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The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

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Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#241

Post by chubot »

brm wrote: post #124

Everyone always writes these and yet I've seen very few ever talk about how to decide what's worth showing up for or how to get a working hypothesis of an animating principle for your own existence. It'd be remarkably useful to have a working framework for how to figure out what to want, especially targeted at smart people with top level talents in several areas.

"What's worth it" varies so much by person that you can't generalize. Tons of people have written about that, but they all write different things, because they're different people.

That said, I've noticed that there is a pretty big split between short term success vs. long term success, with this site skewing toward the latter. (Primary short term example: work hard at a safe, high-paying career)

If you're reading this site, PG (original author of it) has written extensively on these things:

http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html Live in the future; build what's missing

I think this is a great slogan because there seems to be an implicit myth that everyone has access to the same viewpoints and knowledge (or should), e.g. media narratives. In reality knowledge is very unevenly distributed, and the viewpoints of people and communities are more diverse than you can imagine (traveling and/or listening to random people is a good way to see this). If you're not living in "the future", your idea of "new" or "good" might be skewed or simply pedestrian.

http://paulgraham.com/genius.html Have a disinterested obsession with something that matters

http://paulgraham.com/worked.html -- some "implicit" advice, a great read

The advice in this article is good too:

> Pick an idea in a large market that will always be in demand and work on a product that caters to a subset of use cases exceedingly well.

I think it depends on your appetite for drama. To me, startups have a lot of drama and often fail spectacularly. They have good characters and bad characters. So if I just want to enjoy my life, then I'll work on something steadily, learn, improve my skills. After working on a bunch of things close to the state of the art, it's hard not to think of ways the world could be better.

I liked munificent's statement in this thread that "humans are incredible generalizers". That is, just do things and you'll get ideas. Certain work smells good and other work smells bad. (IMO the biggest bad smell is prestige: http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.)

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#242

Post by appleiigs »

kjerzyk wrote: post #84
spideymans wrote: post #69

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.

I disagree with the J. Kenji Lopez-Alt suggestions. He is too extreme/OCD for beginners.

A much more accessible source is Harold McGee who wrote "On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen". McGee reviews the science but also some history. He also reviews some of the cooking tips your mom gave you and why they work or don't work.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#243

Post by king_panic »

superasn wrote: post #160
munificent wrote: post #40

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…

> 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. There is an amazing book called The Slight Edge which is based on this very principal and it can really change your life. Here is a small excerpt from it that really resonated with me: It sure would be nice if, somehow, you could do something…

The Slight Edge is an amazing book about an amazing concept. Dramatic change happens one percent at a time at a consistent cadence.

Also great chapter in The Psychology of Money about Warren Buffet. He's been investing since he was a child and is now in his 90s -- He's been compounding returns on a longer timeframe then anyone else alive.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#244

Post by Dangeranger »

Damogran6 wrote: post #129
spideymans wrote: post #69

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…

The number of domains of knowledge that are effectively infinite are compounding...this thought tends to make me hyperventilate if I think about it too much. It was very important to me to be smart so that people looked positively at me, now that I'm getting older, I'm having a hard time letting that go as I know more and more about less and less.

And yet, “smart” is less about how much you know and more about how quickly you can become competent in something new. You can feel confident in the knowledge that when you need to know something you can learn it, just-in-time.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#246

Post by chejazi »

superasn wrote: post #160
munificent wrote: post #40

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…

> 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. There is an amazing book called The Slight Edge which is based on this very principal and it can really change your life. Here is a small excerpt from it that really resonated with me: It sure would be nice if, somehow, you could do something…

> If you're doing the few simple errors in judgment, time will expose you, no matter how well you appear to be doing right now.

Like smoking pot. I love smoking pot, but wow can it cascade errors in judgment (only realized upon looking back)

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#247

Post by gilbetron »

weaksauce wrote: post #181
kjerzyk wrote: 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.

watch J. Kenji López-Alt on youtube. does the full recipe from start to finish while telling you the whys. he started doing that kind of thing semi-frequently at the start of the pandemic and now has a pretty large catalog of videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqJQ_cXSat0KIAVfIfKkVA

The best part is that he does very little editing, so you see him screw up and make modifications on the fly - nearly all other cooking shows/videos don't show that and so you feel like everyone can cook perfectly. Kenji will forget to add things, or burn things, or do things out of order, but he keeps rolling with it. To add to the videos, he has the best articles on seriouseats.com that explain how and why everything is done in the recipe.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#248

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

dheera wrote: post #216
telchar wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take away from your point, but from what I have read, the Grand Canyon was most likely not formed by little drops of water, but instead by occasional torrents of water. There is ~70 feet of boulders and detritus at the bottom of the Colorado River. Only a flood powerful enough to get all that material moving at once will erode the bottom of the river bed and carve the canyon deeper. The slopes and walls probab…

And so maybe true effectiveness would be achieved by having a torrent of work once a week instead of a few minutes a day.

Both. I am naturally a very "torrent of work" kind of person, but I've learned that one approach isn't enough. Some problems require a bit every day, some torrents.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#249

Post by deregulateMed »

criddell wrote: post #115
deregulateMed wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you liked that book, Power of Habits is the 10x better version. It's less of a 20 year olds book of lifehacks and more of a science based approach. Power of Habit book changed my life, quit all drugs and video games. Now I just read nonfiction books.

Why don't you like video games or fiction anymore?

Waste of time. At least comparatively speaking.

Plus these get boring, I climb up the hedonic treadmill. Movies and video games get boring.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#250

Post by simonw »

OJFord wrote: post #201
simonw wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you complete the first level of the three, or have you got to purple status on every lesson? I find that getting all the way it purple on every lesson has been massively more effective for me than just doing the lower level lessons.

The three? Purple? Maybe it's different for different languages. Each lesson (as in topic badge type button) done through 5/5 crowns (1-7 stages per crown iirc), I just go through fixing the broken ones or practicing ones I know I'm rusty on now.

Yup that's what I'm talking about - the Spanish track added a concept of "purple" which is an advance on the broken ones - you can now take an additional set of lessons for one that shows up broken and it will never break for you again.

I think the Spanish track is likely one of the most advanced in terms of number of lessons and quality of teaching - though I expect the "learn English" tracks are equivalent or more advanced, I've just never looked at those.

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