At Multiplitaxion Inc; a bunch of programmers (me included) started what we called a 'knowledge sharing sessions' which would happen every fortnight. The idea was to exchange thoughts; talk about what we had learnt; and get inspired.
As months passed; the number of people joining these knowledge sharing sessions increased and so did the frequency of these discussions. We moved from once every fortnight to twice a week. With an ever growing audience; discussions moved from hardcore technical topics where people would program on stage; to discussions on design; abstract philosophical topics connected to project management and sometimes these talks even touched the social aspect of things.
Before we knew it; we had turned a technical session planned with a specific purpose into a general purpose discussion forum where people got together and --- well; talked; about --- anything.The little fortnightly meet of ours; dear reader; had turned from a meaningful specific into a wondering generality; and it was happening two days a week.
Now as someone who is a big time fan of TED videos and inspirational books; I completely understand the importance of inspiration. Having said that; most good inspirational book nudge you to read them and then go out there and work. TED talks range for just 18 minutes where people talk about what they have 'done' or 'built' and the entire event ends in about three days; after which you get down to real work of trying to make dents in the universe.
That is exactly what makes TED so beautiful.
We; on the other hand; were doing inspiration two days a week; and that dear reader; was a real problem. We were talking more; and doing less. Jeff Atwood describes this phenomenon rather articulately in his post about doer-or-talker. He explains:
It's an easy conceptual trip from building bridges to building software. In software, some developers take up residence on planet architecture, an otherworldly place where software is eternally planned and discussed but never actually constructed. Having endless discussions about software in a conference room or mailing list feels like useful work-- but is it? Until you've produced a working artifact for the rest of the world to experience, have you really done anything?
There is something to be said about getting ready for and then assembling for a serious meeting in a conference room. Its really easy to fool yourself into believing 'this-is-necessary' or 'this-is-important' when in reality it is nowhere in the same vicinity as 'necessary' or 'important'.
Every time you find yourself spending more time getting inspired or discussing stuff than you spend actually doing stuff and shipping things; may I suggest; dear reader; that you take a pause and indulge yourself in some serious work.
Charles Miller uses the example of open source project to illustrate the same point. He explains:
The best way to start an open source project is with code. Working code. Hack away at home on weekends, maybe get a couple of friends to help you out, and don't go public until you have something to show people that does something interesting, and that other people can use to build more interesting stuff on top of.
You need this for a bunch of different reasons: it establishes the original contributor's bona fides in the open-source meritocracy, it shortcuts all sorts of damaging debates about coding styles and architecture that can stop a project before it starts, and so on.
Most importantly, though: working code attracts people who want to code. Design documents attract people who want to talk about coding. I've seen what happens on projects that start with no code and a commitment to produce a design. Some of the procession of UML diagrams were really well put together, but that's about the extent of it.
Yes; inspiration is a critical part of moving forward and so is design but if you surround yourself with people who want to 'talk' inspiration and design all the time; without doing any real work on it; you are going to have highly scalable systems that don't exist and highly rewarding careers which produce no real meaning.
Word of advice; stop talking and ship.
If you are a programmer; slog away at a truly remarkable system; if you are an author; go ship a book; if you are a blogger; blog consistently; if you run a podcast; package and deliver it consistently.
Yes inspiration is important; but remember; it is a medicine and an overdose of inspiration can have some serious side effects.
Take the right amount of inspiration; know when you have had enough; and when you realize you have enough of it; stop; get your ass out there and slog at shipping something.
I wish you good luck.
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