Don't just scratch an itch | Hacker News Reader

Don't just scratch an itch

builtfromsource.com

26 pointsmratzloff10 comments

So to sum up: "It's not just inspiration, it's followthrough which makes all the difference." And it's not just a little followthrough, but you have to continually renew your enthusiasm and continue to improve even beyond your original vision.

That's if you want success, but for some of us sometimes, I think that scratching the itch is enough. If someone wants something better, they can do better.

The metaphor is inapt. Inspiration is not scratching an itch, it's having an itch.

As was intrigued by that uncommon advice "don't follow your passion, follow your effort" but after I read Mark Cuban's post I'd say he's right. What do you guys think?

Link to blog post: http://blogmaverick.com/2012/03/18/dont-follow-your-passion-...

I definitely appreciate Cuban's words.

I think the truth is that one must question the sincerity of their passion if they're unwilling to put forth effort for it. For many, I think a passion is something they'd like people to think they do. If they're really passionate about it, they'll do something about it; at that point, there'd be no question.

I am guilty of that as well. When I am passionate it usually mean that I want to scratch an itch. But now I think that passion is something that comes after you put a lot of effort on the subject matter. BTW, I submitted Cuban's post to HN to challenge the notion of passion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4680098

Exactly. I think you summed it up better than the original blog post.

Scratching an itch is fine. Not everything in life has to be commercial.

> After you scratch the itch, you have a choice. You can move on or you can keep at it. And I bet that if you keep working at it, you’ll find a new or interesting wrinkle that will reinvigorate you.

But I have other things to work on that I already know are more interesting and rewarding.

I've been working on Errbit for a while now, and that started as 'scratching an itch'. It's great to be part of an open source community, where everyone scratches their own itches, and their contributions improve the software for everyone else.

As @tisme said, 'Not everything in life has to be commercial'.

Hi Nathan!

Errbit is great, but I think there's room for diversity. After all, Redmine, Lighthouse, and JIRA all exist but address different use cases.

Coalmine has features that Errbit doesn't (and vice versa), but ultimately we want to take it in a slightly different direction from Errbit and other Airbrake-like tools.

As we get closer to 2.0 in the coming months I hope to make that distinction even more clear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com