just do something

posted aug 2024

I’m occasionally asked for advice. While I think I’m grossly underqualified in most cases, and I let the askers know that, I try to answer them anyway.

One of the most common questions I get is “how do I get started in X?” where X is a field I have some experience in. I think the answer is always the same:

just do something.

I find that beginners who ask me for advice often get caught up in finding the “optimal thing to do” to get started in X. They want to know what the best book is, what the best course is, what the best project is, whether to start with A first then B etc. I think this is a mistake. The best thing to do is to just do something, because spending time doing a suboptimal thing to get started in X is far better than spending time thinking about the what’s the most optimal thing to do.

After you’ve done something, your brain will let you know whether you liked it or not. If you liked it, you’ll probably naturally seek it out again. If you didn’t like it, you’ll probably be bored, and naturally seek out something else.

While I think it’s important to try to find motivators to explore things (e.g. building a project!), I think it’s more important not to force yourself to do something. Listening to your brain and boredness is the most efficient way to figure out what you like and don’t like about X, and doing things you like is the most efficient way to “get into” things that you can sustainably pursue.

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Footnote: This is something I’ve always believed in, and always tried to practise, but it first got put into words with me in this video by a prolific CTF player / security researcher.

While the video is about “hacking” / security, I think the message is universal to anything these days. My advice is usually a strict subset of what’s in the video, so if for some reason you’re looking to me for advice, please watch that video first.