91–100 of 113 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What make you think it is not particularly challenging to do, especially given your earlier acknowledgement that almost nobody is a good listener?
Just for the sake of example, I consider solving partial differential equations challenging. Listening is not challenging. One may not do it for a variety of reason, but we call can do it no exception, the act is as easy as it gets. A bit like walking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What make you think it is not particularly challenging to do, especially given your earlier acknowledgement that almost nobody is a good listener?
Just for the sake of example, I consider solving partial differential equations challenging. Listening is not challenging. One may not do it for a variety of reason, but we call can do it no exception, the act is as easy as it gets. A bit like walking.
Walking is extremely challenging for a lot of people so that argument would contradict your point.
But it is a good analogy, a lot of people who have problems talking to people and listening also have problems walking properly. So just as you say walking is trivial to some but others just can't get it right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't sound very good in real life scenarios either. I can provide feedback without necessarily knowing how to fix it. For example, if someone I work with consistently have a hard time communicating their ideas, I can and should provide that feedback, even without knowing how they can fix it. At the very least if they realize the issue, they can attempt to go fix it themselves. Providing feedback in general is…
> I can provide feedback without necessarily knowing how to fix it But at least you provide guidance on how and where to learn the solution as well, yes? I don't imagine anyone going around telling people what they should do but not being able or willing to guide them to where they can find out how to do something. Also, I don't see providing advice that is both unsolicited and uninformed as being a gift. That's the…
"I am not afraid of a person who knows 10000 kicks. But I am afraid of a person who knows one kick but practices it for 10000 times." Bruce Lee
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I get the point you are making and the "hunger" example is obviously a painful one. But I actually think feedback should be shared freely. EG: if I have bad communication skills, yes ideally someone coaches me. But at least, random feedback of "wow that meeting went badly" - hearing that from many people over and over - may make me aware of the area and look into it myself. Like, if I am starting to get fat, I want p…
> if I am starting to get fat, I want people to tell me But would you want random people to tell you, unsolicited, "you're fat, you need to lose weight". Also, I'm obligated to note that the energy balance model of weight gain and loss has come under close scrutiny in recent research, and it is never as simple as eat less, exercise more. https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2011132
It is probably not an all encompassing model, however it's still one of the best approximations for what the average layperson should do to lose weight.
With dieting and exercise, i went from a weight of 86 kg to 74 kg over a period of about 3 months (weighed myself daily, kept track of what i ate). Since then, with just dieting, i've gone from 74 to 70 kg in about 2 months.
Is it hard to get nutrition right in such circumstances? Sure. Are there more factors that should probably be taken into account? Of course. Can improperly done exercise cause damage to the body? Yes, that's why people repeat that you need good form so often.
However exercise most definitely works to some degree, even though i had to make myself to do a bit of it every day. I went from being able to do about 30 incline pushups to 150. From 30 situps to 150 as well. From being able to do 10 pullups, all the way to around 40, of course, all of the exercises divided into sets of repetitions with some rest inbetween. The numbers and targets could probably be fine tuned, but it was enough for me.
I believe the thing we often need to learn is the thing we're afraid of learning. We often (always?) have weaknesses that can/do jeopardize our strength and closing those weaknesses is crucial. The famous Scott Galloway (whom I had as a b-school professor) made this point like this: if you are a great guy, great father, great boss, etc, but once in a while you get violently drunk and hurt people in your life - THAT t…
So the Manager Tools podcast had a discussion about this I can't be bothered to find. Their advice, as best I recall it, was that you should focus on two things: fixing absolute deal breakers, and honing your strengths. Imagine you come up with N dimensions you want to rate yourself across on a 1 to 5 scale from worst to best. If you have any 1 out of 5's that are clearly blocking career progress, you should focus on that. If you're sitting at 2s and 3's, you should work on getting a 4 or 5, rather than leveling up across the board.
You have described scenarios that seem to be absolute deal breakers (likely because those are the memorable stories) but in most cases, I think the latter applies.
> Every year, his own developmental goal was to go learn the next C++ standard. And that would have been useless because he was already a great C++ programmer.
Well, those don't come around that often. But more to the point -- situation matters. If you're working on a major C++ product that is expected to last decades, the company is in trouble if _nobody_ is allowed to study improvements. Best case scenario the company has some talent management app that you can query to find out two other people intend to master C++20; worst case, every engineering manager focuses employees on short term wins and the mountain of tech debt becomes unclimbable. I fear though, that the worst case is also the average case!
This wouldn't be Hacker News if someone didn't comment that ACTUALLY a random walk of n steps will get you sqrt(n) in some direction, which is much better than log(n). I guess my special skill is being pedantic.
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I've come to realize that 'exponential' is so often used to describe anything nonlinear. This would be the exact corollary. Good to pick up on it. I'll look out for this too now.
corollary : i've come to learn to ignore writers who use "exponential" incorrectly, to your point. i realize this makes me picky, but it seems to be reasonable, as that incorrect usage often is a signal of sloppy thought.
I think the answer depends on "why do you want to learn?". The implicit answer to that question for this blog post seems to be "to advance your career". That's a fine answer, but not the only answer.
i am currently researching cancer due to my diagnosis. Its a fascinating world that will keep me occupied for a long time. I am learning statistics p-values, multi-variate analysis , kaplan-meier ect. A little bit of genetics and cell anatomy, mutations when i am bored of stats and reading about human side of cancer in the book 'emperor of all maladies'. I am really enjoying this part of the journey, learning somethi…
The were two positive thing about my wife's cancer 1- She survived 2- The intense learning experiance.
P.s. You could add medical imaging to your list of interesting cancer related things to learn. It won't really help you but it is extremely interesting .
If you can get the DICOM files of your scans try to interpret them with the full radiologist report. I got started with the trial of radiant viewer¹ (it easy to use but you will probably hit a ceiling before the end of the trial) and then try 3D slicer² (it's a lot harder to use but I feel that I used maybe 10% of that software capability and I was able to cleanly isolate the tumor and make the rest of her body translucent).
1- www.radiantviewer.com 2- slicer.org