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The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

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101–110 of 591 posts

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#101
post #80

Duolingo taught me this. I started doing ten minutes of Duolingo a day... 959 days ago. It showed me the enormous power of doing something small every day. Since then I've tried setting myself other streak targets. My most successful has been publishing weeknotes (just published number 92) since that forces me to focus on what I've got done - and through that incentivizes me to get stuff done, so I can put it in my w…

Me too, about half that. But I'm painfully aware it's no longer getting me anywhere (I completed the 'tree' hundreds of days ago) - what I really need to do is sit down with my textbook in order to progress further with the grammar, and widen my vocabulary beyond what's in Duolingo. But that requires more time commitment, so I do it much less often, and do Duolingo instead.. fairly pointlessly - sure it probably helps stop me slipping backwards.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#102

I've written two books over the past decade as well as learning some other skills and hobbies and this is absolutely the most vital lesson I've learned. There is an incredible power in simply pouring a little time into something every day over a long period of time. It feels like a superpower when you see it start compounding. The Grand Canyon was created by little drops of water bouncing off rocks for millenia. Cons…

The grand canyon was likely not the result of little drops but rather huge deluges - over time.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#103
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Knowledge usually works like this. When I first got into home cooking a few years ago, the learning process was painfully slow. It must've taken several attempts spread across a week just to learn how to make basic scrambled eggs the "proper" way. Now after a few years of experience, every ingredient I learn to work with seemingly unlocks a dozen more dishes that I can easily assemble. The rate of learning accel…

Would you mind sharing what you used to learn cooking? My main struggle is recipe books that teach you the recipe rather than cooking. But I'd love to learn HOW to cook, not WHAT to cook.

The food lab by j Kenji Lopez alt is another cooking book (with lots of recipes) that really helps you understand why and what you are doing rather than just telling you a process to follow.

Highly recommend anything Kenji does (previously he was the main force behind seriouseats.com) and also does a lot of first person point of view cooking videos on YouTube where he explains why he is doing things while he is doing them.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#104
post #12
post #2

Is it generally easy for people to get permission from their day job to code on the side, without assigning all rights to the employer?

This definitely depends on the employer and your geographical location; for example, in California, clauses like this are not legal except under certain conditions: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Of course, what you've said is true as far as it goes. But, consider this: if your employer has a product with any sort of search capability, your hobby/side project search engine then falls under the heading of things "relat(ing)... to the employer's business."

If you work for a big enough tech company, like, say, Google or Facebook, it's likely that a lot of things will "relate...to their business." And, note, too, that there's no requirement that you actually know that it relates to a part of your employer's business.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#105

This type of sentiment generally makes me feel that literally nobody understands why business work or don't. I remember pitching the idea of a fantasy financial league to a friend who is a teacher, as a way of teaching kids about the stock market and finance. His reply instantly gelled with me and let me know they actually understood much more than I about both teaching and finance: He said it will teach exactly the…

I’m no business expert, but this approach seems like a huge gamble to me. Why spend years building a project before the usefulness and public reception is quantified? I’d rather spend a hard few months building something that fails rather than an easy 6 years.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#106
post #63

This was exactly how we built OwnLocal before we quit our day jobs. In a sense, it was very easy because when you don't know how big the problem is, everything feels like progress. Now I see 40 barreling towards me and it's hard to just do a little bit every day. Because I have experience, I can form a much bigger picture of an idea in my head and it's hard to peel off a tiny bit and make that feel like a success. Th…

Few things are impossible to get back once you loose them: naivety is one of them.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#107
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing what you used to learn cooking? My main struggle is recipe books that teach you the recipe rather than cooking. But I'd love to learn HOW to cook, not WHAT to cook.

I highly recommend Masterclass to get into cooking. The Gordon Ramsey and Thomas Keller videos jumpstarted me into serious cooking last year. 10/10 would recommend.

is it worth the price. seems a overpriced for the content.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#108

This type of sentiment generally makes me feel that literally nobody understands why business work or don't. I remember pitching the idea of a fantasy financial league to a friend who is a teacher, as a way of teaching kids about the stock market and finance. His reply instantly gelled with me and let me know they actually understood much more than I about both teaching and finance: He said it will teach exactly the…

While of course doing a startup is very hard and subject to a lot of unknowable, uncontrollable factors I don’t think it’s quite as dire as a retail investor picking stocks. There’s no “efficient markets” for software products; it’s much more likely that you can spot and exploit an unmet business need near your domain expertise than that you have unique insight into Walmart’s quarterly earnings.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#109
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Knowledge usually works like this. When I first got into home cooking a few years ago, the learning process was painfully slow. It must've taken several attempts spread across a week just to learn how to make basic scrambled eggs the "proper" way. Now after a few years of experience, every ingredient I learn to work with seemingly unlocks a dozen more dishes that I can easily assemble. The rate of learning accel…

Would you mind sharing what you used to learn cooking? My main struggle is recipe books that teach you the recipe rather than cooking. But I'd love to learn HOW to cook, not WHAT to cook.

A lot of people recommend videos to get started. A lot of (as in most) recipes assume you know enough to tell when the stove is at an appropriate temperature, when a texture is "right," etc. Video isn't a panacea but written directions for many things tend to assume you kinda know at least the basics.

ATK's best recipes and maybe some of Alton Brown's books (though I'm less enthusiastic than some are) are probably better than most at breaking down the steps and the reason for doing certain things.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#110

Reminds me of these equations: 1.01 ^ 365 = 37.78 0.99 ^ 365 = 0.03

This is my life in unemployment.

I really do start doing all those things I didn't have time for.

But each day I get 1% lazier...

Lesson: Never take more than 6 months off.

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