Frank Chimero: Classroom Rules
This, plus a schedule, forms the totality of my syllabus this term.
- Give it your best. Work hard. Be respectful. Show up on time. Be physically & mentally present. Anything less than your best is a waste of your time, mine, and that of your classmates.
- Show the work every day. Tight feedback…
[…] if you asked random people on the street if they’d like to be able to draw like Leonardo, you’d find most would say something like “Oh, I can’t draw.” This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I’m not going to try. Because the fact is, if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to work as hard as they possibly could at drawing for the next twenty years, they’d get surprisingly far. But it would require a great moral effort; it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years. And so to protect themselves people say “I can’t.
I have come to accept that I’m really not smart. I’m slow, forgetfull, concepts never seem to stick, I have to force myself to not take things for granted.
Congratulations! You have just discovered that you have an asset! Forgetfulness, an awareness of one’s limitations and an understanding that learning can be challenging are all things that actual newbs are not aware of. You no longer suffer from hubris.
Your newfound recognition of your limitations is the foundation upon which you must build and shore up a structure for acquiring new knowledge, outlining plans which recognize your limitations and executing these plans in a predictable manner.
These problems are the same problems that most programmers (hell, most people) face. This is what the life-hacking movement is about. It is about understanding that we are all human, and that improvement in our lives requires recognition of our weaknesses.
If something is not working for you, what you should do is look for alternative methods to achieve your goal. If you do not absorb knowledge through reading books or theories, perhaps reading code would be better for you, or perhaps you are a social learner and need to talk to other programmers about what it is that they do.
Remember that every challenge is an opportunity. There are even people who have turned their quests for self improvement into niches and businesses in their own right. If you see something that doesn’t make sense to you, it may not make sense to other people. If you find a way to make a task easier, others might find it useful too.
I hit the point you’re at about 5 years ago. I’m beginning to feel competent and trust my ability to build things. There’s a lot more that i want to learn and become better at. It’s a long process, but many have tread the path before you, and many will follow in your steps.
Hacker News | I’m a cargo cult programmer, help me
This is one of the few comment threads on Hacker News worth reading. We’ve all had these moments in our career—where we feel stupid, slow and like this isn’t the career for us. If you’re feeling this way, read through it. If you aren’t, skim for reminders of why we do what we do and why we help other people in need.
Every time I listen to this song, I get a bit more out of it.
the learning curve has value, it is essential for learning, and it needs to be preserved, not whittled away in the name of “ease-of-use.
instead of wanting things to be “perfect” (and what is perfect anyway?), we should accept that they will never be perfect, and we must accept good instead.
I honestly don’t know what works for others. The act of writing, like any art, defies description. Some of the best advice I’ve seen regarding how to write essays is from Paul Graham. He says writing is thinking, and, insightfully, that writing forces you to think better. He wrote, “Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well.”
My other suggestion (also, I think, stolen from Graham) is to concentrate on writing things with lasting value. I’m not sure I’ve been doing a good job of this at all lately — I think too much of what I write currently at DF is about stuff that’s only relevant right now. I’m certain that what helped me make a name for myself, what built the DF readership, were the long pieces I did in the first few years, most of which are still relevant, or at least still interesting.
There are a lot of people writing for the web today; but there aren’t that many at all who are trying to do great writing for the web.
To have a great idea, have a lot of them.
- Thomas Edison
Too Well Read?
Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. […] Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice.
That comes from someone I highly respect and is a great suggestion for people who are stuck on self-help books and list posts. I’ve been hearing this pretty loud and clear for the past six months from a couple of people and yet, I’ve ignored it. Book purchase after book purchase, I’ve accumulated a library that would make anyone anxious.
What I’ve been recognizing lately is that all of these books are causing me to lose things that I hold very dearly: time, sanity and common sense. My wife suggested that maybe by reading all of the time, I’ve trained my brain to stop bothering with thought and simply go to the instructions it’s been taught. While I have no clue if that’s what’s actually happening, it certainly feels like what might be happening.
It’s with all that in mind that I resolved not to buy a book for the rest of the year. Even with this resolution, I still have too many books to read this year.
This resolution is also borne out of the desire to increase the depth with which I read. I want to truly know what a book says, instead of having a table-of-contents-depth-of-knowledge after reading a book. And having all of these books feels like a crushing weight: when I read, I read to finish the book as quickly as posisible, not so I can enjoy and learn from it.
One part of me worries that this resolution will harm me in the long run, yet I got along just fine before I had all of these books and I’m sure I’ll be just fine after I get rid of some of them. Another part of me worries that this is wasteful, that since I have all of these books I should just read them. But, that attitude is what got me here in the first place.
Curations for the week of February 6th
Every week I read a bunch of articles that come from a bunch of sources and for the most part it’s inconsequential fluff. But every now and again, something good comes along, something worth saving, something worth sharing. On that note, I’ve selected a few articles that made me stop and think this week.
Your Shit, My Stuff, Goldilocks, and Making the Bed You Sleep In from Frank Chimero
Get used to seeing this name—Frank Chimero—he has a knack for good clean common sense that more folks could learn from. Here, he talks about his take on stuff and his rules for it. It’s a good read and a bit of a change from the minimalism movement that has been seeing a lot of popularity lately. He sums it all up rather neatly:Add things until it starts sucking, take away things until it stops getting better.
Compassion and the Individual from The Office of His Holiness The Dalai Lama
We can all learn something from the Dalai Lama, whether you’re a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, or any other religion. In this “message”, the Dalai Lama tries to explain the meaning of life and the best ways to obtain it. I agreed with his stance that happiness is the meaning to life. His stance that compassion is the best way to achieve it, however, was a breath of fresh air.Deindividualization from You Are Not So Smart.
Ever wonder where the herd mentality comes from? Curious about why looting and rioting breaks out after demonstrations? Not sure why you made stupid decisions with your friends when you were a kid? It’s because of deindividualization.Those are the three ingredients – anonymity, group size and arousal. If you lose your sense of self, feel the power of a crowd and then get slammed by a powerful cue from the environment – your individuality may evaporate.
What Happened to Downtime? from The 99 Percent
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, about how we go from email to work to twitter to work to email to blog and so on. We never get any downtime any more, worse yet, the folks who claim to try and help are really just contributing to the problem—myself and any of these blogs included, maybe with the exception of Mr. Chimero. It’s high time to stop looking for more sources of information and start doing some actual hard thinking.Don’t Be A Design Zombie from The 99 Percent
Here I am again with another article from The 99 Percent. I don’t want you to get any funny ideas that I really like this blog, I don’t. They re just like any self-help magazine, they help very little and only really serve to fuel your anxieties about yourself. However, this article points out something you can do to curb your distraction problems: wake up early—or for that matter stay up late. Just find some time all to yourself when everyone else will leave you the hell alone.
