Can she do the Melbourne shuffle?
Dance in a Year
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: Dance in a Year
#52"When they score the winning point or sell their company for millions — you're seeing them in their moment of glory. What you don't see is the thousands of hours of preparation. You don't see the self doubt, the lost sleep, the lonely nights spent working. You don't see the moment they started. The moment they were just like you, wondering how they could ever be good." This. Too often we hyperbolize the achievement a…
“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because… All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.” – Mark Cuban
Re: Dance in a Year
#53Looking backwards the motivation to capture the process makes sense. I wonder what was the motivation in the early days?
When learning a physical activity, where form is important (whether to look good or prevent injury), watching videos of yourself can be INCREDIBLY useful. As a beginner, we often cannot feel the ways in which we are doing it wrong, which are clear and apparent to an observer. I've noticed this in fencing and crossfit, all activities where proper form is important to avoid injury. (I'm a beginner at both.)
Re: Dance in a Year
#54The key part of the article for me is this: I don't practice every day because I'm disciplined. I practice every day because I'm obsessed. I love dancing and my body craves it. If I didn't have this raw hunger, there's no way I would've had the discipline to practice every day. This raw hunger is the part you can't fake. You might think you want something, but once you take a few steps toward it, you lose your drive.…
Hey, I'm the dancer in the video. Totally agree with connecting with that deep-down hunger. I've tried many things - and quit many things. It's okay to quit. Quitting gives you the freedom to find the thing that you are truly passionate about.
That's a great point. I think we hear "winners never quit" so often that we think quitting is a "bad thing". But it's important to quit what you don't like to do so you don't lose that passion.
Passion is something that has been coming up in job interviews lately. Recruiters and managers keep saying "Your technical skills are great, but we didn't think you were passionate enough" and asking "What is it that really drives you?".
After spending my teens and 20s learning to accept that I can't have what I want, I'm having it thrust in front of me with people asking why I don't act like I want it.
Re: Dance in a Year
#55Her post is spot on. Daily practice does pay off and can work for any discipline. I often say this to my guys whenever they ask me how I'm able to write code so fast and elegantly. Back story, I'm much younger than they are (29 as opposed to 35+). I was decent at writing software, but still wasn't that great. I'm a lot better than I am two years ago, but it was the result of learning little things everyday. There's a…
So the obvious question: What did you focus on that let you improve way more than other people? I do write code and learn something new every day and while I would say that I have improved a lot in the last few years I am still ways away of where I would like to be. Somehow I have the feeling this is not going to change. I imagine that everyone has to decide specifically where they want to improve and figure out how…
paulkoer, what I did to become better was not to study techniques. I've actually did two specific things...
1) On the job full stack developing (by force). I had no choice really. All the other developers left leaving me as the loan developer. At that time I thought of ... a) Leaving the organization myself - Since my skill level wasn't that great (Only thing I knew was how to build web pages with Microsoft's VS tools) I would've became a junior developer somewhere else. Or worse, went back to help desk. I easily passed on that idea.
b) Learning all there is about the current environment that I'm developing on at work. This was tough especially since I was the only developer and working as a help desk tech. To do so I had to go through a lot of sleepless nights and hair pulling to deliver the product. I also showed up on the weekend at my office to finish up projects even though I didn't get paid for that work. I also had to really pinpoint the things I was afraid of (e.g. taking on tough tasks, JavaScript, asp.net 4.0, setting up databases, deploying systems in different environments, documentation, reading other people's code, reading/using open source software, etc.). It sounds silly to me now, but before that decision I really didn't want to deal with the pain of learning that stuff (and was glad to let the senior guys deal with).
This ended up not only helping me skill wise, but helping the organization that I work with. I'm able to develop software very quickly and (most importantly) correctly. Not only that but with these new skills, I am able to correct a lot of outstanding problems as well as build applications much more robustly. Its amazing what I've learned in the past 2 years just by surrounding myself in this field.
I've always wanted to start a business, and you don't do that just by thinking about it. You have to "put your nose to the grindstone". Now you don't have to go all out like I did. I would suggest to do #2 on my list. Think of a project (or join mines lol) and get yourself into some trouble with it (and you will :D). Think through it, and overcome. Trust me you're a lot smarter than you think, but it does take some work. Some "blood, sweat, and tears".
The good thing to know is that you are not alone. There are other people out there going through the same thing. The ones who are good and efficient are usually willing to help. All you have to do is ask.
(sorry for the long post)
Re: Dance in a Year
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same thing with lifting, I dropped over 100 lb and got crazy strong in just under a year. 315lb squat, 450 deadlift, 225 bench and I shed all the fat. Anything you dedicate around a year on, you'll get good at.
Thing is though that with diet and exercise it can be really easy being very dedicated to not doing the right thing! It's also very easy to get side tracked into being too dedicated to gathering information and not dedicated enough to doing something :-) I'd be interested to know what your methodology was?
Man I read everything I could possibly read. I read bodybuilding.com for years, reddit.com/r/fitness, t-nation, etc. I realized the following that helped me immensely:
- Calories, overall, are mostly the only thing that matters. Lose weight? Less calories than your maintenance calories. Gain? Eat more above maintenance.
- Lifting weights is the most efficient way of losing weight or building muscle because you have an equal amount of resistance every workout. If you run, you can run 10km one week, 15 the next, and so on and so on. With lifting, its (mostly) the same workout, but the weight increases, so the intensity is always the same.
- Lifting, sleeping correctly, and eating really well will create a beautiful trifecta in your life. You don't get irritated, you're crazy confident, you love yourself, it helps SO much with depression, you are more focus and aware. Life is just better, you genuinely love life.
Every day I wake up BURSTING out of my bed with energy. None of that grogginess.
I basically just did powerlifting, (3 days a week with deadlifts, bench, squat, and technical weightlifting for fun like powercleans, cleans, front squats, clean and jerks).
However, I can't run more than a kilometer.
Re: Dance in a Year
#57This page and video are really really good.
I'm pretty sure that more than a few people are going to watch this and choose to not quit learning how to dance, as it can be super frustrating and seemingly impossible at first.
Re: Dance in a Year
#58Nice story, you dance well, but you should definitely choose better dance for your final dance in the video. What you showed looked like you really wanted to use bathroom but tehre wasn't any... Sorry about that, but otherwise, very nice.
This is why you dance like nobody's watching, because giving a shit that someone thinks you look like you have to go to the bathroom or something is retarded. You are part of the problem!
Re: Dance in a Year
#59One of my favorite books is The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, and one of my favorite quotes from it is: The secret of success is to complete a single simple task on a daily basis. It really is about making slow, meaningful progress. No one wakes up a prodigy.
That's exactly what I'm doing on my latest side project. I'm the type of guy that keeps attempting side projects. I'm passionate at first and then all at once I lose interest and stop. Or I realize I should rewrite and lose interest in the middle of the rewrite. This time I'm doing it differently. Ever since I've started I try to work on as little as possible but I work on it every day. So far so good. I have the urge to restart using cooler technology but I've been resisting.
I'm a little concerned though because I'm about to go on a trip where I won't be able to work on it for 5 days. I hope I don't come back from the trip and lose all interest.
Re: Dance in a Year
#60The take home concept here is great: Work hard at something and practice, practice, practice.
I took a break from C++ for years.
I wanted to write a video game.
So I started everyday doing something in C++ on the game and I am now a few months into it and I NEED to work on it everyday.
Karen. Thanks for sharing this. Valuable.
PS. Where did you get that weekly planner you use as a journal. I like the layout!!