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That thought keeps me motivated to continuously work on a project of mine. That one day, maybe years from now, it will reach that point where it is good enough to get the ball rolling. Only a few, which where there from the beginning, will be able to imagine the efforts that had to go into it.
This was a pleasant surprise and a pleasant read. Its message reminds me of the words of Shunryu Suzuki: > As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make i…
Practice now, realize later, feels deeply dualistic to me.
Except for software engineering where doing for 25 years doesn't make me feel like I am doing magic. It feels like the art keeps moving and I need to keep up. Like the card tricks I did back when are now obsolete so I need to learn human cannonball as table stakes.
At this point all I learned was to fear the next thing, obliterating most of my hyperspecific interests if I'm just going to lead myself down the path of a hermit again another N years. I get out instead but it doesn't make me feel much better anymore. It took too much out of me.
I don't know, having spent a third of of my life on a single project almost daily, not all that time deliberate and most of it ADD-driven problem avoidance, I ended up inflicting upon myself a personal hell I have only begun to comprehend the depths of. When the interest finally waned I didn't feel I had enough to show for it and every other aspect of my life suffered in ways that will take years to make up for. At t…
1. They pour a large bowl of rice onto a table
2. They reveal the exact number of grains
Would this feel exciting as a card buried under the ground? No
Does this still require a lot of effort to count every grain? Yes
Applying a huge amount of effort doesn’t equal achieving the desired result (in this case the suspense, surprise and magical element)
The direction one is going is often even more important than the effort applied
I have a friend, who runs setup of major venues. Like, stadiums and conference centers, for big-time events (thousands of people).
The deal is, that a whole lot of moving parts, need to come together, for one event, and there can be no screwups[0].
Takes a lot of planning, prep work, validation, and, most importantly, experience (my friend is in his sixties), as there are bound to be curveballs, and newbies aren't very good at handling out-of-band events.
Not many people can actually do it, but almost everyone thinks they can do it.
> I am certain I’ve seen Penn & Teller describe this trick, but can’t find a citation online. They wrote about a similar trick in their book How to Play In Traffic, but let me know if you know where they explain the “buried underground” version. I also remember watching Penn (I assume) explaining this concept and it's been living in my head ever since. Does anyone know the video?
The way I heard him describe it was "To any normal person this would seem like a totally unreasonable amount of time, EXCEPT to a magician [because that's their job]", or something like that.
EDIT: Maybe it was actually an anecdote from his movie Tim's Vermeer? Been a long time since I saw it...
Great, useful article. Remember: the same principle holds in the world of the psyche. Those people walking around, seeming effortlessly happy? Unless if they're little children, a horrendous amount of effort has been invested to their inner peace. It took me years to realize that. Being envious is much easier than being humble and diligent with getting one's shit together. My wish for 2025 is for massive, decentraliz…
A good and often useful generality, however it's important to recognize how vast the difference can be in the amount of energy needed to achieve inner peace from one person to the next. For example, I had absent drug addict parents, was instead raised by extremely abusive and restrictive guardians. I was homeless since 16 and I spent my 20's undertaking the self-actualization that I should have been doing in my teens…
Nevertheless, I don't see any value on acknowledging the delta between me and peers that happened to be luckier. It'd be useful were I on the other side: for instance, if I hadn't seen my father sink into dementia, if he was still with me, I'd better keep reminding myself of the importance and blessing of growing alongside a functional, healthy dad.
But now... Thoughts like "I have struggled more than these guys" seem dangerous to me. Whenever I've taken them seriously I've ended up using them as justification for the next tiny act of self-destruction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though, would the burrying have any meaning without the reveal? Its only purpose was to be used in the end. I have a hard time seeing the meaning of the burrying itself.
Art gratis art. Some get their rocks off interfacing with the relationship between their art and those who engage with it. Others are entirely satisfied with the process of making art itself. The former is an externalized process, the latter is internalized. Different strokes for different folks, but you can put me in a box with no human interaction and a keyboard, and I will find no end of entertainment through self…
I can see the artistic value of the full magic act, but does that make a tool used in the act to itself be art on its own?
Is the bow used by a violin player in itself a piece of art? Perhaps it could be. But if it's burried?
This was a pleasant surprise and a pleasant read. Its message reminds me of the words of Shunryu Suzuki: > As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make i…
Practice now, realize later, feels deeply dualistic to me.