Tynan

Life Outside the Box

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Things Other People Don't Do

When someone gets an idea, what determines whether that idea gets put into practice or not? There are a lot of factors, but one of the largest is whether or not he believes that the idea can actually be executed. The problem is that while our mental models for things we have experience with can be quite good, our mental models for the unknown are often poor.

A big part of the problem is that we give a lot of weight to the "other people factor". If someone else has done it, then obviously it's possible to do. The converse is not true, though-- just because no one has done it doesn't mean that it's impossible or even difficult. It just means that no one else has ever done it. We can know that logically, but our brains don't subconsciously think that way.

I fell into this trap recently. I've always wanted to be able to plug a microphone into my camera, but it doesn't have a microphone port. I did a few searches, but no one had figured out how to get a microphone jack on the Sony NEX. For about a year I did nothing, until one night as I was falling asleep, it occurred to me that it might not be that hard, and that the only reason I thought it was impossible was because no one else had done it. The next morning I figured it out.

When designing SETT, I really wanted it to be possible to log in without the page refreshing. To the best of my knowledge, no content-heavy sites have ever done anything like that. I almost gave up on the idea before even trying it, just because no one else had done it before. But then I realized that for SETT to be successful, I would have to do a LOT of things that no one else had done before. I took a crack at it, and again it turns out that it wasn't all that tough.

A Somewhat Balanced View on School and Dropping Out

I dropped out of school during my sophomore year of college. I was a little bit scared to do it, but I followed through because I was certain that I didn't want to get a normal job or do anything else that would make use of a degree. Dropping out was one of the best decisions I've made, and it pushed me towards the life that I really wanted to live.

However, just because dropping out was right for me doesn't mean that it's right for everyone, or for you. I think that the school system is trending towards obsolescence and is a far worse value proposition that it was in previous eras, but that doesn't mean that it's worthless or that it's not the right choice for a lot of people. You might be surprised to find out that when people email me to ask if they should drop out, I tell many of them that I think they should stay in school.

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