Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Be prolific

chrismytton.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 134 posts

Re: Be prolific

#61

Post by mkl »

billfruit wrote: post #45
saberdancer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an anecdote which could be completely fabricated, I'd expect it is since the source seems to be a book where it is mentioned as story with no names. If anyone has some kind of study or more concrete example, I'd love to hear about it.

Why is a study or a concrete example necessary, if I might ask. It works perfectly fine as a thought experiment.

A study or concrete example is necessary to know whether it is truth or a just-so fantasy. I don't think thinking about it is enough; even though we know people improve with the right kind of practice, if you're judged purely by quantity, there is no guarantee of improvement.

Re: Be prolific

#62

Post by andrepd »

redis_mlc wrote: post #60
sriku wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this! Another way I express this to my colleagues is to consider that Einstein (and others) took fifteen years to develop the relativity theories that did not require any new theoretical or experimental input. All of that is typically taught in a semester's graduate level course today. The "genius" perception hides all the hard work, false turns, recoveries, retries, .. busy work as you put it .. that's be…

> Einstein (and others) took fifteen years to develop the relativity theories that did not require any new theoretical or experimental input. Further to that, when Einstein worked in the patent office, it's likely that applications related to railroad time synchronization crossed his desk, inspiring his work on relativity.

Hardly. Special relativity was a collaborative effort that was underway before Einstein gave his contribution. It was general relativity which was 100% Einstein's idea.

Re: Be prolific

#63

Post by kapilkaisare »

Reminds me of this talk I saw by Ray Bradbury on writing, where he said (I paraphrase):

Aim to write one story a week. That gives you 52 stories a year, and I dare you to write 52 bad ones.

Re: Be prolific

#64

Post by chrisweekly »

donquichotte wrote: post #29
ChrisRackauckas wrote: post #11

When teaching mathematics I like to always mention that the greats like Ramanujan, while it seems like they just knew everything from pure thought, they all actually did a ton of work by hand. Ramanujan in particular is known for his fastidious notebooks calculating thousands of digits numbers like pi. From writing out the calculations for hours and days, he'd come up with simplification formulas and develop new insi…

To improve, busy work is not enough - some kind of quality control is needed to provide feedback, like mentioned in the "Share your Work" paragraph. I have been playing guitar for 28 years and barely improved in the past 15 years - after a teenage burst of disciplined, daily drills with metronome and recording a lot of music, I still regularly doodle and learn new songs, but it is just not enough to give me escape ve…

FWIW, I agree w your point.

As for guitar playing plateaus, I highly recommend embracing alternate tunings as a shortcut / forcing function for adopting "beginner's mind", re-engaging your ear and your curiosity, and discovering new peaks to ascend.

A few of my favorites: - DADGAD (Black Mountain Side) - DADF#AD (Little Martha) - DGDGBE (Open G6) - CACGCE (Bron Yr Aur) - CGCGCD (Rain Song)

Re: Be prolific

#65

Post by chrisweekly »

jlangemeier wrote: post #51
throw149102 wrote: post #34

I realize this is a silly criticism, but it's strange that the author would write about how it's valuable to make a lot of stuff but then to only write 11 sentences about the topic. It seems like it would be much better way to demonstrate the point if the author wrote 100 pages about producing more work/art/code, without any rhyme or reason or editing. After all, the thesis is "Quantity leads to quality", why not jus…

As one of my martial arts sensai said: "Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." But we're probably splitting hairs that a reasonable person would understand don't need splitting by looking at the whole piece, which can be boiled down to: "Make lots and seek feedback more."

Bruce Lee reputedly said something like, "I don't fear the one who's practiced 10,000 kicks, I fear the one who's practiced one kick 10,000 times."

Re: Be prolific

#66

Post by suprfnk »

throw149102 wrote: post #34

I realize this is a silly criticism, but it's strange that the author would write about how it's valuable to make a lot of stuff but then to only write 11 sentences about the topic. It seems like it would be much better way to demonstrate the point if the author wrote 100 pages about producing more work/art/code, without any rhyme or reason or editing. After all, the thesis is "Quantity leads to quality", why not jus…

Maybe the author made 100 articles or wrote 500 sentences, and then posted his highest quality work on the internet.

Re: Be prolific

#67

Post by ck425 »

chrisweekly wrote: post #64
donquichotte wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To improve, busy work is not enough - some kind of quality control is needed to provide feedback, like mentioned in the "Share your Work" paragraph. I have been playing guitar for 28 years and barely improved in the past 15 years - after a teenage burst of disciplined, daily drills with metronome and recording a lot of music, I still regularly doodle and learn new songs, but it is just not enough to give me escape ve…

FWIW, I agree w your point. As for guitar playing plateaus, I highly recommend embracing alternate tunings as a shortcut / forcing function for adopting "beginner's mind", re-engaging your ear and your curiosity, and discovering new peaks to ascend. A few of my favorites: - DADGAD (Black Mountain Side) - DADF#AD (Little Martha) - DGDGBE (Open G6) - CACGCE (Bron Yr Aur) - CGCGCD (Rain Song)

I've used EBEEBE before and it's a gorgeous tuning, using for the song 'Gold' from the film/musical Once. Also the variation EADGBF# is super interesting with open cords, though you do have to be very careful with tuning the top E string that high, easy to snap if you're not careful.

Re: Be prolific

#68

Post by GavinMcG »

throw149102 wrote: post #34

I realize this is a silly criticism, but it's strange that the author would write about how it's valuable to make a lot of stuff but then to only write 11 sentences about the topic. It seems like it would be much better way to demonstrate the point if the author wrote 100 pages about producing more work/art/code, without any rhyme or reason or editing. After all, the thesis is "Quantity leads to quality", why not jus…

When you realize it's silly, take another minute to think about why it's silly.

The author's point is about developing a skill, not about creating a specific piece of work.

Even if it were about creating a specific item, there may be 100 pages that the author wrote but didn't publish. The point wasn't to share all of one's work, but to do a substantial amount of work and also to share work that can garner good feedback.

Being prolific isn't the same thing as doing a lot of repetitions. "Prolific" refers to a quantity of creative works. The weightlifting and musician examples aren't apt, any more than saying "don't be a prolific author because there's a high risk you'll slouch in your computer chair when you're doing all that writing." Ergonomics are orthogonal to exercising one's creativity.

Re: Be prolific

#69

Post by jlokier »

meheleventyone wrote: post #36
saberdancer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an anecdote which could be completely fabricated, I'd expect it is since the source seems to be a book where it is mentioned as story with no names. If anyone has some kind of study or more concrete example, I'd love to hear about it.

It should be obvious to most people that it's trivially true that practice helps you improve skills that require manual dexterity. I also think it's highly likely the anecdote is supposed to be illustrative rather than literal. IMO it's meant to be advice to students not to fret about how perfect their work is and that with time it will improve. It's just been distorted by the "one quick hack" culture of self improve…

> highly likely the anecdote is supposed to be illustrative rather than literal

If it is a made up anecdote, that would be rather misleading under a headline that says "science-backed".

The article argues that it's supported by data that focus on quantity leads to better quality than focus on quantity.

It doesn't argue that it's merely a compelling idea that we should try for ourselves.

Re: Be prolific

#70

Post by chrisweekly »

ck425 wrote: post #67
chrisweekly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I agree w your point. As for guitar playing plateaus, I highly recommend embracing alternate tunings as a shortcut / forcing function for adopting "beginner's mind", re-engaging your ear and your curiosity, and discovering new peaks to ascend. A few of my favorites: - DADGAD (Black Mountain Side) - DADF#AD (Little Martha) - DGDGBE (Open G6) - CACGCE (Bron Yr Aur) - CGCGCD (Rain Song)

I've used EBEEBE before and it's a gorgeous tuning, using for the song 'Gold' from the film/musical Once. Also the variation EADGBF# is super interesting with open cords, though you do have to be very careful with tuning the top E string that high, easy to snap if you're not careful.

Thanks!! Looking fwd to playing w this one for the 1st time tonight! :)

I remember that film; Glen Hansard's absurdly beat-up guitar (with effectively a second, larger soundhole) even featured in Fretboard Journal. "Falling Slowly" is the song that got all the attention (which IMHO it deserved; gorgeous song and harmonies) but I'll go dig up "Gold" and give it a listen... thanks again! :)

Post reply on HN