always produce

One of Paul Graham's heuristics for doing what you love is to 'always produce'. That resonates with me: it's a way to keep yourself honest. Fantasizing about writing a novel is different from writing a novel. If you try to write a novel and don't like it, maybe you should give up on the idea that writing full-time is the ideal life.

It also connects to generative vs discriminative modeling. The only way to learn how to build things is to do it. Production is the process by which your capabilities catch up with your taste.

Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

What does this mean for me? Am I producing? I've been pretty aimless recently (Feb 2020).

• I'm producing (basic) software in my day job.
• I'm producing unpolished writing in some of my weekend time.
• I wish I knew how to produce good research, and how to produce not just good writing but good conversations.
• I am not failing at producing. But I am complacent. I am not trying to produce the things I'd like to produce.
  • One reason is that I've taught myself that I can't produce research on my own. So to produce it, I have to find collaborators, and to have collaborators, I have to be good enough to not be ashamed of talking with people.
  • This doesn't prohibit me from thinking about research ideas on my own, and then finding collaborators for them at work or elsewhere. It also doesn't prohibit me from working on research myself in my spare time or my work time. Being bad at it is no reason not to do it.
  • Writing-wise, I've been producing scattered thoughts. That's not the same as writing for an audience. Writing for an audience forces you to explain ideas coherently. It invites feedback, improvement, and the chance for connection.