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Do the Real Thing

scotthyoung.com

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Re: Do the Real Thing

#21

Post by Kye »

travisjungroth wrote: post #14
gfodor wrote: post #10

You gotta do both. Research, analyze, digest, and then execute. With time, you can reduce the duration of the cycle. Taking the first step often requires a lot of research and thinking, and then a lot of execution to go from zero to one. Then, iterate, with shorter cycles. Failing to think is as much a problem as failing to execute, you have to balance it.

> Taking the first step often requires a lot of research and thinking I generally agree with your comment, but strongly disagree with this part. You will have much more success if you take this first step as soon as possible. No research, no thinking. And a “real thing” first step. You want to start running? Put on some shoes and go for a run. Don’t sign up for a race, don’t look up running tips, don’t buy nice shoes…

As someone who digs inversion as a way to get started on things and avoid the big blockers: at least look up basics of how to avoid and recognize injuries while running. Injuries will stop you more firmly than analysis paralysis.

You'll mostly discover the right things by doing, but the wrong things can hold you back, and they're often well-documented. Example: guitar players who discover music theory by plucking and poking until things sound good, but mess up their hands with bad form.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#22

Post by jkhdigital »

I’m in the middle of listening to Scott Young’s book Ultralearning, and honestly this article captures the most important idea. 90% of becoming an “ultra learner” is having the courage to tackle the real thing immediately; the rest is just tactics.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#23

Post by emsal »

This kind of writing makes me upset.

* It's really self-important. Not only is it selling you on a particular strategy for attaining success, it also tries to sell success in things like public speaking and doing architectural work as an absolutely important part of one's life, and that implicitly a person's existence is invalidated if they aren't constantly trying to achieve this kind of success. It doesn't do it explicitly but the very notion of "real" and "fake" and other words like "wasted" complete with the trite diagrams showing that "hey, all your efforts are going into this small circle" give a very strong implicit value-judgement of the reader.

* There's no proof. I don't know if I'm on the mark with this one, but I think that the act of omitting any sort of data about measuring the outcome of success when taking different approaches seems to imply to the reader that the argument should just "make sense" i.e. it's a truth that the reader already knows, they should just find it within their own observations in order to understand it. Here, have a handful of anecdotes to top it all off in case you weren't convinced. Overall this just feels like it's made to make the reader feel a certain way (motivated) rather than actually teach them any solid information.

* What even is real and fake? The readers are given a bunch of examples and then we're left on our own to figure out what falls into which category. Someone commented on the article saying that if someone wanted to watch and understand anime in Japanese, they could just do that and that'd be the real thing, with the fake thing being taking the time to learn Japanese. This is obviously not going to be successful, so at this point the author's prescription has failed as a framework for achieving success.

---

This kind of fiery motivational content could be harmful as much as it is useful. It'd be fine if an article, devoid of substance as it may be, was only meant to make readers feel motivated, but the problem is that this kind of fiery motivational content does different things for different readers. A person in a bad, self-loathing emotional state could be rendered feeling even worse, thinking that everything that they're doing at present is fake while everything that their peers are doing are more real, even when that's blatantly untrue. The devil's in the details and personally, I'm not going to let myself get affected by this personal philosophy if the case for it is this weak.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#24

Post by zomglings »

OGWhales wrote: post #15
zomglings wrote: post #11

Definitely agree with the article, and would like to offer a useful supplement to "doing the real thing": "watch someone very skilled do the real thing". Watching a pro can really accelerate skill acquisition because it will expose you to high quality ideas that would have been difficult to develop on your own. Want to get better at Backgammon/Chess/Go? Play a lot of games (at various time controls). Yes. But also wa…

Truly watching others is the most natural way to learn. It applies to all aspects of life. I’ve often felt school, while important, was ill preparing people for actual jobs. Shadowing people is immensely helpful and something my school forced me to do and I was grateful for.

What did you study? (And, if you don't mind sharing, where?) That is an extremely rare position for educational bodies to take.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#26

Post by empath75 »

kalonis wrote: post #13
zomglings wrote: post #11

Definitely agree with the article, and would like to offer a useful supplement to "doing the real thing": "watch someone very skilled do the real thing". Watching a pro can really accelerate skill acquisition because it will expose you to high quality ideas that would have been difficult to develop on your own. Want to get better at Backgammon/Chess/Go? Play a lot of games (at various time controls). Yes. But also wa…

Just watching someone doing the real thing is one of the most prominent strategies to avoid doing the real thing. It is not enough to watch someone very skilled do the real thing. You have to imitate them: Reading a lot of great novels will not make you a better writer. Instead write a story in the style of any writer you admire and you will learn a lot while still doing the real thing. The same is true for almost an…

I play a lot of hearthstone, and I’m quite good at it, but to remain good at it, I absolutely do have to spent a fair bit of time watching streamers and reading strategy articles. There’s a lot to know about the game and you absolutely cannot get everything you need to be a top player from only playing. Even the top professional players spend a lot of time in coaching sessions with their peers or just watching streams.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#27

Post by chrisweekly »

kalonis wrote: post #13
zomglings wrote: post #11

Definitely agree with the article, and would like to offer a useful supplement to "doing the real thing": "watch someone very skilled do the real thing". Watching a pro can really accelerate skill acquisition because it will expose you to high quality ideas that would have been difficult to develop on your own. Want to get better at Backgammon/Chess/Go? Play a lot of games (at various time controls). Yes. But also wa…

Just watching someone doing the real thing is one of the most prominent strategies to avoid doing the real thing. It is not enough to watch someone very skilled do the real thing. You have to imitate them: Reading a lot of great novels will not make you a better writer. Instead write a story in the style of any writer you admire and you will learn a lot while still doing the real thing. The same is true for almost an…

"AND", not "OR".

IOW, possibly necessary, definitely insufficient condition.

It's irrelevant whether it's common to use watching to avoid doing. One should absolutely watch, read, listen, etc -- in parallel to the doing.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#28

Post by superhuzza »

travisjungroth wrote: post #14
gfodor wrote: post #10

You gotta do both. Research, analyze, digest, and then execute. With time, you can reduce the duration of the cycle. Taking the first step often requires a lot of research and thinking, and then a lot of execution to go from zero to one. Then, iterate, with shorter cycles. Failing to think is as much a problem as failing to execute, you have to balance it.

> Taking the first step often requires a lot of research and thinking I generally agree with your comment, but strongly disagree with this part. You will have much more success if you take this first step as soon as possible. No research, no thinking. And a “real thing” first step. You want to start running? Put on some shoes and go for a run. Don’t sign up for a race, don’t look up running tips, don’t buy nice shoes…

>You will have much more success if you take this first step as soon as possible. No research, no thinking.

I'd be careful with this advice. Almost every time I climb outside I see groups who clearly have very little idea of what they're doing, because all the small but deadly details are wrong - no stopper knots, not backing up rappels, building weird anchors, having 1 point of failure, etc.

From their perspective, they're just getting out there and taking those first steps - but with an inadequate understanding of how much risk they've taken on. They don't even realize they're doing anything wrong. It's really bad and regularly leads to serious accidents. To actually climb outside they need mentorship or a bunch of research and practice, both of which take a while to acquire. They should definitely not start by doing the thing.

Re: Do the Real Thing

#29

Post by ookdatnog »

This is the kind of advice that, for one person, might be exactly what they need, and for another it might be the exact opposite of what they need. For example, Christopher McCandless dove head-first into the real thing (that is, surviving without help in the Alaskan wilderness), without proper preparation and training, and died. He didn't have to, he could have built up to it gradually by training various survival skills (aka "faking" it).

Also, the author claims that the difference between "doing the real thing" and faking it is what success largely boils down to. That is a completely wild claim, with of course not a shred of evidence to back it up. Does the author really believe that this is a necessary and largely sufficient condition for success?

Re: Do the Real Thing

#30

Post by bsder »

travisjungroth wrote: post #14
gfodor wrote: post #10

You gotta do both. Research, analyze, digest, and then execute. With time, you can reduce the duration of the cycle. Taking the first step often requires a lot of research and thinking, and then a lot of execution to go from zero to one. Then, iterate, with shorter cycles. Failing to think is as much a problem as failing to execute, you have to balance it.

> Taking the first step often requires a lot of research and thinking I generally agree with your comment, but strongly disagree with this part. You will have much more success if you take this first step as soon as possible. No research, no thinking. And a “real thing” first step. You want to start running? Put on some shoes and go for a run. Don’t sign up for a race, don’t look up running tips, don’t buy nice shoes…

> You want to start running? Put on some shoes and go for a run.

I agree, but not for things like this which require significant physical exertion. Many physical things have components that, if done incorrectly, are injurious. And they're not always obvious.

Guitar, for example, has barre chords. And EVERYBODY always teaches them to beginners at the first fret so you can do an F chord.

This is LUDICROUS. That is the maximum tension point on the guitar with respect to barre chords, and it's a good way to injure new players if they're on a steel string acoustic. New players do not have the strength or the flexibility to do that chord.

Good guitar teachers teach that up much higher on the neck, and they generally only barre a couple strings. Once the student gets stronger, then they start moving it down and using more strings.

Good teachers of any physical exertion activity always have some pitfall like this that they instruct you to avoid.

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