[deleted]
Do the Real Thing
51–60 of 119 posts
Re: Do the Real Thing
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree, strongly. Gonna learn to lift? Read starting strength. Set yourself up for success by structuring an environment for habit formation. Take the steps to ensure you are getting good nutrition before you start. Don’t just run to the local gym and staring trying to mess around in the squat rack. Going to build a new app? Get up to date on tech stack choices so you don’t make a dumb decision. Look at prior art a…
I agree with every activity you recommend, even down to suggesting Starting Strength. > Literally one day of focused thinking can outflank a week or more of pointless execution, even at the beginning. This (and the many other replies) make me think I did a poor job of expressing myself. I absolutely, 100%, do not think people should screw around for a week before figuring out the right way to do things. I am a huge f…
It sounds like we are in more agreement than it seemed - for a full throated defense of thinking over execution, I like Rich Hickey’s talk “Hammock Driven Development” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
Re: Do the Real Thing
#53You 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.
> Research, analyze, digest, and then execute.
I mostly disagree. Too many people (including myself) get sidetracked with tasks that are not actually “doing the real thing” as the article says. For low risk activities, making mistakes is important. Semi-relevant: one term for wantrepreneurs is “making house” where they give the appearances of building a business without actually doing so.
For some riskier tasks, there are obvious “real“ steps to perform before doing the real thing e.g. doing a SCUBA course before using an aqualung. Or getting advice when buying your first home.
For many tasks, just doing it is far more successful e.g. learning a language by speaking it with people that have that language as their first tongue. Listen to people who have learned English as a second language, and so many mistakes are due to learning from reading rather than just speaking (babies learn languages naturally, and adults can too, but most adults follow the standard crap techniques which screws their language learning, especially trying to learn to speak by following rules and reading written material).
While doing anything, it is important to mix in introspection, videos, books, and training. Repetitive practicing without feedback ingrains mistaken habits into our minds: habits which are extremely difficult to correct later e.g. I have skied a lot but I still make habitual errors learnt as a child. If you are using learning techniques while applying them, the material sticks in your mind and you can take what is relevant.
Re: Do the Real Thing
#54Possibly an over-simplification. Take this example: I want to sight-sing hymns. I know a bit of music theory but it's been cobbled together over the past year in an haphazard fashion. I pick up a hymnal to sing the first hymn and immediately need to look up the key signature (I never memorized them). Then I see the hymn is 12/8 time and realize I only superficially covered rhythm and time signatures. I go on YouTube…
Have you considered that sight-singing anything is not the real thing? Singing is the real thing.
Among the musical skills that can be acquired, "sight reading" is somewhat specialized, but definitely real. I'm a part time musician, and a fair amount of my performance work over the past decades has involved sight-reading. In addition to its usefulness for performance, it's an efficient way to digest a lengthy or complex work.
Re: Do the Real Thing
#55C25K does not start with a marathon. Skiing lessons do not start on a black diamond. Intro CS does not start by writing an OS. Skill development is an incrementalist game for patient people. I've made much more progress by finding a sustainable pace and chipping away over time, than by trying to conquer something in a weekend. Natural language acquisition is kind of a special case here, in that you are actually wired…
"The real thing" does not mean the absolute hardest iteration of whatever you're trying to do.
C25K doesn't start with a marathon, but it does involve actually getting your ass out the door and running. It does not involve shoe shopping, reading about stretching techniques or tinkering with your training schedule in Excel. Running is the real thing.
Re: Do the Real Thing
#56Recently, (or maybe it's just me) I have seen a surge of articles providing advice on $Thing. Most of these articles seem to me an expansion of aphorisms which people have been saying since time immemorial. This reminds of the saying,
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."
Such articles can be compressed into a common adage that most people are aware of.
Re: Do the Real Thing
#57Recently, (or maybe it's just me) I have seen a surge of articles providing advice on $Thing. Most of these articles seem to me an expansion of aphorisms which people have been saying since time immemorial. This reminds of the saying, "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Such articles can be compressed into a common adage that most people are aware of.
Yes.
I'll take it a step further and ask, do adages actually contain any signal at all? If you have a saying "try try again" and another saying "don't bust your head against a brick wall" which one wins? When?
Getting fluent in French is probably best done without a plan, but just practicing a bunch. But I'm sure you can think of several activities where "just try it" is godawful advice. Who says writing is in the former camp? Prove it.
Re: Do the Real Thing
#58Possibly an over-simplification. Take this example: I want to sight-sing hymns. I know a bit of music theory but it's been cobbled together over the past year in an haphazard fashion. I pick up a hymnal to sing the first hymn and immediately need to look up the key signature (I never memorized them). Then I see the hymn is 12/8 time and realize I only superficially covered rhythm and time signatures. I go on YouTube…
I think this is actually a good thing, though... you have something real you are trying to do, which guides you to what you need to learn. I find it is a lot easier to learn in the pursuit of something I actually want to accomplish rather than studying in a vacuum. So your approach, for example, is better than if you had just picked up a book on key and time signatures and started reading. You first tried to do somet…
True. I wouldn't have known I don't have the competency to sight-sing if I didn't try it first. That said, doing the "real thing" is out of my reach until I level up in other areas.
Re: Do the Real Thing
#59Definitely 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…
Chess is an interesting example. If you want to get good at blitz, playing 1min games over and over is a terrible way to do it in my experience. Playing 3hr games and studying theory is painful and annoying yet way more useful for real improvement. I think the same concept applies to many things - learning an instrument is another example. Performing a piano piece at full speed over and over is fun, but focusing exclusively on the hard parts one hand at a time slowly is far more useful.
Re: Do the Real Thing
#60Recently, (or maybe it's just me) I have seen a surge of articles providing advice on $Thing. Most of these articles seem to me an expansion of aphorisms which people have been saying since time immemorial. This reminds of the saying, "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Such articles can be compressed into a common adage that most people are aware of.
Yes. I'll take it a step further and ask, do adages actually contain any signal at all? If you have a saying "try try again" and another saying "don't bust your head against a brick wall" which one wins? When? Getting fluent in French is probably best done without a plan, but just practicing a bunch. But I'm sure you can think of several activities where "just try it" is godawful advice. Who says writing is in the fo…
>I'll take it a step further and ask, do adages actually contain any signal at all? If you have a saying "try try again" and another saying "don't bust your head against a brick wall" which one wins? When?
Yes, they do and there are certain factors you need to consider before saying they don't contain any signal. Some factors are:
1. What is it really trying to say?
In your example, try and try again does NOT mean try and try the SAME thing again. It just tells you WHAT to do and not how to do it. I don't remember a single invention being invented on the first attempt egs the light bulb.
On the other hand, don't break your head against a brick wall is usually used in the context of trying to change someone else. This adage is a derivative of the observation that human beings don't change unless they want to, which is the absolute truth. This adage is a corollary or a derivative based on that absolute truth.
2. Has it stood the test of time?
I cannot find a source for this particular adage but it would be safe to say that it has stood the test of time.
3. Who said it and in what context?
This ties in well with the second example of my first point. I could come up with a pithy saying which could be true in a very specific context. This does not make it false it just makes it irrelevant to your context.
So yes, they do contain signals you just need to know how to apply them.
>Who says writing is in the former camp? Prove it.
As far as writing goes, you can certainly improve leaps and bounds by writing more. You write some, get feedback on your work, improvise, rinse and repeat. This is certainly true. Why you may ask? Just consider the number of authors[1] whose first language is not English but they write in English. They certainly did not start off by being great English writers, Ayn Rand being the most prolific of them which HN crowd would be familiar with.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exophonic_writers