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by dschuetz 2655 days ago
There is a rift between people, where there are some who can do just about anything, but they lack great ideas (which makes them unhappy), and there are people who have many great ideas without the ability or determination to implement them (which makes them unhappy). People who can do both are really, really rare.

Both former kinds of people struggle in their own way. Daydreamers don't work, implementors can't dream. They plan, they invent, they struggle and fail. I wonder if there is any skill set behind that, at all. If you can learn to dream, or learn to just do it, at all.
3 comments
behringer 2655 days ago
People who lack great ideas fail to do anything at all. What they don't understand is that ideas come from doing things.
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tachyonbeam 2655 days ago
That depends. I'm in academia. I'm surrounded by MSc and PhD students. Some of them are truly creative, but they are the minority. Most of them are happy to implement an idea that was assigned to them by a professor they're working with, or make small incremental extensions to existing research. In this line of work, what matters most is getting publications. I would say (this is my personal impression) that many successful academics are not creative types, they conservative and incremental, but most importantly, hard working, detail oriented and determined.

All that being said, I wish academia was more about really thinking out of the box, playing with ideas and trying things that are a little more "out there", but from what I've seen in the last decade, it isn't really the case, at least not in STEM.

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keerthiko 2655 days ago
i think you learn both by surrounding yourself with people who do one or both (whichever you feel you lack). In my opinion, this is the one true secret sauce of silicon valley, living and working here means the likelihood of all your random encounters and people you are introduced to being dreamer/doer combos is very high (even if many of them may be misguided).
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snthd 2655 days ago
They're all taking their own easy option. The actual rift is between levels of pain tolerance. Grit.
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