I am a Manic Pixie Dream Hacker
and so can you
I started hacking on computers at the age of 10, and have been coding professionally for about 12 years. At 28 I’m a late bloomer as far as Manic Pixie Dream Hackers go, but as first employee at a YC backed company I seem to fit the mold of a young white male workaholic that Venture Capitalists fantasize about. While it is nice to be a nerd in the Age of the Geek, I’m learning that relentless hacking is far from enough to succeed. I feel I need to learn several new skills in design, communication and delegation to reach my goals. Since I’ve only recently started cultivating these skills, I have an analogous experience to those only recently learning to code.
I believe success has much less to do with how long you’ve been hacking and much more to do with how motivated you are to learn.
Motivation
When I began programming as a child, my motivation to learn programming came from burning curiosity. As I mature I find my desire to solve problems outweighs exploring curiosities, and demands on my time make aimless wandering less appealing.
If I want to learn a new skill now, motivation begins with the application of that skill to solve a problem of personal importance. We must have a goal to push us past the frustrations of syntax errors and malformed API calls.
Design
My goal is the motivation I use now to push pixels into place when putting together a web page, presentation or UI feature. My aesthetic sense has not been honed from a young age, and only in the last couple years have I realized that it’s something that can be learned. Taste comes from tasting, and I’ve been stuffing my face trying to make up for lost time. Perhaps even more important is I’m starting to pay attention, realizing that I can exercise taste anywhere.
Communication
My goal is the motivation I use when I want to communicate what my project accomplishes to the people I think would be interested in it. Until recently I have not been conscious of how information is architected in order for it to be more consumable, and therefore more accessible. I want there to be as little friction as possible in understanding the capabilities my projects provide to the people who would benefit from them. So now I’m learning all about how important hierarchy is, how necessary empty space is and the power of quick iterations.
Delegation
My goal is the motivation I use when I realize there is no way I can code all of the things I want to code during my waking hours. For most of my life I’ve just tried harder: staying up later, drinking more coffee and smoking more weed. There is another level of productivity which I’m starting to actively tap into, which is leveraging other people’s skills to accomplish goals. This requires clear communication, building personal rapport and deeper planning. All those friday nights I spent coding I didn’t spend exercising my social skills. Now I go to meetups and pro-actively start conversations that lead to collaborations so I can work with people to realize the visions that haunt me.
Get Started Now
Lil Wayne started skateboarding around age 28. I’ve been skating since I was about 12 and always thought it was the kind of thing you need to start young.
Three years later he’s doing tricks I can’t.
He is living proof that you can start a life-long pursuit regardless of age and what other people perceive you as.
I am a Manic Pixie Dream Hacker, and so can you.
