Thursday, September 4, 2008

Mental Masturbation

Some while ago Mur from the podcast, I should be writing and author of the book “Playing for Keeps” talked about how talking about a story you where going to write and not writing it is a form of mental masturbation. This concept really stuck with me and it can be extrapolated out well beyond just writing but any thing really or I should say any side project. I’ve applied this same concept which Mur applied to writing to many of my projects. It’s fun to talk about plans and ideas and how everything falls into place in your head but with no action it’s pointless other then feeling good during the recounting of your plans.

A specific example where I’ve applied this to is my when I develop software on my personal time. The thing about software is that you can solve a great many problems with it so it is fun talking about how you would solve that problem better than the current solution available if there is one. It’s akin to talking shop with other developers. However as the saying goes talking is cheap and with no action it is very much just Mental Masturbation. So my take away for this is talk all about the things that you are passionate about but also follow up with action on that passion.

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