
How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome - plinkplonk
http://japhr.blogspot.com/2012/04/366-or-how-i-tricked-myself-into-being.html
======
ozataman
I applaud the author for his tenacity. There is no doubt that kind of
discipline produces results, both in terms of work product and personal
advancement.

However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a
subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to
distill through the lens of experience.

The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other procedural
knowledge. I really don't think it would work for anything in or above the
intermediate range of content on any meaningful, commonly deep topic.

Just imagine whether the "Mythical Man Month", "Code Complete" or "Innovator's
Dilemma" could have been written with this kind of approach.

I don't know about others but when I read a book, I sometimes realize the
presence of an unavoidable slight bias towards believing the author and
respecting his conclusions, that is unless I am already deeply knowledgeable
about the subject and have my own strong opinions. It better be the case that
the author is _in fact_ trustworthy on the subject.

~~~
utnick
Generally I agree, but the topics of his books (SPDY, Dart, and backbone ) are
all extremely new technologies. Like they have all been released only in the
past year. Very few people have a ton of real world experience with these.

So I think the book reader probably will know that the author doesn't have
years of battle tested experience but understand that the book is meant to be
a good way for a beginner to get up to speed and get going with the topic.

~~~
huhtenberg
They might be "extremely new technologies", but how do they fit into existing
picture?

This is akin to a layman writing a book on International Klein Blue, but
having no idea of what other colors are out there. It's a form of a "blind
leading the blind" situation.

------
anthony_franco
Jerry Seinfeld used this exact technique to become a great comic. As told by
software developer Brad Isaac when he asked Jerry for career advice[0]:

 _He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and
hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker._

 _He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X
over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the
chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially
when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break
the chain."_

 _"Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis._

[0] [http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-
se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

~~~
its_so_on
There's only one problem. When you do break the long chain you're out for the
count. When was the last time you heard anything from Seinfeld after his long-
running eponymous show was cancelled?

How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means
you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?

~~~
mangodrunk
It wasn't canceled, he chose to stop the show, and at the time it was the most
viewed show [0]. They offered him a lot more money but he decided to leave on
a high point [1]. After having one of the most successful shows of all time,
he went on to create a successful movie (Bee Movie) [2] and continues to do
stand-up.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld#Ratings>

[1] <http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9712/26/seinfeld/>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie>

~~~
reddit_clone
> successful movie (Bee Movie)

This is debatable. The way I remember it, it was a clunker.

~~~
mangodrunk
Well, let's look at the numbers. With a budget of $150 million and a global
box office release gross of $287 million [0], which doesn't factor in things
like DVD sales/rentals and licensing, etc means they made about $137 million
more than their budget. That seems like success to me, but maybe it's not that
simple in the movie industry with Hollywood accounting [1] and as a lot of it
seems to depend on costs after the making and a simple general guide is that
the movie needs to make at least twice as much of the budget to be considered
profitable [2].

[0] <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=beemovie.htm>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting>

[2] [http://io9.com/5747305/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-
to-m...](http://io9.com/5747305/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-
be-profitable)

------
tangue
Though I respect the process and the efforts behind this, _"How to write books
with a superficial understanding of what you're talking about"_ would be more
appropriate.

~~~
eee_c
Ah, but I think that's the point. My understanding of the topics is anything
but superficial. If you follow along with my daily posts, I think you can see
me work through initial infatuation, recognition of limitations, and finally
deeper understanding.

To be sure, I could know more. But I think you're being dismissive by
characterizing this as superficial.

~~~
dansingerman
Is it more than superficial though? Depends on your definition of
'superficial':

If I buy a book on SPDY (or any technology), it is likely because I want to
use it in a production/live environment.

I want to buy a book on technology from someone who has run a live system, and
got the battle scars one gets from doing so; who has learnt from the
experiences, which they can then share.

When it comes to technology, one can research all they like about it, but
until you have practical _experience_ in a live environment, I would call it
'superficial'.

(From the blog post it is not clear; if you have run all these technologies
live then I agree, your understanding is not superficial)

~~~
sanderjd
I had the same thought as you about his books, if this is the methodology. But
I also find it very inspiring, and am extremely envious. Every time I think,
"Maybe I should write a book about this", I immediately project myself onto a
prospective consumer of my unwritten book and think, "I wouldn't read a book
written by me on this subject, because I am not enough of an expert, so why
should I expect anyone else to feel differently?", so I don't write the book.
This guy thinks the first thought and just goes for it. The word is overused,
but: awesome!

------
jwwest
Theres a lot of 'sayers' in the world: armchair quarterbacks, pundits, etc,
but not enough 'doers'. There will always be a glut of consumers and a small
fraction of producers. Not even our "consumer generated media" age of
twitterbooks and instafaces has stopped this. Although it has raised the
amount of snark and uneducated criticism.

So if you move your hand to write three sentences about Django, you're already
in the 2% (totally made up) of producers on the internet. Hell, if you blog
consistently for a month straight you're in the top .5% of bloggers.

The fact is doing something, anything, is worthy of some admiration. People
that would try to detract from your work are often the 98% of never-have-
beens.

------
oskarth
This is a great way of working. I just wonder if the books are:

(a) any good?

(b) selling?

There's a huge difference between writing a good book and sticking a couple of
notes together. Anyone read the books in question?

EDIT: I didn't see that one of the books was published - search on Amazon gave
nothing and all I could find was a buy-my-book landing page. Sorry about that.

~~~
andyouthink
Did you miss this part: "The Pragmatic Programmers"?

~~~
lukejduncan
Oh wow, I definitely missed that part. For some reason I thought the middle of
the post was the end. The bold "How'd I do" made me think that was a closer

------
bdunn
Chris - congrats man. I've been silently stalking your "chain", and also came
across your posts frequently when I was writing Planscope and was frantically
Googling for Backbone help.

The thing I like best is that you now have a time capsule for your
professional life. You can look back and see exactly where you _came from_ and
where _you went_ , which is more than most of us can say. I have a hard time
remembering what I was doing a month ago!

Keep it up, and I look forward to seeing what technology or library you tackle
next!

~~~
eee_c
Much thanks. I've definitely appreciated the encouragement along the way. But
mostly it's cool to know that my posts have helped. Makes it that much more
worthwhile :)

------
personlurking
I spent many years doing something similar, blogging about what I had just
learned (no posing of questions, though). I posted once or twice a day in two
blogs and what I learned wasn't so much via the content as it was via the
research and curation skills I taught myself. To me, research is all about
staying committed to the information I am looking for, yet being flexible in
my approach (something I learned growing up with a computer, ie, a problem
needs solving so I look at all the ways to solve it).

Still get close to 20K pageviews/month in the main blog even though I barely
post anymore, which is cool, and the result is the same as your blogging and
books...sharing what you learn with others.

Now I'm taking on a new subject/blog. I will try to use your method. Thanks!

------
jpastika
Congratulations, you are awesome! Not only did you accomplish your goal, but
you have tangible evidence of your achievement. Your name is on the cover of
three books, and no one can ever take that away. So what now? Does the bar get
raised. Are you saying to yourself "Wow, I can't believe I did that, what else
can I do?" The difference between success and failure is ambition. You sir
have tapped into your inner ambition. Harness it, focus it and you are
unstoppable. You've inspired me. Thank you!

------
ctdonath
Someone else with a similar attitude I find inspiring: Les Stroud. He'd go to
some random remote wilderness location, take a few video cameras and nothing
else, and record himself surviving for a week. Result: _Survivorman_ , a hit
TV show going into its fourth season, with at least 3 spinoff shows.

A more mundane example: my brother took a photograph every day for a year. Not
a big deal, no particular subjects or goals, but getting that one picture a
day was paramount. With some editing & on-demand publishing, result was a very
nice coffee-table book of intriguing eclectic photos.

Same idea. Pick a topic, dive in, write/record for an audience, do it with
passion and consistency and detail, the result is awesomeness. The more you
strive the awesomer you get.

~~~
gnosis
There's also this guy, who painted every day for nine years, and went from a
completely unskilled beginner to a master artist:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031684>

~~~
ctdonath
And the guy who, to test Gladwell's "10,000 hours" theory, has taken up golf
and intends to turn pro. He knew nigh unto nothing about the game when he
started. (BTW: how's he doing on that? anyone have updates?)

~~~
gjm11
<http://thedanplan.com/> where there's a blog, regularly posted videos, etc.

Current status (I just looked): 2 years in, 2700 hours done, and he just shot
his first sub-80 round of golf.

------
ilaksh
Some people didn't get one main aspect of his point which is the 'tricking'
part where he publicly committed himself to his daily work output goal.

I guess two problems with that are A) I am unfortunately not that "gullible"
as far as believing that there will really be dire consequences if I don't
produce a certain amount and B) as far as I know there is no public for me who
would care if I suddenly declared that I was going to produce one new feature
every day no matter what or whatever. I have no twitter followers and no one
ever really read my blogs and generally posts on sites like reddit are
autobanned. The closest I could do would be to go on Facebook and almost
everyone on there is family. They would probably react the way they usually do
to my Facebook posts which is "wow, I forgot that guy was on Facebook? He is
so weird" with an addition of "who cares".

Also, its easier to write one article a day than it is to say push a major
feature per day. Also it is easier to measure and break off writing goals than
software goals.

I don't have a problem doing work every day, but I do feel like some days are
vastly more productive than others. Not sure what goal I could have per day
other than X amount of hours of actual work.

------
andyouthink
I loved this story! The only parts that need a little work were: 1. His
background, because he didn't just go from zero to book writer, 2. How in the
heck Nick Gauthier decided to co-write with him on a topic Chris previously
knew nothing about, 3. Usually "I'm awesome!" is just asking for a humility
check... but I think that the point is that _you_ can be awesome.

~~~
eee_c
I've been coding since the mid-nineties and had been content to be
good/competent. From there to book writer is, I think, a natural outgrowth of
the chain posts.

I know Nick IRL. He had previously toyed with the idea of doing a book. I
can't speak for him, but I think he signed up after seeing what I did with The
SPDY Book. It worked out well IMO. He took the more in-depth ones, I took the
more foundation recipes and then we proof read each other.

------
guynamedloren
This is fantastic. Another method to "tricking yourself into being awesome"
(also called _learning_ ) is to jump right in and start working on a project.
Like the author, you'll come up with loads of questions that need answering,
and if your project is going to be successful, those questions _must_ be
answered. Otherwise your project/startup will die.

Personal experience: this is exactly how I learned Ruby on Rails as a non-
programmer. I had an idea for a project, so I tried reading books and
tutorials for months. Nothing stuck. It just didn't make sense. I couldn't
translate the words I was reading into code. So I said "screw it" and started
hacking away at my project, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. Progress
was slow obstacles were rampant, but it turns out those obstacles are easy to
overcome with stack traces and google/stackoverflow!

~~~
andyouthink
I think the difference is that some of us need a little more structure. By
providing a method and a repetitive activity, by the 21st day or so (3 weeks
they say), it will become habit. After that point, making a point of solving
problems for a particular purpose everyday will be much easier, and you'll be
making more progress.

A few stories to illustrate:

1\. I had a few friends that made it a point to learn a new technology every
day of the month and blog about it. In the end, the friends had learned quite
a bit, and even though they only had cursory knowledge of the subject, the
structure allowed them to succeed at their goal to have a more general
knowledge in their discipline.

2\. I have another friend that started writing an application with the point
for it to be the central product of a great new startup. This friend is not
only intelligent, but very capable in the whole stack, self-organized, and I
would have expected him to succeed. However, he lost interest in the end
before go-live. there were competitors, and I think he lost the vision that he
had in the beginning. He could still finish the product, but now he has
another job. I credit this to lack of structure, which is not his fault; I've
gotten no where near as far as he did on a myriad of ideas for products.

~~~
guynamedloren
> _I think the difference is that some of us need a little more structure. By
> providing a method and a repetitive activity, by the 21st day or so (3 weeks
> they say), it will become habit. After that point, making a point of solving
> problems for a particular purpose everyday will be much easier, and you'll
> be making more progress._

Yep, I agree. As long as you are able to find problems to solve. Personally,
this doesn't work for me because I am not able to come up with problems unless
the present themselves in something I'm working on. I can read 100 books on a
subject, but if I can't apply the knowledge or imagine how I can apply it, it
doesn't stick. Just different ways of learning, I guess.

------
courtewing
I'd say this in the original article's comments, but apparently it does not
allow anonymous comments:

I found this article to be really inspiring. I guess I can see how some people
may think Chris is just stroking his own ego, but I did not read it that way
at all. First and foremost, I took from this article that a key to feeling
great about yourself and your accomplishments is to actually do stuff, all the
time. It's a simple concept that I'm sure we're all aware of, but this article
really hit it home for me.

As a direct result of this article, I am inspired to do stuff, even if that
stuff is considerably less awesome than what Chris accomplished last year.

I start with a personal response via blog post: [http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-
inspiration-chains-and-being-awe...](http://epixa.com/2012/04/on-inspiration-
chains-and-being-awesome.html)

------
Lewton
The idea behind this is roughly the same reason that I had a much harder time
creating a habit of running 3 days a week, than I had creating a habit of
running 6 days a week. If you start doing something daily, the friction to get
started on the task is almost completely gone

------
davemel37
My takeaway, "Just Write. Go and Create Content. Stay Committed and you will
surprise yourself at what you can accomplish."

The only thing I take issue with is the comment that the author has more than
quiting smoking to show for it, he has 3 books.

as a former smoker, who hasnt smoked in 20 months, I can assure you that the
struggle never ends, whereas once the book is finished, you can move to the
next project.

I still rely on my 20 month chain once in a while to remind myself that I can
do and continue doing the impossible... but the battle to quit smoking, is a
constant one, and pays off for the rest of your life... the battle to write a
few books is hardly comparable.

------
marcamillion
_slow clap_

This is pretty awesome. The best way to ensure that you truly understand
something, is to attempt teaching it.

This is a technique I am starting to use in my quest to be more awesome
too...doubt I will write a book, but you never know.

~~~
huggyface
_The best way to ensure that you truly understand something, is to attempt
teaching it._

To put the foot on the other shoe, however, the last person I ever want to
learn from is someone who is learning for the sake of teaching. Such knowledge
is usually the thinnest of veneers.

~~~
marcamillion
Couldn't disagree more.

He who has just learned something, or is in the process of FULLY learning
it....is usually better able to teach it, because they understand the
challenges with learning it.

I can't tell you the amount of times I have had PhDs explain concepts to me in
the most convulted way - using terms and language that just flies over my
head, until I am explained the same concepts by a fellow student or a TA or
something in the simplistic of terms.

It's easy, once we 'master' something, to forget how to empathize with those
that have not and to get caught up in our own knowledge.

Happens to me all the time, so I am not just pointing fingers at everyone
else.

I have found that when I force myself to remember what it feels like to not
understand something I am teaching, I tend to be a better teacher because I
break it down to the simplest unit. Most experts don't/can't do that.

A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming
books...how horrible are they? Quite horrible...many of them. Some are good -
and the ones that are, tend to stand out from the crowd. It's not because they
are any less of an expert, it is usually because they can empathize with the
reader more.

~~~
huggyface
_He who has just learned something, or is in the process of FULLY learning
it....is usually better able to teach it, because they understand the
challenges with learning it._

Perhaps. Or perhaps they're at the point where they think they get it -- they
understand it -- and they start espousing their wisdom to others prematurely?
Only they have some fundamentally wrong ideas about the thing they just
started to learn. This is the story of almost every developer's apprenticeship
since the beginning of time. Heck, it's the story of _the world_ (the whole "I
was a better parent before I had children" thing. And of course the most
you'll ever know is in the first year of university, before you learn how much
you don't know).

 _A simple case in point is, just pick up any of the hundreds of programming
books...how horrible are they?_

I'm not sure how that is a case in point given that the overwhelming majority
of programming books are written by people trying to gain credibility through
authoring as a surrogate for actual code (indeed, isn't this what this
submission is about?) -- it is hardly dominated by experts since, what, the
70s?

The software development how-to field -- and this has only been made worse by
the whole self-publishing trend -- is dominated by apprentices. It is the guy
who has laid his first brick telling the world how to be a mason. No thanks.

------
epaga
Very inspiring stuff. A friend of mine once told himself he'd never be stumped
by the same question twice and held himself to it. It's amazing what simple
habits can do if you give them time.

------
bking
This is a wonderful story about how impressive your willpower is. Everyone has
the desire to be great, and most people can see the rough path they must take.
But, the hardest part for everyone is keeping the willpower to continually
push themselves to work towards that goal every day.

I am curious as to how you kept yourself motivated over the past 366 days.

------
Nitramp
I wonder what's the point in writing a book about Dart, where the language,
environment, toolchain, compiler(s), and community are still very, very
unstable.

At best, it could be an intro saying "this is what they're trying to do"; but
you can also cover that in a blog post, right?

~~~
eee_c
I was really unsure what the result would be -- I definitely shared your
concerns when I started.

The core of Dart is surprisingly stable -- the team is doing a really solid
job of not yanking the rug out from under developers' feet. Sure, I could have
stopped at one blog post, but I ended up with 90 and still feel like I have
more in me.

In the end, I was pleased with the result. But I might be biased :)

------
regularfry
This doesn't work for me. I've tried several times, but I just can't make it
stick.

~~~
fendale
Maybe doing it daily is too often to get started, certainly if you have a lot
of other stuff going on in your life too.

I set myself a target of writing one good blog post a week about a year ago,
with the target of having 52 posts in a year. Right now, I have about 31 with
1 month to go - I am pretty pleased with that, especially since I have been on
at least 4 weeks holidays through the year where I left my laptop firmly at
home.

------
sparknlaunch12
Super story!

This is exactly why we started writing a blog. It has kept is learning and
recording new information everyday.

Pretty impressive to see the blog author publishing books on topics he knew
nothing about a year ago.

------
sampsonjs
Suggested title for all self help submissions to Haxor News: "How I discovered
the one and only one secret to being incredibly awesome at everything".

------
fforw
Sorry, but an awesome programmer does not only talk about programming, he does
it.

------
free
Someone here submitted site for the same thing. <http://sein-cal.co.cc/>

What I have done is taken a printout of the same and marked on it everyday.

------
rgonzalez
Very impressive self-commitment.

------
tersiag
I'm defiantly going to try this

------
raheemm
hey man... I'm going to try this out.

------
makeshifter
I think you're patting yourself on the back too much.

I was reading about a woman in Cambodia who escaped from torture and near
death with her two children and survived in the jungle for 3 years. They never
stayed in the same place two days in a row and ate nothing but roots and bugs.

Despite this mother's best efforts, her youngest child starved to death and
died in her arms.

A few years later, she founded a safehouse for depressed women who had been
raped and tortured like her.

Now SHE is an awesome person and I respect her a lot more.

~~~
microcentury
She does sound like an incredible person, but what are we supposed to do with
that information? Does it mean we should not try and do anything, given there
is always someone out there who has a 'better' (for very wide definitions of
'better') story? I don't write this to be snarky, and I used to think in a
similar way myself, but this is not a good way to see the world.

~~~
SpaceDragon
Here's what I took away from the story: there are incredibly humble people who
have overcome incredible hardships and went on to help and heal others.

A lot of the "accomplishments" I read on HN like raising VC money or blogging
for a year straight is weaksauce in comparison.

~~~
wwosik
So? If we never achieve such greatness, does it mean we shouldn't go for the
weaksauce?

My answer is no - not every has to be the hero. If one's a decent one, it's
great already in itself.

------
mickeyben
I'm really surprised nobody said it yet. But indeed, you are awesome.

