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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

#561
Life kept throwing various curve balls at me: I got married, had a daughter, lost a loved one after a prolonged battle, underwent major health issues, battled COVID…

^this made me cringe a bit. personally, it makes me sad when i hear someone describe family or commitments as obstacles to work.

i'm sure i've done it in the past, but personally, i think it warrants examination.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory that each artist finds a window into another dimension, then attempts to communicate what they saw. But I love your theory too.

I see these as one in the same actually. Clarity I think comes from being “part” of the world or some specific part of it. While many and most “live” through it, the Artist sees the inverse of a sorts of it - the “big picture within some lens”. Then, tries to process and communicate the unseen truths in whatever medium they are accustomed.

These statements could leave more room for lousy artists.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#563

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…

I wrote a novel-shaped object (OK, it was never printed, so "object" is perhaps a bit bold) over about 6 months, by the simple expedient of making sure I spent at least 15 minutes every morning with the NSO editor open. Target was "Minimum one word", but (apart from a long stretch in the middle), more like 500-1500 words per day. The long stretch in the middle was when I had to figure out how to deal with the main ch…

For what it's worth, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series was written this way with the Foundation or the concept of it being an "organization" spanning hundreds of years. It might provide some useful ways to handle this though in general I think his solution was "jump forward 20yrs and introduce a new character while brining up the former's legacy".

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#564

One of the more interesting sayings I have come across lately is: People overestimate how much they can get done in the short term but they underestimate how much they can get done in the long term. I see this all the time with friends who pick up the guitar as a hobby. Often someone practices intensely for one week or one month and then gets frustrated at their progress. That frustration often causes people to give…

Bill Gates: Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/302999-most-people-overesti...

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#565
post #63

This was exactly how we built OwnLocal before we quit our day jobs. In a sense, it was very easy because when you don't know how big the problem is, everything feels like progress. Now I see 40 barreling towards me and it's hard to just do a little bit every day. Because I have experience, I can form a much bigger picture of an idea in my head and it's hard to peel off a tiny bit and make that feel like a success. Th…

Over the last 18 months I have been working to get that back. I remind myself at the end of the day that what I did was productive and useful and so far that has worked well.

I realized that it is really easy to fall into the "but what if..." trap but doing so is not spending enough time in the present moment.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re saying putting 40 minutes to things every day works wonders.

I am saying 40 minutes a day is an absolute minimum sufficient for simple maintenance tasks (aka walking, cooking healthy meals, etc) and a far greater amount of time is required to actually accomplish anything meaningful, let alone novel or groundbreaking.

You're just being obtuse

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#567
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But first the artist has to get a gallery to show his work.

exactly, I'd imagine artists spend a good bit of their time schlepping around convincing galleries to display their work.

There's a big difference between "massive success" and having a gallery show. Once you have a decent relationship with a gallery, if you don't care so much about money you can just let the gallery handle that side of things.

A friend of mine has been a professional painter for the last 50-ish years. He makes a couple trips a year to the gallery to deliver paintings. The gallerist tries to take that chance to suggest a few motifs that seem to sell better, but doesn't get too pushy.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. You might be thinking of the Missoula floods that carved out the channeled scablands of Eastern Washington. But the Grand Canyon's river is generally the same size it always has been, and slow erosion forces created it.

Why not both?! It's not ridiculous to allow for constant, steady erosion and the occasional 10,000 year flood shenanigans! Example from in our great-grandparents lifetimes. There's a cool place called the Bridge to Nowhere in Southern California => https://goo.gl/maps/XMerBpT3J2caLJ696 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_to_Nowhere_(San_Gabriel... . The bridge was built as part of a massive project to build roads…

Sure, there are certainly big floods now and again. But the point stands that the grand canyon's formation was primarily from slow erosion, not from big floods doing the bulk of the work.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think you will find most fluid dynamics researchers will agree that a "drop" is a body of fluid where surface tension is non-negligible. We might argue over whether that limit is 25 mm or 5 mm or whatever for a given fluid, but we all agree it's a lot less than 1 meter for water.

How do fluid dynamics researchers measure metaphors…or Hoffstedlierian fluid analogies?

Well, in this case the concept is that a drop-like thing has relatively large surface area compared to volume. Translating e.g. to people, it could mean many/all of the people in a group have ties to outside the group. Maybe "drop" is a neighbourhood and "sea" is a country.

Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

#570
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely not the right comment but as a vegetarian… steam vegetables are disgusting! Grill/bake is so much more delicious. And, after committing the sin of telling you that I’m a vegetarian in my first sentence, I hope it can be useful for someone :)

> steam vegetables are disgusting! Gee. Steamed veges (potatoes, corn, broccoli, beans, carrots, brussel sprouts etc) with a lil vegan butter, salt, and herbs or minced garlic on top is one of my favourite things in the world.

Lightly steamed (retaining crunch, flavour and nutrients), plus melted butter (in moderation) and salt is my go-to as well. For instant pots, there is even a table on how many minutes each type of vegetable should be correctly steamed. That makes all the difference.
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