Ed Weissman

The greatest opportunity for improving HN lies with us, not with the site. Here's a good place to start: http://edweissman.com/how-to-participate-in-hacker-news

And thanks for posting it here man. Also, just so you know, I spent some major time reading your 'best-of' http://edweissman.com/53640595. There are plenty of gems over there .

"The Best of edw519", http://edweissman.com/53640595 "How do I find business problems to solve" is answered a few times over, from different angles, in Ed's comments collected there. I'm not going to tell you which answers exactly, because you should probably read the whole thing.

This is amazing stuff - thanks much! I made a slightly more readable HTML version (with linked TOC and back links) here -> http://bit.ly/lSLTVT This could be converted to an ePub I think, with the linked TOC. If this a problem let me know and I will take it down, or maybe you could post it on http://edweissman.com/53640595 to get the linked TOC?

is it only me or there is a (just one) line of code gone wrong on ed's comment handling server? {"post_id":131434793,"html":"\u003Cdiv class='p_response_container' style='display:none;'\u003E\n\u003Cheader class='clearfix'\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"http://edweissman.com/it-takes-6-days-to-change-1-line-of-code\ class=\"p_view_all_link\"\u003EView All 16\u003C/a\u003E\n\u003Ch1\u003EMost Recent Responses\u003C/h1\u003E\n\u003C/header\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_responses_list clearfix' data-posterous-responses-container\u003E\n\u003Carticle class='p_comment p_response' style='display:none;'\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_info'\u003E\n\u003Cspan class='p_icon'\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\n\u003Ctime pubdate='1337295601'\u003E14 minutes ago\u003C/time\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"http://tomakefast.com\\u003EPJ Brunet\u003C/a\u003E responded:\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_comment_body'\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_profile_photo'\u003E\n\u003Cimg alt=\"\" src=\"/images/profile/missing-user-35.png?1337287723\" /\u003E\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_comment_text'\u003E\nHilarious, I love it.\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cul class='p_action_links'\u003E\n\u003C/ul\u003E\n\n\u003C/article\u003E\n\n\u003Carticle class='p_comment p_response' style='display:none;'\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_info'\u003E\n\u003Cspan class='p_icon'\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\n\u003Ctime pubdate='1337296138'\u003E5 minutes ago\u003C/time\u003E\nkkudi responded:\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv…

You'll have to build an audience first. I read a lot of the mixergy Entrepreneur majority of the successfull ones all had audience or contacts before they had customers. An audience or contact is different from a customer because they are just people who are interested in you, whereas customers go a step further and buy. However an audience or contact allows you to make offers and build a customer base. You can build an audience by making friends on hacker news, if you're known for making great contributions to the hacker community you can build audience. So it's important to be genuinely interested in the community. Once you have an audience you can make them an offer, and if it's any good you'll have customers. And interesting recent example of this is edw519 ebook. Ed genuinely enjoys the hacker news community and people enjoy his contributions which are basically his comments/submissions. I doubt his intentions was ever to sell an ebook of his comments, but he is doing that now, and the site promoting it has been viewed 20923 times, and that's only because he is part of the community and has an audience. see: http://edweissman.com/i-turned-my-hacker-news-comments-into-an-eboo It's a small experiment on Ed's part, but it won't be worthwhile without an audience. If you're interested in more specific ways to build an audience stay tuned. Also read: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/the-easiest-way-to-succeed-as-an-…

Check out chapter 4 of his book, "Work Habits". Available at http://edweissman.com/53640595 and as a PDF (top of the linked page). To summarize: Use simple tools and eliminate distractions. At the end of the day, code and refactor away from the computer (on printouts). This forms the basis of the next day's work at the computer.

>> If you can go from 4 to 10 in something new every few years, that's amazing ... If you follow edw519's posts (and I recommend that you do#), you will see he is an amazing guy whose life revolves around programming. #see http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=edw519, free ebook, "The Best of edw519": http://edweissman.com/53640595 Also well worth following: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11, http://www.kalzumeus.com http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=cperciva and many others...

I think edw519 used to write in length about 'just-in-time-learning', calling it 'pull learning' (as opposed to 'push'). See, for instance, comment 71 in [1]. My rabbit-holing doesn't always resemble your approach; I often end up reading a book on a topic I'm just interested in, without a particular project or feeling of lacking knowledge. However, I try to transition myself into more JIT-learning/pull-learning style, so that I learn things at the same time I try to get something useful&interesting done. This mindshift is probably mostly due to HN (and we're looping back to rabbit-holing :)) - especially the prevailing emphasis on 'shipping the damn thing'. [1] - http://edweissman.com/53640595

Heh, I thought you were joking: http://edweissman.com/53640595 that's kind of fun

yea, this happens to me all the time. Ed Weissman's solution to this is to have a separate work station (qn 64, http://edweissman.com/53640595). Personally, I open separate browsers for work and general surfing (email, HN, twitter etc). For instance, all my tabs for work will be on Firefox (tab groups and tab mix plus work wonders for tabs organization BTW) while all other non-work related surfing will be done on Chrome.

What you said reminds me of something I read from edw512's book ( http://edweissman.com/53640595 ) > Buyers of software products, like small children, hear one word more than any other: "no". "No, it can't be done." "No we don't do that." "No, if you did that it would screw up everything else." "No, that's stupid" It doesn't matter if you're right, all that matters is that you're just another person saying "no". > You differentiate yourself from others by giving the exact same answer, but with the word "yes" instead of "no". > "Yes, in order to do that, we'd also want to look at..." ... > As I've told my customers many times, "The answer is always 'Yes'. You may not want to do it once you understand what it will take, but the answer is still 'yes'."

Would suggest to go through these - really helpful 1) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/43528 2) http://edweissman.com/53640595

Nice job! Feature request: Make the queries linkable. I think people would appreciate being able to have permalinks for themselves or HN leaders like tptacek, patio11 and jacquesm. It would also be very interesting to see how the results for edw519 size up against his own curated comment list: http://edweissman.com/53640595 -- Update: Thanks to bitovod for implementing the feature. There's now an ongoing list of the HN leaders at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2662721

His HN comments collection: http://edweissman.com/53640595 , search for "bed".

https://jrock.us/ https://jgc.org/ http://kaledavis.com/ https://aegir.sexy/ https://www.gwern.net/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/ https://danwin.com/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/ https://www.magic.do/ https://edweissman.com/ https://jakeseliger.com/ http://www.fogus.me/ https://www.stavros.io/ https://jasonlefkowitz.net/ https://minimaxir.com/ https://www.robinwhittleton.com/ https://ciexinc.com/ https://rongarret.info/ https://williampietri.com/ https://bpier.re/ https://joshtriplett.org/ https://ooer.com/ https://feross.org/resume/ https://www.brandons.me/ https://benjaminpbreen.com/ http://hokstad.com/ https://www.scott-a-s.com/ https://www.bermita.com/ http://tlrobinson.net/ https://ldpreload.com/ https://dotat.at/ http://xavvy.com/ https://correa.in/ https://adriann.github.io/ https://leclan.ch/ https://joeyespo.com/ https://pius.me/ https://adamierymenko.com/ https://drewdevault.com/ https://battlepenguin.com/ https://chris.improbable.org/ https://www.snellman.net/ https://ocdtrekkie.com/ https://www.cryptolotus.com/ https://www.gregkogan.com/ https://david.kitchen/ In no particular order. From: https://jessimekirk.com/blog/hn_users_links/. I went through about half of the list looking for personal websites to use as inspiration for my own.

I don't have much advice for emotional issues but you could try taking stock of how the day went. What was good and what wasn't? If you have trouble remembering you could keep notes about what you're doing while you work so you can review things later. If you identify misses on your part, you could start digging into what didn't work, why, and what you could do in the future[0]. Like a mini retro for yourself. Hopefully you'll be able to catch when you're slipping on something and implement a strategy that helps you improve. Are there software tools you could build for yourself to give yourself guard rails or automate error prone tasks? Could you have applied your focus elsewhere to get different results? Do you have knowledge gaps anywhere? This works for things that are going well too. Are there ways you can increase your velocity or bring helpful stuff to your team? Keeping notes on tasks and issues talked about during meetings is really helpful too. It's easy to forget details if you get context switched out of things or lots of time passes. Pay attention to what business is doing and other teams are up to too. Sometimes you can see patterns and suggest things that help the larger org in nice ways. Don't freak out - you got this! [0] sort of like this but probably less extreme - http://edweissman.com/Wiki0205.html

http://edweissman.com/53640595 -- or check his profile.

Most of your doubts and concerns were already answered by the wise old edw519 here: http://edweissman.com/53640595 Also please understand that self-pity is the worst use of your imagination. I've been in your situation too and some of the things that helped me are: 1) Having a habit of exercising daily for 30 minutes. No compromise on this. This is a good antidote for depression. 2) A habit of getting up at 5 daily and doing the most important thing at that time. This habit alone can change your life and to cultivate this hard habit in a ridiculously easy manner please check this article: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when… 3) Having a Vision Board. I use text instead of images. They are more direct. I change it every week to keep it fresh and inspiring all the time. As a part of the morning ritual, I stare at the vision board for about 5 to 10 minutes and is also close to where I sleep. It gets in my way whenever I’m distracted and not working. I'm an aspiring Hacker too - currently at the 'aspiring' level only though. I'm learning Ruby by straightaway trying to implement the algorithms found in my college book - Design and Analysis of Algorithm. My work is hardly inspiring. But I start my day with some satisfaction that I’m one step closer to becoming someone like ed519 even if it would take me years! Remember that the 10000-hour-rule is BS. I realized that I can have fun 'while in the learning phase' and I could…