> When you pour energy into a passion, you develop an expertise and an expertise of any kind is valuable
I don't disagree with the overall spirit, but these Paul Graham aphorisms always turn me off.
> To satisfy my mathematically oriented brain I've gone one step further and formalized the concept into the equation L = D * T, where L is luck, D is doing and T is telling.
See? There's no passion here. It really isn't relevant to what is being discussed.
Sure, passion is great. The more the better, the world is incredible when you're surrounded by it. Developers are fond of writing beautiful code, I am one of those too. But god damn, hold the inner coach and remember y'all are not psychologists. There is no reason to reduce the multitude of complex motivations to a single amorphous concept such as passion.
It is funny, because D * T suggests that it can all be done with D with just a smidgin' of T, or that you can just do a lot of talking with just a smidgin' of D.
But I guess I forgot about the Trump Presidency. So maybe D * T is the right model.
Still that's more or less assuming that the costs and returns of D and T are roughly similar. But talk is cheap, and it is not clear that the returns earned are the same.
if we are intent on maximizing u(d, t) = u(d) * u(t)
we still need u(d) and u(t) to know what quantities of d and t will do the job (assuming that there is a maximum, or not more than one...)
I don't disagree with the overall spirit, but these Paul Graham aphorisms always turn me off.
> To satisfy my mathematically oriented brain I've gone one step further and formalized the concept into the equation L = D * T, where L is luck, D is doing and T is telling.
See? There's no passion here. It really isn't relevant to what is being discussed.
Sure, passion is great. The more the better, the world is incredible when you're surrounded by it. Developers are fond of writing beautiful code, I am one of those too. But god damn, hold the inner coach and remember y'all are not psychologists. There is no reason to reduce the multitude of complex motivations to a single amorphous concept such as passion.