Get Excited and Make Things

[prog]

This SXSW talk from Merlin "43folders" Mann and John "Daring Fireball" Gruber has become my personal north star for the moment. (Here is a transscript.)

It boils down to this: If you wanna publish something awesome on the internet, figure out what really and truly obsesses you. Then follow it. Let your desire to be awesome lead you, versus your desire for ad clickthroughs. If you succeed, then further success shall come.

This is lining up to be my guiding principle for a lot of what I hope to do in the foreseeable future.

(Image credit: moleitau, after this.)

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

figure out what really and truly obsesses you

This is the hard part, though, at least for me. Maybe I'm too old for obsession anymore.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

I have a simpler edict:

If you wanna publish something awesome on the internet, go ahead and do it.

[cnoocy]

I'm amused by the apropos id of this post.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha! Lookit that.

(I can assure you that I did nothing awesome in 1993, though.)

[prog.livejournal.com]

Maybe "figure out" is the wrong phrase; either something sets you on fire or it doesn't.

I really don't think age has anything to do with it, and I think you know that, mister grumpypants. (Personally, my own breadth of obsessions only gets wider and wider, the longer I live. The skills I need to improve are judgment as to what's worthy, and post-novelty focus.)

Indeed

[prog.livejournal.com]

The talk is kind of an extended corollary upon this; taking it from "here's this cool thing I made" to becoming one of the internet's most credible go-to guys on whatever that thing is that you're doing. This mostly just involves doing it for the sake of doing it, and to hell with the CPM.