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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

>You misunderstood the point. It's not about being a shy wall-flower. It's about not being a whiner; about not complaining how hard you have it, how everything is impossible and everybody else is so stupid, and how great you could and would and will be if only everything and everybody else didn't keep you from doing it.

Why? What possibly could be the benefit of not complaining about stuff that sucks? Sure, I understand that stuff sucking shouldn't stop you from doing it, but why not complain about it? What's wrong with dissipating the frustration/anger/whatever? Hell, sometimes, if you complain enough, people might actually help and then magically you can achieve more than you could on your own.

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Biggest reason why talking about something doesn't help is that "talking" feels like real work, when it isn't.

Talking about your great idea to other people can only discourage you from doing anything about it.

And speaking of getting stuck / being frustrated, most people don't realize the real reason for their anger / frustration.

And there's nothing worse than bad advice from people that have no clue about what you're into, which is most people you know. And those that do, there's a high probability that they don't give a shit anyway.

     What's wrong with dissipating the 
     frustration/anger/whatever?

The problem is that it doesn't work, quite the contrary -- you get more angry / frustrated the more you talk about it.

What works is identifying the real reason why stuff sucks, and learn to live with it or eliminate the factors that got you there in the first place. Only trained professionals can help you here (i.e. psychologists), but it's hard finding a competent one.

Also, that's just like advising people to work on stuff they like -- easy to say, hard to do (which makes my comment completely useless).

Yeah, this seems like the kind of thing that's gonna vary widely by personality and culture. Some people and some cultures find expressing emotion to be healing and the best thing ever (see latin america--my peeps), others think that expressing emotion is pointless and grotesque (see New England WASPs).

Truth is, there's not one right answer, there;s just: What the hell is it gonna take for you to get shit done? Does talk help? Then talk to lots of people. Does locking yourself in a room and STFUing help? Then lock away!

The key here is self-knowledge. Know what makes your productive and do that.

> Talking about your great idea to other people can only discourage you from doing anything about it.

But it also focuses you on your idea, makes you think about it, find the loopholes and so on. There's nothing like trying to explain something to someone to realize you don't understand it at all. Without trying to explain, you'd live on happily thinking you understand it.

> The problem is that it doesn't work, quite the contrary -- you get more angry / frustrated the more you talk about it.

That depends so much on your personality it's absurd. Maybe I hang out with women too much and their ways have rubbed off on me, but when I talk about my problems it helps me solve them. Don't care for the person's advice either, I just need someone to bitch at ... it helps me focus on the problem and see different ways of solving it.

It's probably similar to how pg claims writing helps him think, well, talking helps me think :)

I think it depends how you go about complaining. There are two ways in which you can do so.

The first is to go to somebody who is able to start solving the problem, and bring it up with them. The alternative is to sit around with your colleagues, bitching about how things aren't right.

The article seems to be about the latter, which is rarely a productive activity, and just results in everyone become progressively more bitter unless someone steps up and takes it to the relevant people. It seems in many businesses, especially big corporates, nobody ever takes that step for fear of seeming like they're not a team player.

Interestingly I've just been doing staff reviews with some of my team and one of the pieces of feedback to one of the team (who is very very capable) was "stop being so stoic" - complain more about the pain points.

The reason being is that we as a company need to know which bits are hard, which bits need fixing.

Quietly getting on with it doesn't scale.

There's a difference between being productive and whining. The worst work environments always have people complaining about the same stuff, sometimes for years.

And what change would bring just shutting up about it? Say it, tell it, and change it. Don't all the people subject to the same crap as you deserve the change? Don't the good but misguided people (among some selfish and indolent ones) that have caused the problem deserve to know?

I think that airing your dissent is the _least_ you can do.

> There's a difference between being productive and whining. The worst work environments always have people complaining about the same stuff, sometimes for years.

But what makes you think that if they stopped opening their mouths about it, they'd suddenly stop being the kind of mediocre person who never does anything to address the issues they constantly run into?

I think you're mistaking correlation for causation. It's perfectly possible to complain and fix things. The real advice you'd like people to follow is "Don't be Mediocre"

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