The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday • Hacker News Board

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#351

Post by robocat » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

king_panic wrote: post #243

superasn wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Warren Buffet

That is selection bias at its worst: he really is an outlier. There are plenty of investors that beaver away every day and do not get his returns. I suspect you could pick one of his decades and only find a few people that exceed his ability.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#352

Post by denton-scratch » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

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 also favour Felicity Cloake; there's very little introductory fluff, it's straight into the food.

In the "How To Cook The Perfect"..., series, she tackles standards. She gathers the opinions and recipes of various authors and chefs, and tests them against a tasting panel. She then settles on her chosen recipe; but you get to decide whether you prefer to go with chef X or author Y, in respect of (e.g.) the capers.

I've learned a lot from Cloake. And her writing suits my cooking style - I don't like to be tied to a recipe past the first attempt.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#353

Post by holycrapguys » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

telchar wrote: post #161

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…

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…

This comment is a perfect representation of Hacker News discussions.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#354

Post by teddyh » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #159

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #77

Adding a little bit of extra productivity to every day is great advice. The challenge can be finding the time, which means you need to subtract time from some other activities. Trading sleep for extra productivity is a losing game in the long run. It’s much better to swap out some time waster activities like watching TV or, yes, browsing HN. It can be tough to reduce time spent on vices, but after the habit is establ…

A few weeks ago I started unplugging my internet when I go to bed, so it's off when I wake up. Then I work for 2 or 3 hours before plugging it back in. I use DevDocs.io, which has an offline feature, to look up standard library stuff. I actually delay going online for as long as possible because I know productivity will drop off a cliff once I reconnect. This is the most productive I've been in my life, by quite a wi…

For offline documentation, I use these in order of preference:

• Info¹ documentation, which I read directly in Emacs. (If you have ever used the terminal-based standalone “info” program, please try to forget all about it. Use Emacs to read Info documentation, and preferably use a graphical Emacs instead of a terminal-based one; Info documentation occasionally has images.)

• Gnome Devhelp².

• Zeal³, using up-to-date documentation dumps provided by Dash⁴.

• RFC archive⁵ dumps provided by the Debian “doc-rfc“ package⁶.

1. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/info/

2. https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Devhelp

3. https://zealdocs.org/

4. https://kapeli.com/dash

5. https://www.rfc-editor.org/

6. https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/doc-rfc

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#355

Post by nend » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

arnold_palmur wrote: post #262

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…

This is the quintessential example of a pedantic Hacker News comment.

I don't know, I appreciated the correction and additional information. There was also an acknowledgment that it doesn't change ops point. Seemed like a useful comment to me.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#356

Post by ibizaman » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #332

d_burfoot wrote: post #276

I feel like HN should have a special flag called "survivorship bias" that we can use to tag posts like this. For every project like this one, there are 1000 others where someone spent 15 hrs/week for 5 years, built something really cool, but never got any funding or traction. Now, that time was probably better spent on a cool project than on playing video games or watching TV. But you shouldn't think that consistent…

> I feel like HN should have a special flag called "survivorship bias" that we can use to tag posts like this Pointing out the possibility of survivorship bias doesn't add anything to the conversation on articles like this. The author never claimed that everyone who works consistently will have a successful startup. The article is barely about startups at all. We get it - Startup success isn't guaranteed and followin…

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#357

Post by robocat » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

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.

A friend of mine (who couldn't cook) learnt by buying the delivered raw food packages that have say four evenings dishes with recipes.

The recipes are designed and written so that they are hard to screw up.

It was a least effort path that worked for him: no videos or books (so a different option than the majority of answers so far!). Mostly I believe it is just the desire to cook - even if just making one _favourite_ dish. Good luck!

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#358

Post by ipnon » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

d_burfoot wrote: post #276

I feel like HN should have a special flag called "survivorship bias" that we can use to tag posts like this. For every project like this one, there are 1000 others where someone spent 15 hrs/week for 5 years, built something really cool, but never got any funding or traction. Now, that time was probably better spent on a cool project than on playing video games or watching TV. But you shouldn't think that consistent…

Not all hardworking people are successful, but all successful people are hardworking. Success is not guaranteed, it has an element of randomness. Attempting to be successful involves risk, and "survivorship bias" should be accounted as part of that risk. But still success is not entirely random, because only playing video games or watching TV will not result in it.

It's not that you should think that consistent engineering effort alone will have any payoff, it's that you should think consistent engineering effort might have any payoff.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#359

Post by GeorgeTirebiter » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

thorum wrote: post #333

dreamer7 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the activity. It's impossible to build any medium to high complexity software by working on it for 5 mins a day. But you can make a lot of progress by practising every day for very little time. For example, I've improved on my tucked planche progression by just leaning forward while holding a plank for 5 seconds every day.

My experience has been that a small amount of work each day builds mental momentum which can snowball into something bigger when my schedule opens up and I have some free time & an idea that excites me.

Yes, working on a problem daily means your subconscious is daily prodded to "think about the problem". As you do other things, your brain is 'working on it' so when you do get those few minutes or maybe an hour to work on it, you almost always know what to do - you've been thinking about it all day!

There is an apocryphal story of what Newton said when he was asked, "How did you come up with the theory of gravity?" replying: "By thinking about it all the time."

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#360

Post by colonelanguz » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #351

king_panic wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Warren Buffet That is selection bias at its worst: he really is an outlier. There are plenty of investors that beaver away every day and do not get his returns. I suspect you could pick one of his decades and only find a few people that exceed his ability.

Yeah. And he also hasn't beaten the market in over a decade.