Daydreaming about the future instead of doing work today

Great piece.<p>Last year, I forced myself to release <i>something</i> every two weeks -- even if it wasn&#x27;t finished or was just a poorly-written blog post. I can proudly say it was one of the most productive years of my life[1]. Most of those projects won&#x27;t see the light of day -- no one will care and no one will notice -- but <i>releasing</i> is far better than endless planning.<p>And just to really hit it home: this year I built Lofi (a small Spotify player replacement[2]) and I shared it on reddit[3] (and on HN). But if you read most of the posts, it&#x27;s a whole bunch of angry people arguing about Electron sucking, about why the app is 100mb, about how C++ and Qt would be better, etc. etc. The difference between me and those people? I&#x27;m already working on my next project ;)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dvt.name&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;retrospective-stuff-2018&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dvt.name&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;retrospective-stuff-2018&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lofi.rocks&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lofi.rocks&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;programming&#x2F;comments&#x2F;aufj4m&#x2F;lofi_a_minimalist_spotify_player_with_webgl&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;programming&#x2F;comments&#x2F;aufj4m&#x2F;lofi_a_...</a>

Maybe the friend just doesn&#x27;t <i>want</i> to make a Serious Business out of this yet, maybe he just enjoys having this side project. Maybe he&#x27;s still refining the physical design of these signs along with the software with every one he builds. Maybe he&#x27;s got enough sources of chaos and craziness in his life already from work&#x2F;family&#x2F;the hairbrained schemes of his buddy Trevor and he just wants a nice little hobby where he can fiddle around. Maybe he just does not <i>need</i> a Side Hustle in his life right now.<p>Maybe this is just what he&#x27;s playing with instead of putting together model kits, y&#x27;know?<p>It&#x27;s quite possible to get lost in the weeds planning stuff with no forwards motion. It&#x27;s also possible to make really, really expensive mistakes by plowing forwards. I&#x27;ve done both of those. There is an alternate reality where the friend <i>has</i> been looking for people to make this thing fast and cheap, and is now sitting on a pile of these things that he can&#x27;t sell at a price point that will break even, much less make a profit, with an order of magnitude more money than he is comfortable losing sunk into them. And maybe that reality&#x27;s Trevor just wrote a blog post talking about how this friend should have done their research first, what kind of idiot doesn&#x27;t do their research?<p>I&#x27;m not saying forging ahead is always bad. I&#x27;ve done it a lot in the past. Sometimes it&#x27;s worked out, sometimes it hasn&#x27;t. And when it doesn&#x27;t work out it is <i>a shitload of hassle and stress</i> and I can only take so much of that at once.

&gt; Emailed someone where a call would be better?<p>Better for you? Or for them?<p>Funny how you can read something, mostly agree and then see an example and nope right out of the whole idea because the example tells you the author has an entirely different set of what ‘valuable’ is, compared to you.<p>Maybe doing the ‘hard thing’ of jumping straight into action is good in some cases... but, mostly, it’s not.<p>Plan first. Act second. Evaluate third.<p>If you miss any of the steps, or get stuck at any of the steps you’re doing it wrong.<p>I contend the authors supposition that most people get stuck on step 1 is wrong.<p>Most people <i>I know</i> get stuck on step 2, and give up without trying to iterate on what they were trying to do, because they didn’t understand that maybe step 1 didn’t come up with a perfect plan the first time around.<p>Sure, maybe it’s cool to have a step 0, which is ‘try it right now!’ to give you some idea &amp; experience on how to get started.<p>...but the basic contention I this article; “the best thing to do is just to do <i>something</i> right now”; is wrong, and most modern learning &amp; self development frameworks will back that assertion.<p>Isn’t there some famous fallacy thing about this being how terrible political decisions are made?

The human mind is not a business. Fantasizing about the future is actually integral to the functioning of the human mind. It builds neural pathways and releases dopamine that makes you feel good about your choice, motivating you to execute.<p>Without the fantasy, the reality would never come.

There is a rift between people, where there are some who can <i>do</i> just about anything, but they lack <i>great ideas</i> (which makes them unhappy), and there are people who have <i>many great ideas</i> without the ability or determination to <i>implement</i> them (which makes them unhappy). People who can do both are really, really rare.<p>Both former kinds of people struggle in their own way. Daydreamers don&#x27;t work, implementors can&#x27;t dream. They plan, they invent, they struggle and fail. I wonder if there is any skill set behind that, at all. If you can learn to dream, or learn to <i>just do it</i>, at all.

Really great piece, take the time to read it.<p>I&#x27;ve been quite prone to this, and one thing that&#x27;s helped is building systems vs. goals, per Scott Adams[1][2]. If you read many stories of successful people, you see a pattern in having habits or systems that were built at some point that lead to those successes, as opposed to setting a specific goal and trying to plan around that.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.dilbert.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;18&#x2F;goals-vs-systems&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.dilbert.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;18&#x2F;goals-vs-systems&#x2F;</a><p>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;TGYvt2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;TGYvt2</a>

I noticed many people doing the same thing with &quot;to do&quot;&#x2F;&quot;to read&quot; lists. They&#x27;ll add items to their lists thinking they&#x27;ll get around to doing them <i>some</i> day, not realizing that future me is probably just as lazy as present me, and if I were going to do something, I would have done it now.<p>So, todo lists become a bit of intellectual masturbation in the sense of &quot;oh I&#x27;m not putting this off, I&#x27;m definitely going to do it, since it&#x27;s on my todo list!&quot;<p>I have on my todo list (see the irony) to build a mobile todo list app where tasks will disappear if not finished in a while, along with some other bells and whistles (they&#x27;ll all move to another screen where you can&#x27;t remove them and they&#x27;ll mock you for ever), mostly as an art piece on this exact phenomenon rather than a useful app.

This piece and its ilk are the real click bait of HN. Nothing new or interesting said here, just another “fail fast and early” piece that misses the bigger picture: namely, that unless you just want to make money—which is cool—failing fast and early is not what everyone is about. Finding a markov chain to a product is definitely a way to get there, if you just want to find some product, any product, that will sell to somebody somewhere. But okay, I’ve read this piece a hundred times. I get it. Please stop writing it, or at least please stop upvoting it.

Article like this is like how a fortuneteller works. It&#x27;s vague and can be interpreted in many ways.<p>&gt; Put off the correct, hard work for the easier, less effective work?<p>What&#x27;s correct? How does that not conflicts with &quot;future you&quot; problem?<p>You know that any one who is having the &quot;future you problem&quot; is also doing that while thinking that they taking the correct hard work approach, right?<p>It&#x27;s just one of those idea where you can just rationalize whether something fits the philosophy.

&gt; Complained about your dating prospects instead of making yourself more dateable?<p>Being dateable and actually finding people to date are two very different things.

Compare the classic Ze Frank bit on &#x27;brain crack&#x27;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0sHCQWjTrJ8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0sHCQWjTrJ8</a>

NOTE TO ALL: The use of the word &quot;mas...bation&quot; will automatically kill your comment. Might want to censor yourself, as silly (and understandable, in most contexts) as it is.

&gt; You can picture how you’ll look and feel, the money in your bank account, the respect of your friends and peers.<p>This is visualizing rewards rather than the thing itself. In contrast, visualizing the product you want, or people getting it (i.e the business operation you want) is inspiring.<p>The difference is conceiving of yourself as a producer or as a consumer (of rewards).

In the personal development&#x2F;emotional healing technique I&#x27;ve most used in the past few years, this concept is called &quot;living in the future&quot; and it&#x27;s most certainly been a deeply ingrained tendency for myself and others I know, and is critical to overcome for one to make tangible progress in life.<p>A personal development coach I know trained me to stop talking to others about the successful things I plan to do or expect to do, the theory being that the subconscious&#x2F;unconscious mind can&#x27;t tell the difference between talking about them and actually accomplishing them.

It&#x27;s not this simple. Failure can be the result of too much planning and research as well as too little. Programmers in particular may be more prone to planning too much rather than doing too much but it&#x27;s possible to overcorrect. The general advice to try something and move forward when you&#x27;re stuck in analysis paralysis is useful and often good but it&#x27;s also true that plenty of people put plenty of time and effort into things that ultimately were a waste of time and could probably have been avoided with a bit more planning or research up front.

If this was a form of cancer I would be Stage 4 and getting my affairs in order.<p>So after years procrastinating on a book, doing research and taking notes but not publishing one word I started blogging. I’ve only written 4 blog posts and they get decent traffic. I was surprised. I’m trying to apply “do the work” to other areas too.

If this article resonated with that tuning fork in your head, you might be interested in “What&#x27;s Your Future Worth?” by Peter Neuwirth.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oreilly.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;view&#x2F;whats-your-future&#x2F;9781626563018&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oreilly.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;view&#x2F;whats-your-future&#x2F;97816...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Whats-Your-Future-Worth-Decisions&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1626563012" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Whats-Your-Future-Worth-Decisions&#x2F;dp&#x2F;...</a>

I always wonder if people like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk daydream of their ideal future like most of us seem to do. They definitely seem to <i>act</i> on their vision more, but do they daydream as much as the rest of us?

&gt; Whether you have a Tesla in your brain or a Tesla in real life doesn’t make a difference in how happy you are.<p>This quote from the end of the article reminded me of the famous chimpanzee experiment where two chimps were hooked up to a brain scan, one was given a banana to enjoy the other just allowed to watch, but both seemed to have the same &quot;pleasure zone&quot; of the brain light up.

Look past the title. It’s a good article.

Daydreaming is the first step, necessary and extremely useful.Alone on her own the visionary role does not go far enough though.<p>What happens is that usually the capability of visionary (seeing what does not exist yet in front of you like it is real)is related with your personality.<p>People who has not this capability could not really see what does not exist, but they are essential for following the roadmap(tracker) the good visionary can design.<p>The tracker personality on her own can&#x27;t really go far enough too. This person does not really know where to go.<p>You can do both roles yourself, the visionary and the tracker, but that is very hard because you have to switch roles, almost like Mr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. And you will have a very strong tendency towards one of them.<p>Or you can partner with someone who is a &quot;natural&quot; tracker if you are a natural &quot;visionary&quot;. The sum of the parts will be much better than the individual parts.

I don’t know. I’ve lived what the article describes and there’s truth there.<p>OTOH not everyone is required to actually manifest all their dreams. Maybe it’s more fun and satisfying to tinker endlessly without actually starting a real business.<p>Yes, it’s a problem that people live in the future. But also not everyone is cut out to follow through on what they imagine.<p>For me, 99% of what I imagine is just an excuse to tinker, but I’ve followed through on a tiny subset of things and that was great too. I like knowing I actually “did it.” I like pointing to the accomplishment.<p>But there’s definitely a joy and peace in daydreaming and endlessly tinkering without ruining everything by setting yourself up to argue with manufacturers, look for funding, manage employees, live out of a tour bus, or any of the other practical realities that go along with pursuing your dreams in a professional capacity.

&gt; What we should all do is pick the path that has the best 3 feet<p>I hope I&#x27;m reading this quote correctly. This doesn&#x27;t feel entirely right. Short vs long term gratification is probably a much longer topic but I still think a modicum of effort in getting the pros and cons for the most obvious of choices is helpful. Certainly more than just picking the choice that sounds good at the start.<p>Most long term projects have no immediate gratification. Based on the advice above alone whenever you have some money you should pick the path that provides the best immediate benefit and turn it into wine or icecream :).<p>Edit.<p>&gt; In my friend’s case: follow the money!<p>The money you&#x27;re definitely already making or the money you could possibly be making?

&gt; Started a business by making a website instead of finding a customer?<p>How do you go about finding a customer without at least a prototype? You need to do market research, sure, but how do you get a customer without a product?

For people turned off by the title: &quot;Future You Masturbation gives you the pleasure of all your future accomplishments with none of the work. It’s your brain tricking you into something that feels good today in exchange for lost meaning and purpose and accomplishment in the future.&quot;<p>It actually sounds a lot like the concept of not telling people about dieting or whatever long-term task you&#x27;re engaging in due to the dopamine rush from telling people rather than accomplishing things.

The tone of this post is so superior and dickish I&#x27;d rather not listen to the author.

This was good motivation. I&#x27;ve been editing a book that I&#x27;ve been working on for over a year. I submitted it to a literary agent just now. It took less than an hour. I&#x27;ll probably fail. But I&#x27;m living in the now.<p>I also made the website first ;) - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.burnfastburnbright.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.burnfastburnbright.com&#x2F;</a>

This article hits me right in the gut because I&#x27;m guilty of every one of those HAVE YOU EVERs. Ouch.<p>Even as we speak, I&#x27;m here commenting away (why?) on Hacker News when I should be publishing posts, building a list, growing my business so I can find a product in the service and getting it done already. Uuugh, just saying that makes me feel terrible. How do I overcome this...

Fuck myself, literally. This is me for the past 20 years. Imagining myself writing GPL licensed software, in Clojure, using Vim through an actual (not emulated) Linux terminal, for the domain I have the most knowledge, making millions.<p>:%s&#x2F;Clojure&#x2F;IDEALISTIC_LANGUAGE_OF_12_YEARS_AGO&#x2F;g for older projects.

When it comes to masturbation narrowly defined, most people now accept that it is not harmful or sinful. Nor is it a sign of a failed sex life. I believe that we should have the same attitude towards more general forms of self-gratification.

The title needs to have NSFW appended to it. I just realized I clicked on a URL (from my work computer) with a word that is probably on IT&#x27;s blacklist somewhere.

How is it related to masturbation I do not understand.

Does anyone know where I can buy one of those signs?

One related study[1] found that when you tell people about your goal, you are less likely to actually achieve your task.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psych.nyu.edu&#x2F;gollwitzer&#x2F;09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Seifert_Michalski_When_Intentions_.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psych.nyu.edu&#x2F;gollwitzer&#x2F;09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Se...</a>

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.<p>If you love this article you will love this book.

Why did this get penalized from #1 down to ~15?

Yikes. This is a really good one.

This hits home. I am personally a culprit in daydreaming and building castles in air.

definitely the stupidest title i&#x27;ve ever seen

&quot;Emailed someone where a call would be better?&quot;<p>There are no such circumstances. Fuck voice calls.