Kevin Smith’s Secrets To A Successful Life

How did I know his advice would be a variation of 'do what you love'? I've heard it so many times, but am I supposed to quit my job as a developer that supports my wife and two young kids, and do something that I'm really passionate about, like starting a rock band? That's really tough, my wife would probably leave me and we'd have to move out of our nice, safe neighborhood.<p>Also - once you make your passion your ft job it then starts to get annoying. I remember when programming was my passion, and now it's just another job - who's to say the same thing wouldn't happen with filmmaking or music?

Kevin Smith had an impressive drive, focus, and determination with respect to pursuing film-making. He wanted to <i>get down to it</i>; he went to the shortest, cheapest film program he could find, and dropped out half way with a partial refund because they were spending too much time on film theory and not enough on practical filming, and would rather spend the money on his first film.<p>Sure, he's a slacker in many respects, and proudly so, but in this respect, he was focused as a laser. It helps...

Keven Smith is a smart guy who can tell a great story. "An Evening with Kevin Smith [1 &#38; 2]" are both great DVD's where he goes from college to college telling life stories and answering questions/ giving advice off-the-cuff, and yet, these stories are engaging and hilarious and well worth watching. The advice he gives in this article, in my opinion, is simple advice that I think guys here on HN have been reading for years, but it's no less true, whether you like Kevin Smith or not.

It may not take talent (or an abundance of it), but it does take a certain type of intelligence. Kevin Smith clearly has that. I fear that many people (including the guy who started this with a tweet) probably will never get something like this moving in the right direction.

Looks like Kevin Smith compiles his tweet monologues on his own blog: <a href="http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=401" rel="nofollow">http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=401</a>

I am honestly surprised by the number of people "meh"ing at this advice. It is surprising because this is a forum for hackers, smart people who look for ways to use a system's rules (or lack thereof) to do what they want or need to get done. And yet a significant number of commenters here are saying "Don't want to be what you want to be; be what you want to be" is bad advice.<p>As a novice hacker, my role models are many of the same smart people who post here. It's a little disheartening to see such strident dismissal of some good god damn advice.

I think it all just comes down to how much time you waste instead of doing something useful. Like I'm doing right now writing this comment and reading HN. Nobody ever seems to admit how much time they waste watching tv, web surfing, sleeping, gaming, drinking etc.

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This is nice, but I'm disinclined to take useful advice on how to live my life from people who are apparently less happy than I am.

step 0: be really talented

Like a lame pep-talk from your Wall-Mart manager after he fires you.