Write up notes on Hackers and Painters

[nelsonic]

Finished reading the book last weekend, need to write up my notes...

[nelsonic]

If anyone else is interested in this book (if you involved in technology you should be...!) found a "Free" PDF of it online: http://ce.sysu.edu.cn/hope/UploadFiles/Education/2012/1/201201202241087375.pdf I have/read a paper copy if anyone wants to borrow it. 😉

[nelsonic]

Watch Paul Graham of Y Combinator describe what a "Startup" must do: ](https://youtu.be/2lcp0uZsY7k "Click to Watch!")

"make something that makes people's lives better" "don't spend your time looking over your shoulder..." "what kills young companies? ... they make something that users don't like...!"

[nelsonic]

https://blog.massivetimesaver.com/2018/04/24/top-10-article-by-paul-graham http://paulgraham.com/love.html

[nelsonic]

How to Do What You Love (January 2006)

"To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated."

"The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it even if they had to work at another job to make a living."

"if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves"

Always Produce

"you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible."

https://github.com/dwyl/?q=learn

""Oh, I can't draw." This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to try."

"it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years. And so to protect themselves people say "I can't."

"The two-job route: to work at things you don't like to get money to work on things you do."

"The two-job route has several variants depending on how long you work for money at a time. At one extreme is the "day job," where you work regular hours at one job to make money, and work on what you love in your spare time. At the other extreme you work at something till you make enough not to have to work for money again."

@iteles how much is "enough"...?

"anything you work on changes you. If you work too long on tedious stuff, it will rot your brain." "And the best paying jobs are most dangerous, because they require your full attention."

"In the design of lives, as in the design of most other things, you get better results if you use flexible media. So unless you're fairly sure what you want to do, your best bet may be to choose a type of work that could turn into either an organic or two-job career. That was probably part of the reason I chose computers. You can be a professor, or make a lot of money, or morph it into any number of other kinds of work."

"Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're practically there."

[nelsonic]

https://www.writingroutines.com/paul-graham-interview https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22403856

[nelsonic]

https://thepolitic.org/an-interview-with-paul-graham-founder-of-y-combinator/