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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

#451

Post by practice9 »

sebmellen wrote: post #325
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 agree, but IMO that is missing the point of the post. For me, this lesson transcends software engineering and applies to nearly every quadrant of life. Yes, progress does not guarantee success, but progress for its own sake is still worthwhile. And even if your ultimate goal is to succeed, applying these principles makes the success more likely , which is most of what matters in any kind of entrepreneurial enterpri…

It helps to have several tiers of success. It doesn't have to be a boolean condition

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#452

Post by SuoDuanDao »

random_kris wrote: post #435
chejazi wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

I've been smoking daily for past 5 years, it cascaded into smoking from morning until I fall asleep. Decided to stop on my 25th birthday 3 days ago. It's really hard and even though I love this devil's lettuce I wish I never started smoking it. Any tips for a fellow smoker ?

Cardio seems to be key to a healthy relationship with the plant. I think it has something to do with it accumulating in fat cells but I don't know the mechanism, that's just based on my observation of the difference between healthy and unhealthy tokers.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#453

Post by brailsafe »

I think probably it's better to think of this as 'reasonable effectiveness'.

Unreasonable effectiveness would be better communicated with a success metric that isn't also highly dependant on luck.

As in grinding vocabulary in a foreign language every day.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#454

Post by rndmize »

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 would recommend The Professional Chef - it provides techniques and how do them, and follows this with recipes that apply them after. As might be expected though, this is a fairly serious book.

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-...

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#455

Post by wly_cdgr »

mattjaynes wrote: post #89

If you haven't read or listened to this book yet, I highly recommend it: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work[1] It's a collection of daily routines of many famous and prolific artists. The surprising thing about so many of the artists is that they only work 2 or 3 hours per day, then spend the rest of the day walking around, socializing, etc. But they consistently show up and put in the work and it adds up to some amazin…

What's more surprising (I would say, crazy) is that anyone expects more. Nobody works at their top level for more than 2-3 hours a day. Maaaaaybe 3-4 tops. Doesn't mean you can't be productive for many more hours, but you are not gonna be able to work effectively on tasks that are anywhere near the limit of your ability. You just can't and nobody does it....not athletes, not artists, not writers, not philosophers, not mathematicians, ..- not anyone doing hard creative work

Also, for anyone doing that kind of work, things like walking around and socializing is both vitally recuperative and indirectly productive in its own right

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#456

Post by brudgers »

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…

As a proportion of Earth’s water it is ‘tiny drops.’

As a metaphor it is reasonable as ‘tiny drops’ is not a scientific unit. And a boulder is any non-monolith greater than 256mm…seventy feet is not particularly large in a scientific sense just in an ordinary tourist talk one.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#457

Post by thread_id »

I'm not sure what all this pedantic nonsense is regarding the grand canyon and flooding. But I can tell you from personal experience that this indeed works beautifully well. And the more progress you accumulate, the more velocity you experience. It is a virtuous cycle.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#458

Post by Aeolun »

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.

I think the problem with humans is that, other than with falling rain, the throughput is limited.

So you cannot really do a torrent of work on grand canyon scale.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#459

Post by tharkun__ »

norrius wrote: post #419
tharkun__ wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this might be great advice and the reasoning sound. Some of it I can't tell but the thing about water and salt makes me suspicious. I suppose you mean to add salt after the water boils instead of at the start? Why would the water boil faster without salt with any significance to cooking? I looked it up again and apparently The temperature needed to boil will increase about 0.5 C for every 58 grams of dissolve…

I suspect this is more about giving that almost-boiling water more points where it can break tension and start forming bubbles. So it doesn't make the water reach 100° faster but makes it more visible.

I'm not entirely sure how you mean. Would you care to elaborate your point?

Just to make it more clear, in case I wasn't, the 'common wisdom' as also perpetuated in the parent's statement is indeed about the faster boiling time. It's all over the internet too (and youtube).

The 'problem' with it is that it it is actually factually true. That water will definitely boil faster without salt added to it at the start. It can be calculated to the T if you know all the input parameters, like initial temperature, power output of your heating element, amount of water and salt. The fact remains that it's only by maybe milliseconds for common water and salt amounts used in cooking. So pedantically, whoever mentions it, is right, but it doesn't matter and is not how it's commonly referred to. It's more used to throw around your knowledge about cooking, giving 'tips' etc. I don't doubt that many of the other 'common wisdoms' of cookery are similarly unfounded if pedantically true. Not all of them probably.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#460

Post by bogomipz »

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.

Have a look at Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food." It teaches the different cooking methods - braising, grilling, roasting, frying etc. It teaches you why how these methods work and what foods benefit from them. It's a fun a book and you will cook a bunch of good stuff and there's a healthy bit of science in there as well. It will get you on your way to cooking without recipes.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584790830

The other recommendation I could make would be to "Cooks Illustrated" magazine. It's a monthly magazine but they're the kind of thing you could keep around for years as a reference. Besides the usual recipes also lots of "how to" and they usually have a seasonal focus so you can learn to cook things in season.

https://www.cooksillustrated.com/

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