[HN Gopher] Sustain your creative drive in the face of technolog...
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Sustain your creative drive in the face of technological change
Author : adityaathalye
Score : 144 points
Date : 2025-04-22 05:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thecreativeindependent.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thecreativeindependent.com)
| susam wrote:
| > Whatever it is that you do, you have to really do it. If you
| have a choice between doing it for three hours on Sunday or doing
| it for 15 minutes a day for the rest of the week, do it 15
| minutes a day, because what you do every day is what your brain
| is working on when you're not paying attention. Your subconscious
| is making progress on the things you do constantly.
|
| This very much resonates with me. The difference between doing
| something everyday vs cramming it into one big session (say, once
| a week or once a month) is huge! In fact, the bigger the
| challenge, the more pronounced the difference is.
|
| For instance, I recently picked up a new hobby: reading full
| undergraduate or graduate level mathematics textbooks, and
| solving the exercise problems. A few years ago, I spent time with
| analytic number theory [1]. Currently, I am learning Galois
| theory. I have noticed that reading even as little as just one
| page a day yields far more insight, intuition, and problem-
| solving ability than trying to study 5-10 pages together during
| the weekend.
|
| Even if it is just a page (or just one theorem or just one
| proof), the act of engaging daily keeps my mind working on the
| material. I can almost feel the ideas maturing in the background.
| Every morning, I wake up with a deeper understanding of the
| material, not because I studied for hours, but because I took the
| time to struggle with a few new concepts, no matter how briefly,
| the night before.
|
| Having done this for a few years, the process feels almost
| mechanical. Just feed the brain with new concepts before the day
| ends. Even if the ideas feel challenging or difficult to fully
| grasp in the moment, I've learnt not to worry too much. Just feed
| the new ideas to the brain anyway and go to sleep. The brain
| digests complexity quietly, in the background, and returns the
| next day with fresh insight and deeper intuition. It's a
| remarkable machine we carry on our shoulders!
|
| [1] https://susam.net/journey-to-prime-number-theorem.html
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
| sandspar wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| sandspar wrote:
| Thanks, sorry
| sovietswag wrote:
| I was expecting something snobby but this was actually a very
| interesting view into the mind of a self-actualized person. I
| guess this is what happens if you keep working hard and don't
| burn out! Thanks for posting this
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Didn't address the problem of LLMs and such making publishing
| original work a self defeating challenge because any of it can be
| emulated and expropriated by anyone in a pinch.
|
| If not licensing training data is legal then you have no ability
| to say "I made this" and mean it in the eyes of other people.
| It's empty air because everyone can and will assume you could
| just ask a model.
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