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Everything Is a Practice

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Re: Everything Is a Practice

#61

Post by marssaxman »

dswalter wrote: post #3

Something about not being young anymore is that I am much more comfortable leveraging small changes consistently over time. When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge. I needed things to improve over the course of days or hours. (In this, I was terribly short-sighted). But now that I'm considerably ol…

For me the increased awareness of time has been a double-edged sword. More patience for slow progress and sustained practice, maybe; but there's also come a much greater awareness of the immense investment of time it takes to reach mastery, which leaves me feeling like it's usually not worth beginning at all.

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#62

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I really liked that!

This has been my experience.

I've done a lot of things, in my life. Taken a number of paths, but I've found designing end-user applications and device control programming to be most gratifying.

But one aspect of my Practice, is finishing stuff. It has to have an exit.

It's my Practice, and I do it every day.

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#63

Post by shironononon »

agree with this article very much. I came to the same conclusion after years of.. not programming .. but yoga.

My practice of yoga extended to everything else in my life and has helped me accept that I am a human be-ing. Every day in your human body will be different, new versions and push requests are happening RIGHT NOW to your favorite tools and repositories that you're not aware of so how can you possibly expect yourself to be an expert?

Release your labels and expectations to practice your art:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#64

Post by factsaresacred »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #59
xboxnolifes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The version of you that was a couch potato for four hours on a Saturday is less good than the version that went for a run, lifted weights, home-brewed beer, met someone for coffee, or whatever self-improvement you might have done. How so? I see many people assert this, but I've yet to see someone be able to articulate why (that isn't trivially refutable). Are we measuring by happiness? Contentment? External validat…

Individuals are free to choose their own evaluation metric for their lives, but it turns out that most fall into a relatively narrow band. Let's assume people have (at least some measure of) free will, because otherwise the question of "What should I do" is largely moot. Let's define life as a path through a space of nonfungible states. Our utility metric U(s,t) gives a utility value to experiencing a certain state (…

> it makes sense to evaluate states not just on their immediate utility, but on the utility of future states they make possible or exclude, and the states necessary to pass through to achieve them.

Great way to frame it. Somewhat similarly, I view it as path dependency: your current choices are constrained by previous choices, meaning the further you deviate from the person you wish to be the harder it is to turn things around if the future you so wishes to.

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#65

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

MrVandemar wrote: post #57
Starwatcher2001 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing something similar. I've decided at 62 to learn to play the keyboard and be able to read music. It's late in the day but I'm slowly getting there 30 minutes a day.

Never, ever, too late. Heard a story of an 80 year-old who said, "If I'd taken up violin when I was 60, I'd have been playing for 20 years by now." Anything you can do that brings you satifaction or exercises your brain and keeps it sharp is a great thing.

I met a woman who picked up painting after she retired. After a few years she got pretty good, and after a decade she got really good, and by the time I met her she was in her late 70s, happy as hell, and making more money painting than she ever did during her actual career as a teacher.

She was doing a lot more than 30 minutes per day, but it was pretty comforting for me to realize that nothing's really stopping most people from continuing to learn and grow deep into their twilight years if that's what they want to do.

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#66

Post by groby_b »

JohnFen wrote: post #54
bogrollben wrote: post #17

I'm at the point where I feel fed up with too much talk about self-improvement. It's ok to not be productive and just enjoy things. Enjoy relationships, the sunshine, even video games or something that is literally a waste of time. Maybe I got burned out by goal-setting and productivity talk. It also might be some remnants of some mild depression I had lately. I guess I just don't like feeling pressured to constantly…

> It's ok to not be productive and just enjoy things. It's not only OK, it's absolutely essential. > if you're not improving, you're less of a human being I don't think that's the message that you should take. Your value as a human being is independent of all that. However, I think there's an element of truth to "if you're not growing, you're dying."

Well, if you're growing, you're still dying. You're a human, not a cancer cell.

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#67

Post by kashunstva »

dswalter wrote: post #3

Something about not being young anymore is that I am much more comfortable leveraging small changes consistently over time. When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge. I needed things to improve over the course of days or hours. (In this, I was terribly short-sighted). But now that I'm considerably ol…

> When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge.

And this is probably true of most 16 y/o.

I work as a collaborative pianist, which means essentially “accompanist”; so I work with young musicians a lot. This transition to tolerating and embracing slow incremental work in service of a larger goal is what distinguishes those kids who are successful from those who get stuck. But it’s really a mindset that they can acquire at any point. Some are ready earlier than others.

I try to get the students I work with to adopt at least the habit of reflecting on their practice by writing down three things each day: Where did I put in honest effort? Where did I experience some resulting success? And where did I make some measurable progress? So E,S,P prompts. It’s based on the work of psychologist Nate Zinsser. The idea is to make visible the input and output of slow incremental effort.

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#68

Post by an_aparallel »

i gifted my old man a drum kit a few years ago. He was shocked, and surprised and flattered - but said "there's no band anymore, i cant play this!"

So - of i went - set it up...im into production so i thought "cool...i'll sample this every now and then"...turns out - futzing around on the kit - ended up with me selling it and replacing it with a top shelf kit, with top line cymbals...i play around 15 minutes twice/thrice a week....

i went from nothing - to - playing the tastiest funk grooves, with barely any effort...just savoring the fun while i was playing...literally no expectations...i wish more things were like that :)

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#69

Post by maskull »

Starwatcher2001 wrote: post #10
dswalter wrote: post #3

Something about not being young anymore is that I am much more comfortable leveraging small changes consistently over time. When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge. I needed things to improve over the course of days or hours. (In this, I was terribly short-sighted). But now that I'm considerably ol…

I'm doing something similar. I've decided at 62 to learn to play the keyboard and be able to read music. It's late in the day but I'm slowly getting there 30 minutes a day.

My library has a Great Courses piano course available through hoopla/kanopy. It's really well done!

Re: Everything Is a Practice

#70

Post by JohnFen »

Scalestein wrote: post #58
JohnFen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 25, this is a superpower. Even if you just practice a thing for 10 minutes a day, by the time you're in your 40s (which is about when life starts getting really good) you will be fantastic at it.

What makes your 40s so good? I'm approaching them and would love some more things to look forward to!

A million things. Of course, there's no hard date such that when you turn 40 then everything changes. It's just a rough age range.

I'll answer your question by repeating the most common things I've heard from others, not my own experience, in an attempt to reduce the error band by not having a sample size of 1.

By your 40s, you generally have at least a direction you're going. People tend to take you more seriously. You have a greater sense of what's actually important and what's not, and stop wasting energy getting as worked up by things that don't really matter. You are still young enough that you aren't yet battling many adverse effects of aging.

You also tend to be at your most physically attractive point. Your career path is likely to be established and less uncertain. Romantic partners tend to be more stable, so your love life brings more joy. Speaking of romantic partners... relationships are better because (as a friend of mine once put it) "sex isn't such a fucking emergency anymore". Your relationships tend to be more balanced. And so forth.

I think, really, it's an age where you have gained more perspective and are still young enough to use that to live a better life.

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