
Oh, the Places You'll Go - dalton
http://daltoncaldwell.com/oh-the-places-youll-go
======
Alex3917
"I am not sure if Dr. Seuss realized that this particular book would hold deep
significance to anyone, or that generations of young people would be given
this book as a graduation present."

I'm sure no one could have predicted just how successful it would become, but
he did put an enormous amount of thought into the messages he was sending.
This NPR interview with the author of a new book about Dr. Seuss is very
interesting:

[http://www.npr.org/2011/10/05/141085044/gustav-tadd-and-
todd...](http://www.npr.org/2011/10/05/141085044/gustav-tadd-and-todd-dr-
seuss-lost-stories)

He made a lot of war propaganda early on in his career, and it seems that this
is one of the things that had a profound impact on him and the later books
were partly an attempt to make up for that.

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kunle
> Rather, it's that these interviews really, truly are an accurate description
> of what was going on in their head during the game. It's our fault for
> expecting a compelling narrative. Our expectation of divining some deep
> insight into their creative process is fundamentally flawed.

\--

This point is pretty spot on. I can imagine that when you're doing something
that is percieved in hindsight as "great"; if you spent all your time doing it
thinking about how "great" it was, you'd probably make all the wrong choices
because you'd be all worried about making it look "great" in hindsight.

~~~
suby
What I'm about to say might be absurd, but I've found this to be true of me
playing computer games. I'll use Civilization II as an example -- I used to
play Civilization II quite a bit, and occasionally I did absurdly well. If it
ever got to that point and I paused to look at how good I was doing, I would
then get out of the flow and be worried about messing up the game, worried if
I was doing everything optimal, etc. I would inevitably end up not doing as
well as I would have if I just kept on playing as normal.

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greggman
bah humbug,

How much muscle memory did Zuckerberg have? Couldn't have been that much as he
was so young.

I think this post is missing a larger point. You don't need to get to the
point that "creating and shipping products is muscle memory". You just need to
ship products. We've all seen the examples of Rovio (60+ products before a
hit) or Id (4 products before hit?). And there's probably also plenty of
examples of first product hits as well. Seems like important part is shipping.
Not being a master of your craft.

Of course maybe that's not what people want to hear and I certainly would like
to know tips that would make it more likely that the things I ship, write,
create will be well received and popular but I can certainly name many
products, libraries, app that are not the product of "someone with a finely
honed craft."

And so that's the true story. It's not that people who do great things don't
have an interesting story because to them it's just a normal day and they're
so awesome they don't recognize it. It's that greatness comes from doing. The
more you do the more chances for greatness.

~~~
paul
You picked the perfect example to be wrong about :)

Facebook ships every day, and in the early days they shipped continually
because they were editing the code on the live servers (no revision control
even). I doubt that anyone would have called the very first version of
facebook "great", but they've shipped thousands of times since then, and now
they have product with a billion users. And of course Facebook wasn't his
first product either -- remember the Facemash story?

~~~
qq66
And Synapse before that...

------
fourspace
This is by far my favorite children's book; I read it to my son at least once
a week. After our first reading, I immediately realized how relevant its
message is to entrepreneurs, so I'm glad to see it show up on Hacker News. One
more blog post I should have written only to see someone else beat me to it.
=)

Its basic message is to embrace failure. You're going to fail, things will be
difficult, and you probably won't be great at everything. All of that should
absolutely not deter you from trying what you want and living the life you
want to live.

~~~
simonw
A friend performed it as a reading during our wedding ceremony - it was
particularly fitting as we had just quit our jobs and were about to embark on
an open ended round-the-world honeymoon.

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jeffdavis
"Similarly, in software, you can't be thinking about which programming
language you are using ... MongoDB or MySQL... You will never hit the
proverbial fastball if that is the sort of junk filling your head. Rather,
creating and shipping products needs to be muscle memory."

That's a vague statement, but I interpret "muscle memory" to mean "have a good
default toolset" in this context.

It makes a lot of sense to have a default toolset -- tools that work well in a
lot of situations that you understand very well, which together cover most of
the problem space you work in. That frees you from getting lost in the weeds
trying to decide which tool to use each time. However, it still very much
matters what tools are in that default toolset.

It takes a lot of effort and study to understand and choose the right set of
default tools. If the options are MySQL and Postgres (or ruby/python, etc.),
you need to pick only one as your default choice, otherwise you get distracted
trying to make that decision for every project. It's not so much whether the
technology overlaps or not, it's whether you perceive the applicability to
overlap. For instance, if you perceive MongoDB to be useful as a primary
datastore, it can't easily coexist in the default toolset with a SQL system;
but it can if you perceive MongoDB to be more of a caching layer or for
special-purpose processing.

Of course, you should recognize the signals when you're dealing with a
different kind of problem that may require a non-default tool.

~~~
scott_s
_I interpret "muscle memory" to mean "have a good default toolset" in this
context._

I don't. In sports, we use "muscle memory" to refer to on-the-fly adaptations
that athletes have to perform without conscious thought. For example, a
basketball player sees his defender lean too far in one direction, and he
automatically knows when to stop, jump and shoot in order to avoid being
blocked. The shooter did not have to consciously think "Oh, he leaned that
way, so I need to correct this way." That's too slow. The right thing to do is
ingrained from hours of drilling and live practice. My sport of choice is
Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I see the same thing with myself all the time. When I
feel my opponents weight shift, I don't consciously _think_ about how to flip
him over. If I do, he'll already have moved. I just _know_ what to do, based
on years of drilling and live training.

So, I extend the metaphor to software to rather the opposite of what you said.
Always applying a default toolset is the opposite of on-the-fly adaptations.
"Muscle memory" for solving software problems is being able to reason about
what you know you can handle without having to pick a technology up front.
It's having an intuition of what what the technology allows you to do. You're
not thinking in terms of technology, you're thinking in terms of solving the
problem and being able to easily classify things as "I know how to handle" and
"I don't know yet how to handle."

The benefit of software over sports is that we have the luxury of time; we
have the time to check our intuitive guesses through rational evaluation.

~~~
jakejake
There is a quote, I'm not sure the answer but in a nutshell is says that
amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they
can't get it wrong. I think that is very true in all disciplines.

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rbanffy
A small gem to add to a wonderful post:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahv_1IS7SiE>

Enjoy. Or get moved. Whatever works for you.

~~~
notlisted
Lovely, but I like this "reality-based" version too...
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIP8lFWa_mg> (by college-humor)

~~~
nessus42
Wow, that's great too!

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holdenc
Oh the Places You'll Go is a superb children's book that takes apart difficult
problems such as conformity, risk-taking, complacency and failure. It follows
a young protagonist through a psychedelic landscape discussing the painful,
confusing and wonderful places we will all eventually go -- if we just try.
What could be better?

------
larrys
"Similarly, in software, you can't be thinking about which programming
language you are using, and whether you are using MongoDB or MySQL, or whether
photogrid layouts are the hot new thing or not. You will never hit the
proverbial fastball if that is the sort of junk filling your head. Rather,
creating and shipping products needs to be muscle memory. You just need to
have clear eyes, a full heart, and be ready to show up and play."

Muscle memory comes from doing something many times. Watch the new barristas
at Starbucks and compare how they use their hands to vs experienced barristas.
Or a plumber. Or a physician. Or a programmer.

It takes time. Unless I am understanding what the OP is saying he seems to be
implying that you can "just do it" and be in the zone that allows you to avoid
thinking about "which programming language you are using".

When someone asks me a question about something that I have years of
experience in I have all the answers immediately without thinking and I know
the questions to ask and the nuances and can even correct the wrong
information being given to me. That took years reading, learning and
experiencing things. It doesn't come overnight. Along the way the learning
process did involve "junk filling" my head.

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enko
This might be off-topic, but - wow, what a great-looking, well-designed blog
this is. Congratulations.

~~~
stu_k
It's on Dustin Curtis's Svbtle: <http://svbtle.com/>

~~~
enko
OK, well I'd never noticed that blog network before. Well congrats anyway to
the artist behind that - a great looking, minimalist design.

~~~
barrkel
The thing that annoys me most about it is the "kudos" thing that animates on
mouse-over. I've accidentally "given" kudos a couple of times before I figured
out what it was so I could avoid it.

~~~
sad_panda
It is pretty sweet on mobile. On the desktop it offends my sensibilities as
much as, say, using HTTP GET to affect state.

~~~
mgkimsal
what if the mouse-over triggered a POST?

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shanecleveland
In addition to having this book in our kids' collection, my wife gave this
book to the young gal she donated a kidney to a year ago this week. As with
many well done pieces of art, I am sure, it is amazing how one thing can take
many different shapes for so many people.

------
larrys
"During my tenure in the music industry, my favorite part was getting to meet
people that created truly Great music." ...

"What is fascinating to me is that Great creation stories all sound
surprisingly similar. Something along the lines of “yeah we went in the studio
and put down some tracks, and they sounded pretty good, and we had to redo a
couple of things, and then when put out the album.”"

Do we have any info on the process that the people who didn't create "great"
music used? Perhaps many of those used the same process. And what is the
definition of "great" music anyway? Is it music that wins awards, or, the most
popular music, or music that is critically acclaimed or music that is
downloaded the most?

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brudgers
> _"when an athlete is interviewed and says things like “well, we just went
> out there to play today, and we got some good momentum and powered through
> the other team,” it's not that the athlete is a moron lacking the cognitive
> capacity to accurately explain to us what happened out on the field that
> day. Rather, it's that these interviews really, truly are an accurate
> description of what was going on in their head during the game."_

There's a bit of a switch from a last shot question to a "what do you think of
your team" question. Intelligent thoughtful and specific answers to questions
about specific plays are quite common (e.g. Tiger Woods discussing his shots
after a match).

What is common is that athletes may be less articulate than your typical
office professional when describing those events. This interview with Wayne
Rooney regarding his goal of the year hits some of the issues:
[http://espnfc.com/us/en/news/1071240/beautiful-game-
beautifu...](http://espnfc.com/us/en/news/1071240/beautiful-game-beautiful-
mind-.html)

BTW, the best Dr Seuss book is "One Fish, Two Fish."

------
earbitscom
I always wondered if people like the guys in Led Zeppelin realized, as they
were writing some of their most epic and timeless songs, that they were
creating something as truly significant as they were. Perhaps when you're
creating something as an individual, it's hard to know that you're doing
something great as it happens. But I'm curious if it's the same when you're 4
people in a room and that "magic" happens that can only be experienced when
you've found that fit with other creatives that results in something truly
original and innovative. I feel like, on some level, in cases like that, they
had to know.

~~~
freshnote
I think Page and Plant did know. We learn and live by how others react to us.
It's how we get a sense of who we are, how "good looking" and "smart" we are.
It's a constant process of self and peer evaluation and grading, although
often implicit.

Page didn't always rock. No doubt he had to figure it out like everyone else,
but when he did he was clearly a Great song writer and riff maker. And that's
Great with a capital G.

------
rdl
I don't think "what were you thinking when you created this" is EVER that
interesting a question. Too short a time interval, and too vague and
undirected. "What were you thinking when you typed this semicolon?"

However, two types of questions are interesting (at least for me -- of
engineers and entrepreneurs; not really that interested in athletes or
musicians, but I think it's general).

1) How did you solve this specific problem or decide to make these specific
tradeoffs (micro)

2) How did you get to this point (macro) (this has to be asked in a more
specific way, unless the person is a really skilled or experienced interviewee

~~~
larrys
"is EVER that interesting a question."

Agree and it feeds into the idea that you need to have some grand plan in your
mind at all times. When you read stories about people in the news they are
always presented as very clearly being "a" or "b". "He always knew he wanted
to be President" or "He wanted to be a ball player but ended up being
President". Anyway the question can in some cases even be annoying and make
you feel defensive. I dated a girl once who insisted on knowing what it was I
liked about a particular dish. Why is it important why I like pizza? I just
like pizza. Think a minute (if you are a straight guy) about why you like
tits. Go ahead. Not sure about you but I can't answer that question. I just
like the way they look. Is that an adequate answer? It triggers some thing in
me that makes me feel good. I think it's easier many times to describe what
you don't like, than what you like. I like air conditioning because high
humidity makes me feel yucky. So air conditioning helps me avoid a negative
feeling.

I think the key is like you detailed. In the specificity of the question.

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rudiger
Is the right-hand side of the text cut off on the iPad for anyone else?

~~~
dcurtis
Which iPad model and OS are you on?

~~~
alabut
I noticed it too - I'm on an iPad 2.

~~~
dcurtis
Can you (or anyone with this problem) please send me a screenshot?
hi@dustincurtis.com. Thanks.

~~~
alabut
Shoot, sorry, I didn't see this comment until I left town for a week and left
my iPad behind.

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mathattack
I wish he had started with "Rather, creating and shipping products needs to be
muscle memory" because that's the true gem of the article.

Oh yes, and I added the Doctor Suess book to my Amazon wish list.

------
akkartik
Internet archive has the original, btw:
<http://www.archive.org/stream/ohplacesyoullgo00seusrich>

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jchung
What's so interesting about this is that the key message in "Oh, the Places
You'll Go" is one which resonates for adults. Too many of our childrens books
condescend.

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systems
thinking dogma, all over again! (i.e. when thinking is seen as the opposite of
doing .. and therefore bad!)

thinking is not bad ... you can think and still make great things, greatness
doesn't have to be spontaneous or reactive ... it can be well thought, laid
out and planned

just think about it .... and oh, the places you'll go :)

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Mz
My sister sent me a copy of this book when I finally completed my associate's
degree (as a graduation present -- along with a stuffed toy in cap and gown
announcing "I iz a brane."). It's a wonderful little book.

------
capex
"Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you."

That caught my attention. Mostly the biggest obstacle in front is ourselves.

