I think authors of advice like this underestimate the amount of exhaustion a lot of people have to cope with. I set out with the intention of getting into the habit of being creative instead of consuming only to realize I Was putting myself under more pressure.
I have to say though that simply doodling on a Synth and enjoying the sounds, playing an instrument without trying to make a song, can be very relaxing and satisfying. Especially when you are a beginner at it. Otherwise you might be trying too hard to create something meaningful, destroying the pleasure in the process.
So my advice would be not to attempt to create, but to simply indulge in the act and enjoy the flow.
I've found that counter-intuitively, the best way to get over the hurdle of creating is to learn it seriously, at least for a while, to get over the beginner period. And not just just hobbies of creation, but also sports.
It takes a beginner significantly more energy to enjoy an activity, but once you are proficient in the basics (like keyboard playing for improvisation) the mental barrier is much lower, and you are more likely to just jump into it and enjoy yourself.
My father liked badminton, but was never good, and rarely played. Then, at some point in his busy life, he scheduled a lesson once a week, for two months.
It made such a dramatic change; he started to play weekly, even after the lesson ended, and each time with rejoicing and cheerfulness.
I've seen the same pattern on myself and my friends as well, in both arts and sports. So, I'd say if you think there's something you might enjoy doing often, schedule some time to study it (again, doesn't have to be long). Get better and get happier.
Same. I have found that I'm usually only interested in doing things I'm already good at, and cannot do well attempting to be an autodidact. The obligation of setting up and getting to an appointment on time means you have no choice but to have someone experienced see you work, and no choice but to have them guide you. If I am given a choice, as in left to my own devices without any other person to force or obligate me to keep going, I will usually end up stopping.
My biggest problem is either not being able to tell if I have actually made any progress, or have made too little progress over too long a period of time. It seems to be accepted that if you put in a lot of effort then you'll get better, but they never mention how much better. I don't see the point in getting to point X in 10 years when being smarter about my resources would have gotten me to point X in 3 years, if getting there faster means getting to the point where I actually start enjoying it faster. Time is precious and non-renewable. Some forms of practice are simply better than others, and I believe that I can't always figure them out entirely alone.
I also think that people have a talent and proclivity towards certain fields of interest.
If you have played a couple sports well, then it's easy to pickup more.
If you can play a musical instrument well, it's easer to translate the learning to others.
If you can cook one cuisine well, then it's easier to start cooking others, as the fundamentals are there.
That said, I agree with you, if you want to pickup something that you feel you don't have a talent for, then you need to hire a good coach and take lessons. And yes, the initial hump is frustrating, most people give up, but if you can push yourself over it, you'll begin to enjoy it.
I had opposite experience. I always tender to take things seriously and felt like doing them just bit is wrong or weak and "unserious".
Result was that I stopped those activities soon, because they were draining. Meanwhile, people who just unseriously dabbled in them, tender to learn and get habits. They were not drained by them and had fun.
I'm sure this is highly subjective, and people get fun or boredom in their own ways.
I just find that I cannot enjoy something if I have too much doubts. I may enjoy doing it once or twice, but if I'm constantly caught in failure/exhaustion, it's no longer fun.
I used to be into composing and improvisation, but each time I attempt at it, the result was to "meh". I walked the keyboard but knew nowhere to go. The fun was basically an initial passion plus a little curiosity, which in me, tends to die quickly if no fuel is supplied.
Meanwhile, my friend who actually studied Jazz, can sit in front of a piano and just play, fully enjoying every second of it, while entertaining everyone else. Comparing with my randomly walking on the keyboard, it's a higher level of fun as he attempts to weave the harmonies and melodies, and it's more lasting and more complex.
Again, it's a quite personal thing, as I also have a friend who literally doesn't do anything new. He neither dabbles nor learn seriously; has no hobbies apart from having dinner with friends; but still, he seems to be really happy.
For me the difference was mindset, with "unserious" approach, I also expected less. Both in terms of effort and result. So suddenly "meh" improvisation (or whatever) is OK, because the goal was not good improvisation. It was too do pretty much anything and maybe learn little bit.
And that change of expectations made difference in long term - in two years span I improved much more on things I had low expectations at and kept fun and thus kept doing bit by bit.
That's great advice. When going back to work after a few months, I had to shelve so many projects. I had no energy for anything. Sometimes, I could do little more than cook dinner. That's as a single, childless person with a low stress job.
Let people relax. Stop appropriating every good thing and turning it into another competition.
This reminds me of a lovely article I've read recently: an app can be a home-cooked meal. In other words, you can create small scale, short-lived things for private consumption. It's a lot more relaxing.
Agreed, although I’ve found that some of this pressure is due to the incredible amount of momentum towards consumption you have to overcome when trying to become a creator.
When I’m out of my writing habit, sitting down and getting something out is a huge chore. My brain constantly wants to pick up my phone, check my email, read the news, etc. But once I’ve spent a few days limiting that impulse, I feel like the chains are off and I’m able to just sit down and write.
Last year I participated in Nanowrimo, and it was insane how quickly the words came after the first five days. I highly recommend it to anyone who has felt similar friction in their creative practice.
NaNo is a blast, especially if you can find a group online or in person to work through it together. I'm a bit obsessed with it, if you or your wife have any questions about it don't hesitate to email me at james@sane.digital .
I think it is a similar situation to the people advising to have side-hustles and hone your skills in your free time. It’s great if that’s your thing. But it is not for everybody, and nobody should feel obligated.
That's good advice. Before you learn how to make a dish, you must learn various ways to ruin a dish. You can read all the books in the world, but only dozens of bad omelettes will teach you how to make a good one.
There is one musician on YT who said that he is simply doodling away on his groovebox frequently and that more than 90 percent of the results are shitty. But from those ideas that are somewhat decent he develops his music.
I read the article, but started to get a bit disappointed, when it got to competing and advancing one's career/impact. It espouses a different motivation from the one that drives me.
I'm not against these. After all, it's why most folks get into whatever they are doing. We all need to keep a roof over our heads, and food on the table. We also want to feel good about what we do. It's just not why I do what I do.
I do what I do, directly as a love of the craft, and all my work is an act of creation.
I get up early every morning, and walk a couple of miles. It's usually dark, when I do, and I use the time to sort through what I'll be doing that day. A lot of that "sorting" is a moral and motivational inventory. I figure out what I want to do, and also why I want to do it. If I can't come up with a compelling why, then I have to reconsider the what.
I do enjoy writing. I've done a lot of it[0], and will do more. I don't have a schedule for writing prose. I tend to churn something out once a month or so, but I will sometimes do a couple of articles in fairly quick succession.
I do them for myself. It's nice if people read them, but they really help me to clarify what and why I do, as well as how. Like everything else I do, I apply a lot of polish and refinement; even if I am the only person that will ever read it. One of my habits, is that everything I do, I do as "ship." When even my casual throwaway experiments consist of a level of quality not seen in many large-scale industrial apps, then the stuff I'm serious about, is likely to be fairly robust.
The one daily thing that I like to do, is write code every day. Not just LeetCode (in fact, I never practice that stuff). I like to write "keeper" code, every day, 366 days a year. Of course, I'm not able to actually get that done every day, but I get most days done. My GH Activity Graph is pretty much solid green[1].
I've been at this game a while, and a lot of what I do is almost "instinctual." Basically, "muscle memory." When I'm working on a a project, I don't whip out my GoF Design Patterns book, and figure out which of the Basic Patterns I'll be using, or my copy of Rapid Development, to set out a project plan; I just start writing an OBSERVER or ADAPTER, without bothering to call it that. In fact, the only reason that I tend to use industry jargon, is when I'm trying to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for maintainers. Otherwise, I often make up my own terminology.
I'm a bit "on the spectrum," and tend to live in my own world. It can be a massively productive world, but is insular.
When I write -especially about how I do stuff, it often forces me to get out of "muscle memory," and into the same world everyone else lives in. I have to explain what I do to an audience that is larger than just myself.
So, it's great if people like what I write, but it really doesn't matter that much (at, least, to me).
I have to disagree. Please don't write for the sake of writing. Only write if you love writing or have some ideas to share , don't worry about amount of readers.
I see many writing because of "others are writing " often end up with not so good work(articles/blogs).
Briefly to summarize, Write only if you have something shareable information or you love writing. Don't write because someone told you that Writing is Very good idea. Then you end up with something people won't like to read.
Hard disagree. I think you may be conflating writing and publishing. Just because you’ve written something doesn’t mean that you have to publish that thing.
Writing has far-reaching effects on how you think and communicate. Lots of people believe their thoughts are well organized and that they’re capable of communicating them. But then they sit down to write those thoughts out and they can’t get anywhere.
Writing, as a practice, helps you begin to make sense of all the disjointed ideas in your head. It helps you make connections between things you otherwise may not have noticed. And it helps you improve those ideas and connections because you can review and edit them later.
Think of it like exercising: just because you life weights, doesn’t mean you have to start wearing sleeveless t-shirts.
I use writing as an indicator where I land on Bloom's taxonomy for a given topic. I also use it as a tool to increase my own comprehension; and—to put it bluntly—to call myself out on my own bullshit. When it's in writing, I've got to defend anything I claim in a way that's a lot more rigorous than when it's just in my head.
I disagree. Not everything you do has to be valuable to others. I doodle in my notebook, build crappy furniture and pluck on my guitar because it's fun.
Writing can be a skill you hone for your own pleasure, and a useful way to structure your thoughts or capture your current state of mind.
You do those because you love it. That's what i meant. You either want to love it or you want to share something useful to otters. That's when you must do.
At the point that I have a finished product sitting in my hands, there is no combination of reasoning that will prevent me from desperately wanting to share it with others. It does not matter that I did it for myself - in fact, that is always how it starts - but I personally feel that it's a waste if I end up passing on before I declare it ready to show to the world.
I believe this indicates a problem in my line of thinking: desperation to affect the world or get someone to care. My belief is that if I keep everything I do to myself, then I have not "affected the world" in any way, and this is not good. My accomplishments will die with me and nobody will ever know what kind of a person I was, and all my life boiled down to was essentially finding a way to be independent and survive and then participate in solitary hedonism for the rest of it. For whatever reason I find this a suboptimal use of my own life. I am in a position in the midst of failed startups and college applications and poverty to have enough time and capital to work on my ideas, to do nearly anything, and I can squander it in any number of ways. I lose the game every day knowing this and only remembering it if someone publishes a life advice article but ignoring it the rest of the time.
It feels as if my worth is tied to other people irrespective of what I tell myself otherwise, because of my desperation to have someone to confide in, but not in a way that is effortless. I keep believing I have to spend a lot of effort working on skills to deserve the kind of friends I want to know that have also worked very hard to hone skills. I don't really understand why, except maybe I don't know anyone that fits into my perfectly idealized view of the world. My family wasn't pushing me to overachieve either. My standards for people and things are just too high.
Do I enjoy creating things? Not necessarily, but not creating enough things that pass my arbitrary filter before I die is supposedly worse. But this is only a vague ideal and not a concrete goal. It just looms over me constantly, as if I should have a constant reason to criticize the way I am living as "not what I really want." But I still believe the vague goal if I end up writing it out concretely. I don't want it to go away, or I will miss wanting, even mildly, to become "that kind of person."
I understand this is discouraging me and I have to work on it somehow. Maybe getting the recognition from someone that I can accomplish things I set my mind to and that there is a path to what I want to do would clear out most of the issue. (But I don't mean people telling me them over Internet messages or therapy sessions just because I asked. It doesn't seem to work. I can tell all of these things to myself, but for some reason I can't personally believe them until someone wiser than me can confide in me enough to recognize and confirm them through what I actually do, not what I say.)
It helps to reframe what creating software is. That's why I like this article that compares it to a home-cooked meal. I can't speak for others, but I don't cook to change the world. It just feels rewarding to make good food. Likewise it feels good to write software that scratches an itch.
You can make software like you bake cookies, for the enjoyment of a select few. You can enjoy writing code in obscurity like you can enjoy looking at a landscape without sharing it on social media.
The point of creating is not the result, but the process itself. It teaches you new things, and gives you a better appreciation of the world around you. Gardening turned my local forests into living, breathing museums. It allowed me to look deep beneath the surface, to literally see the forest for the trees. If I wanted pretty flowers, I'd buy plastic ones.
I write, not because I love writing, but I think I have thinks (edit: this is a typo, but not one I can bring myself to kill) I want other people to know. Actually, often these are things that I have said in piecemeal many times in other places and it can be remarkably useful to just sit down and force myself into the constraint of “ok, I need to get these all together in a coherent thought that someone else will want to read”. It’s often a pretty painful experience, to be honest, but I have found it can be really helpful in getting to “what really is my opinion on this thing? Why do I want to talk about it so much? How can I distill it into something that others can understand? What parts can I support with evidence? Which parts don’t really make sense anymore?”
You write because You have shareable information, You feel like your thoughts must be documented/organized. You do it for greater good even though you don't much like/love writing.
Actually by "if you love writing" , i meant writers who are fond of writing stories/other entertainment. It could also mean some writers who love writing tech doc/daily notes.
What I criticizing were writers who write spam,skiddie hack articles, false news,low quality spam,etc. If you don't know about what you are writing,then you are wrong.
Yeah, I think we all agree that blogspam is not fun to wade through. I interpreted your comment as “don’t write unless you love writing and have things you want to share” when I think you really mean or.
Desire to publish helps to overcome 80% remaining work. Even then 9 out of 10 remains in the shelf, it is too hard.
Again and again I am finding myself after a day with something that is not ready. All I can do is scrap it for now and turn to something small. Like 674 bytes small [1] but I think it is beautiful.
It's also reasonable to write for its own sake. I find writing therapeutic, as a result I've yet again started a blog. I don't care if anyone reads it, the act of writing and publishing is what makes me relax.
One of the things he mentions in his book is to be judicious in editing your own texts, removing any words that do not add to the actual message that you're trying to get across. For instance, in the last sentence, I ought to have removed the word 'actual'.
I think some of this advice could probably apply to this article as well.
The interesting question is, why do we still read these things? We already kind of know what they are going to say, and we already have well informed and stable opinions about them. I think personally deep down maybe I'm hoping they're going to convince me that what I say does actually matter to someone else... I'm yet to be convinced ;-)
For me, I've become absolutely sick of these types of self-help articles. But once in a while, I'll read one in the hope that it'll actually teach me something new and make me re-consider how I viewed something. Usually that doesn't happen. The ones that do are pretty technical, a recent example is the 'What does code readability mean?' article hanging around on the HN front page right now.
I love the ones that tell you the opposite. How To Do Nothing is my favourite example. I also like those that remind us to build silly things that don't matter.
It's good to be reminded that maybe there is more to life than being really really really ridiculously productive.
Writing puts thoughts to paper. Muffled thoughts don't make good sentences. A collection of sentences makes a paragraph. Therefore, muffled thoughts can't make a paragraph.
Where am I going with the above: By writing, we find out if our thoughts are muffled or not. This means that writing is like a mirror to our thoughts.
Now there is a difference between writing for personal use and writing for the public. I think everyone should write for personal use. Examples of writing for personal use are
1. Journalling.
2. Self Reflection.
3. Project analysis.
When it comes to writing for public consumption, it's a different thing all together. You would want to have a topic or interest area you want to write about. It also takes much more time than you can imagine.
I started writing recently for the public and the process has been rewarding. I have learnt alot about myself.
You can check out my newsletter at https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/
Muffled made sense too. Writing for yourself allows you to write down thoughts that might not be suitable for others (unless you are Charles Bukowski). Writing about your negative emotions feels very therapeutic. Older journals are a delightful read. It's fun to remember the things that made you tick back then, whether it was a short-lived obsession with old maps or lust for a girl that - let's face it - really wasn't that special.
People always ask questions like "How are you thoughts if you are dead/blind?" I'm neither of this and most of my thoughts don't look like images, text, or sound. They are their own convulted thing, a thought.
Talking and writing about them helps me to "linearize" them and to find the holes.
Especially technical writing helps to get things in check. Did I miss some steps? Can I reproduce my conclusion from my text alone, without any extra input?
Write something, try to explain things, it can help you to understand better; even if you think you already know them well.
You don't even need to publish your stuff, though others people input can help greatly too, even if the just ask questions because they don't know the topic as well as you.
I have been reading a book just 5 pages (some days more) and writing for 136 days without a break. I am super enjoying my journey. Check out https://5pagesaday.com/
It's not a plug to hop you to my site. I sincerely appreciate your feedback. I see a lot of benefits, like I improved my ability to express my views concisely. I am now a lot better at summarising things and packing so much of value in short sentences. I would highly recommend building a habit, like reading and writing.
I write blogs mostly because I want something to refer back to over time. If someone else finds it useful that’s great but ideally I am the target audience.
I tend to write while I’m doing anything as loose notes which I can then turn into something after the fact. So I get the benefit of what I was thinking at the time and then years later can get back into that mindset.
It works for me, and is relatively low effort. What I have found though is that it helps job wise because I stand out just a little, which is more important than ever as I get older.
Question for folks that write on a regular basis: what medium do you use to write? Paper and pen? Laptop? Tablet? Something else?
I find pros and cons to all of the above, and ultimately have a hard time getting into the flow. I used to write all of the time on a laptop before I started working in software.
I use Scrivener. It's basically a "pretty good writer's IDE". Yes I could make something more sophisticated and tuned for my workflow hacking up emacs or vim, and it's not Jet-Brains level of polish, but after trying both routes I realized for writing, Good Enough is just fine. And the advantages of Scrivener outweigh the lack of vim bindings... :-) Put it in full screen, and everything you need to write is there, with all of the other distractions from your general OS hidden out of the way. Decent outlining and note taking tools, plays well with git, multiple ways of looking at the same data, and Composer Mode, where your page becomes a typewriter. It's pretty slick and fairly priced.
I will also outline on paper and index cards. Index cards are great for outlining and can be spread around the desk easily.
I've used Scrivener for book writing where I've found it really useful for when I'm still fiddling with organization and overall balance between chapters. The downside is that between collaborators and editors, I need to move everything over to another format at some point. But I still find it useful in the early draft stage if I'm mostly working on my own.
I write a bit. I use my laptop. I change my methods frequently (text files, notion, html, markdown, wiki, wordpress).
Lately I've slacked a bit and so a couple days ago I decided to simply write letters to myself. This is very, very easy. I don't have to worry about how good it is, I'm only writing to myself. I also put a note in my calendar to go back and read my letters about once a month.
Sometimes I'll expand letters into blog posts or small books. I've published several small books in the past, the most recent being my introduction to computer programming for absolute beginners, which is called "Splash of Code by Joel Dare".
Either laptop of desktop depending on whether I need a lot of reference material open.
I wrote with a typewriter for years before computers and I can't really handwrite for an extended period any longer (or read what I've written half the time).
long hand on plain paper - then dictation onto the computer. it's a nice system combining the sound feel, including a first edit as you change the medium.
My problem with writing is the inevitable cringe I get after rereading what I wrote (especially on stuff that I wrote longer than a year ago), since by the time I reread it, I have already learned so much more and have gotten totally different insights, or the environment has changed so much that my writing is no longer relevant. And then I feel embarrassed, because if I cringe, then I start to think how many other people would cringe if they would read it.
Trying to hedge against all these outcomes results in an unhealthy high level of expectation that my writings be timeless pieces of novel and truth that it cripples my writing to the point that I stopped writing a long time ago. Any tips to overcome this?
I wrote a personal journal during my motorcycle travels. Not a blog, just a personal journal. I wrote down what happened and how I felt, with no regards for any audience.
That was after I gave up on writing a blog about it.
I read some of it a bit later. I couldn't make it through a single blog article, but poured through the journal with a wide grin. It was enjoyable precisely because it was so raw. It perfectly captured everything: the fear, the excitement, the anger, the embarrassment, the lust, the boredom. That was the story, not the diluted version I felt comfortable sharing. It felt much more real with the bad parts left in.
Write for yourself, as a record. Be angry, be lewd, be irrational, but be honest.
Regarding the author's point that you "need to narrow down and focus on a small enough splice, such that when you tug at its strings, you have a real chance to get noticed" — reminds me of a friend who sends the occasionally newsletter.
Rather than boasting a large email list, the friend signs off every email with the line, "sent to 27 subscribers." You have no idea who those 26 other people are, but you know you were hand-picked. This is not a list you sign up for, but it's one where you are likely to pay attention.
I started to work on one tech site, and I often write many technical documents,and I'm planning to complete a documentation before a new release this December.
For every post I wrote, I personally learn a lot, specially edge cases. That alone is worth it for me the process.
I disagree that you have to put content out. I suppose the author is from South Asia, and there is a competition there that seemingly small things matter more. Bring in Hacktoberfest PR counts, GSoC gaming, and of course a stellar Medium.com content for the full picture.
Stop trying to force yourself to do stuff. Soon you'll only be able to function by making a project out of even stuff that won't be bending themselves to such, well , projects.
Idk if that's right, if I didn't force my self to do anything I'd be sitting around watching TV, ordering food and smoking weed. I think most if not all lean naturally lazy.
I agree about the writing, but don't try to be a philosopher.
Philosophy is a field where reputable, long-tenured experts routinely get it wrong. Many philosophers stake their entire career on a mistake.
Being the expert in your field, even having 30+ years of experience, does not make you a philosopher. A beginner in philosophy has at least an undergraduate degree and 5-10 additional years of moderate study.
Stick to what you know, and you will always be able to translate your experience into valuable insights for others.
Insofar as a a philosopher's job is to think clearly, analyze concepts, and provide arguments, I agree.
Like cycling or any other activity, there are levels to philosophy. But that doesn't mean you should enter the Tour de France because you're interested in mathematical Platonism.
The book "Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student" is a great resource to improve your authorship. It's dense, meticulous, and for me, invaluable. I consider it the literary equivalent of a technical manual.
In the midst of Covid-19 isolation, meeting with less distractions, I too had thoughts on theses lines. It almost came as a revelation. Keep creating, everyone's a creative force. But create value, not nonsensical stuff. Kudos for the author of this article.
If I may, RWE's 'Self-Reliance' too mentions something on these lines.
> With this blog post, I’m pulling at the strings that connect people who want to create stuff, have the ability to create stuff, and want to get started but haven’t yet. More specifically, my blog might appeal to people who have the ability and desire to write.
Doers (less and less)... teachers (less)... networkers (more)... writers (more and more)... the trend just shows the sad indictment of an economic tsunami in the making, where opportunities and real money are scarce?
I have to say though that simply doodling on a Synth and enjoying the sounds, playing an instrument without trying to make a song, can be very relaxing and satisfying. Especially when you are a beginner at it. Otherwise you might be trying too hard to create something meaningful, destroying the pleasure in the process.
So my advice would be not to attempt to create, but to simply indulge in the act and enjoy the flow.