment through novel metaphors, not necessarily acquiring new knowledge, in the strict sense.

So you're saying that reading is just entertainment, never learning?

Or are you just deciding in advance that all books about business are just worthless fluff?

Not sure what bad book you might have picked up in the past, but it seems your thinking is prejudiced.

We all get our learning where it gives us the greatest reward.

You chose Rutgers. (Was that just entertainment, not to be confused with learning?) The teachers/experts there are no better or worse than the teachers I've chosen, but might have been better for you or worse for me.

Some prefer hands-on experience. Some prefer classroom lectures and homework. Some prefer reading.

I like all three. I tend to get the biggest bang-per-buck reward from reading, but that's just me. No need to knock someone else's choice because it didn't work for you.

Or are you just deciding in advance that all books about business are just worthless fluff?

That's probably closest to what I think. "Worthless fluff" is a little harsh, but nearly every business book seems to be full of untested generalizations based on very limited/biased sample sizes. Influence, by Cialdini is one exception that comes to mind.

To really learn something in the sense of creating a model that represents reality with a reasonable certainty takes an enormous amount of effort - several orders of magnitude more than effort than self-declared business experts put into their books.

Confidence in entrepreneurship is a delicate balance. You need the drive and determination to make things happen and overcome obstacles. On the other hand you can't have so much hubris that you ignore all input and refuse to adjust.

Sorry, but I think there's a flip side to this post that is missing. There is such thing as a "really bad idea". Combine that with all the other factors which are beyond your control and all the confidence in the world won't save you.

Humility is just as important as confidence IMO.

Good point. Too much of either is dangerous! Too much confidence, and you think your shit doesn't stink. Too much humility and you think you're shit. :-)

I don't think it's confidence that makes you naive. I think that too much confidence may keep you from giving up when you should. You believe that no matter how many problems you're facing, you'll find a way to make it work. Inability to take criticism smacks more of arrogance than confidence in my mind, but maybe it's all semantics.

That being said, I agree with the parent. Humility is as important a trait as any, not matter your walk of life.

I tend to think it takes a lot of confidence to give up when you should, too.

You have to be confident enough to believe you'll have another idea next (either better, or easier to execute...).

There's something to be said about being naive/foolish. I remember when I first started with this whole entrepreneurship thing. Since I had not seen the pitfalls and the realities of certain difficulties, I thought anything was possible. Finding that same level of foolish confidence mixed in with the occasional reality check can be a powerful thing. Stop looking at the impossibilities and all the common "this wont work because of x questions". This quote from notorious big always summed it up nicely for me:

"The key to staying, on top of things is treat everything like it's your first project, knahmsayin? Like it's your first day like back when you was an intern. Like, that's how you try to treat things like, just stay hungry."

Jobs said the same thing, but in that unmistakably his, much terser style. "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Of course, not too literally: not as hungry and foolish as a savant hunting for prey. We're talking about markets, too. Observe the heavy brain lifting going on in entrepreneurship at the same time. One half of the entrepreneurs brain is, and needs to be hungry and foolish; the other so ruthlessly rational, perpetually self-scrutinizing, plus balancing and aligning private goals with public demand. All of this is neither literally the outcome of nor a requirement for "hungriness" or "foolishness".

Jobs was quoting the last issue of the Whole Earth Catalog. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA starting at about 12:50.

Whoa, I forgot that and now remembered... thanks!

A mixture of confidence, curiosity, knowledge, drive and a pinch of irrational exuberance all seem essential to become a successful entrepreneur, but luck cannot be overlooked as the defining factor of success. To the extent that one can create their own luck, are 10,000 hrs of practice more attributable to the necessary amount of effort required (on average) to create luck rather than the time required to create expertise - at least in the art/science of entrepreneurship?

I love these types of posts, they remind me to close my HN browser window and get back to work on my startup :-) I love browsing the links and discussions on here, but sometimes I just have to get down to brass tacks and move my project ahead.

the moment we accept something is impossible, it becomes so

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