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This article is quite shallow. It's essentially saying, in order to excel at something it needs to become a part of you. There's some truth there, but Charles Bukowski said it much better and more succinctly with, "Don't try." [1] 1: https://poets.org/poem/so-you-want-be-writer
Telling people to ignore things they dont like thinking about is completely terrible advice. Its almost the worst possible advice.
This article is quite shallow. It's essentially saying, in order to excel at something it needs to become a part of you. There's some truth there, but Charles Bukowski said it much better and more succinctly with, "Don't try." [1] 1: https://poets.org/poem/so-you-want-be-writer
Telling people to ignore things they dont like thinking about is completely terrible advice. Its almost the worst possible advice.
It reminds me of nights when I was a teen hacking away at some computer games or writing my first emulator. There was no class, no jira tickets, no books. Just a teen struck with a madness.
1: https://bookshavepores.tumblr.com/post/9013559249/charles-bu...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm an Eminem fan and didn't get that reference FWIW. I thought it was some "Silicon Valley bro" that wanted you to drink kelp, and build your biceps or something
Gotcha! Shame on me. Just slapped a "Slim Shady" label on his hoodie. Won't fully stop the bleeding but at least a few more people will get it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telling people to ignore things they dont like thinking about is completely terrible advice. Its almost the worst possible advice.
I don't think he meant to not try. I think he meant you shouldn't have to try. Trying implies some resistance or conformity. To him, art and creation was something that was there and natural. You just did it. You were mad with it [1]. It reminds me of nights when I was a teen hacking away at some computer games or writing my first emulator. There was no class, no jira tickets, no books. Just a teen struck with a madn…
There are so many better ways to spend your time. Pushing a boulder uphill is hard. If it never gets over the hump and starts pulling, find a different boulder!
The thing that doesn't click in articles like this is the advice section afterwards. Do you think the people described thought about how to increase their practice surface area? No, they were simply /interested/. And part of the reason they were interested was because of natural talent! Do you want to know how to increase your practice surface area? Find things you're interested in. But the reality is that many peopl…
The thing that doesn't click in articles like this is the advice section afterwards. Do you think the people described thought about how to increase their practice surface area? No, they were simply /interested/. And part of the reason they were interested was because of natural talent! Do you want to know how to increase your practice surface area? Find things you're interested in. But the reality is that many peopl…
Accepting yourself as you are is the worst poison to tell to your child or someone you care about. Life is about in inventing yourself through craft, doing, trying, discovering, challenging, achieving goals and self improvement.
Telling people to dive into something even if they don't feel it is dangerous advice (especially for kids) -- people will just get burnt out.
Of course, there is nuance here -- you don't necessarily want to achieve world-class in something, and sometimes pushing is indeed worth it.
Or, you can live a balanced happy life with relationships and touching grass where you are "in the moment", and not always distracted.
being passionate about something is not a distraction
There are some tricks -- if you are already good at something, maintaining that good level is usually not that hard (you already know how and can recalibrate your level to the available time), but picking up new concepts is very time consuming.
I'd also say that the article talks about living through something, that's probably more involved than just passionate.
> The difference between being good and being great isn’t talent or formal training, but the invisible practice that happens when you're just living life. Pure nonsense. Necessary != sufficient, and honestly neither are demonstrated in the anecdotes.
Two things. It's possible to be great at something simply by practicing, assuming normal capabilities. But great here just means "better than virtually everyone". Being mediocre among people who practice regularly it makes you immediately better than basically everyone who has done it once or twice. By most definitions that's "great". Median daily StarCraft ranked player? You're great at StarCraft. Second, if you sta…
In order to be great, indeed, you don't need to be obsessed, and very rarely you cannot achieve it -- you just need to be relatively consistent. And I 100% agree that if you start early, maintaining a skill on the "better than vast majority" level is not too hard (the hard work was done in the past).
But to achieve truly outstanding results, you definitely need to dedicate tons of time and ideally be obsessed with it (at least very-very interested).
I can think of various high-Level activities such as analyzing systems we interact with on a day-to-day basis. However, I cannot come up with exercises that would improve my code itself.