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191 points pabs3 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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triyambakam ◴[] No.41876072[source]
I think this sounds good but is ultimately not good advice.

Finishing, as in will power, focus, and vision, is like a muscle that you can take to the gym.

This advice is the equivalent of going for a run one day and never picking up the habit. I don't think it will lead to fitness.

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marttt ◴[] No.41885544[source]
Fully agreed. I have accidentally drifted into that kind of SOFA-mode, having been a highly organized, checklist-manifesting person beforehand. Currently, my personal pursuits are a considerable mess, and guess what - absolutely nothing about this feels "creative", really. It is what it is: just a mess.

Lately, I envy my better half who reads all books from start to finish, and also manages to be very consistent in teaching specific things to our children. This is Doing More With Less in practice -- in the long run, children obviously benefit more from that as compared to inconsistent creative bursts that I (currently) represent. Order is much harder to accomplish than mess; I think ultimately, good learning = keeping order, and being consistent about what not to do.

(I do remember Nassim Taleb advocating to read books "ADDHD-style", as in, swapping right away when you feel bored, though. And he is quite good with his probability stuff, so threre's that. Also, I quite like Perl and Larry Wall's views on the inherent messiness of human language -- I think he is spot-on with this. But... as a layperson, it's nonetheless way too easy to get lost inside this mindset. Managing complexity is an art, I guess. Or, as somebody once wrote on the Perlmonks forums, "freedom is hard".)

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1. nuancebydefault ◴[] No.41889711[source]
In a nutshell there is no way around the following : anything worth the effort, will take effort. Mess is not.