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e.g I work out every day from 7 to 8 pm. I may be sounding less busy. But if the routine is the same, but I decide to go to the gym at random schedule, I will be more unorganized, will look busier, might be less productive, and yes I'm doing something wrong.
For example, working stupidly hard in a startup where you're stake/potential upside is either very limited or unlikely is working hard for other people.
Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule? This reminds me of some other advice I remember reading: No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity, and nearly all success stories to the contrary are missing key facts. ie Myth: Michael Jordan…
Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard. But crucially, at the peak of the game, both talent and hard work are just the cost of entry. The rest is luck and opportunity. For example: Phelps won the Olympics by a knuckle . That’s a difference so subtle it’s down to chaotic systems and butterfly wings for that particular race. Overall everyone at that level is hugely talented and incredibly hardworking
And even that's got a certain element of opportunity in terms of the era you were born in. Tons of good athletes could have revolutionised their fields had they been born a few decades/centuries earlier. See British tennis pros, with the likes of Henman and Murray having had the potential to win a lot more grand slams in an era with worse rivals.
Still, other fields are a lot more opportunity and luck based. A lot of successful businesspeople got there by being well connected or simply having the right idea at the right time. Someone who had the foresight/luck to get into the vaping industry or bitcoin or whatever at the right time could become a millionaire/billionaire without any real talent. There are many YouTubers who can barely edit a video that got hundreds of thousands or milllions of subscribers via luck and timing. There are programmers who don't know what a switch statement here is how classes/OOP works who make thousands a month from game development on Patreon.
In many cases, talent and hard work sadly matters less than finding the right audience to appeal to, being good at marketing/sales and being able to network well/have good connections.
Good job the violinist works in the music industry not the software industry, or he might find after all his sessions of focused deliberate practice that now no-one wants to hear the violin anymore, and he must in future focus his efforts on the upcoming disciplines of both xylophone and clarinet.
If you can't write down Freygish scale, including the dominant fifth, you needn't even dare thinking about playing there.
Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule? This reminds me of some other advice I remember reading: No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity, and nearly all success stories to the contrary are missing key facts. ie Myth: Michael Jordan…
That's a facile rhetorical question. You could similarly ask, "How do we know that good food and exercise lead to healthy human beings, rather than that already-healthy human beings have access to good food and exercise?" The answer, of course, would be research. All the students were working the same amount. Their work habits were different.
Furthermore, although I can understand why success might lead to more relaxation (for instance, by making students feel less stressed about their future prospects), I don't see how it would lead to more discipline or a focus on deliberate practice. Successful people tend to do the same things they've always done, for the obvious reason that they are successful doing it. If they were undisciplined and successful, what motivation would they have for becoming disciplined?
In addition to the data and the research (and Newport has illuminated many more results than this one), two anecdotes come to mind. The first is from The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, where he brings forward some examples:
> [Consider] Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s confidential adviser in World War II. A dying, indeed almost a dead man for whom every step was torment, he could only work a few hours every other day or so. This forced him to cut out everything but truly vital matters. He did not lose effectiveness thereby; on the contrary, he became, as Churchill called him once, “Lord Heart of the Matter” and accomplished more than anyone else in wartime Washington.
The second is from my personal life. Having children forced me to concentrate my efforts and create a much more disciplined work life. I'm more successful and focused than ever. Although this is just an anecdote, this phenomenon is commonly reported by other people in demanding technical or executive roles.
I think as usual Cal raises important points. But this feels a bit like Malcom Gladwell's proposals were he goes out looking for data that aligns with his initial conjecture. As a man of science, I am sure Cal appreciates the weakness of a study with self reported journals, collected at a single site, in a single problem domain (Violin players). My point is that it's ok to propose this and clarify it is your opinion…
Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule? This reminds me of some other advice I remember reading: No level of hard work or organization will substitute for talent and opportunity, and nearly all success stories to the contrary are missing key facts. ie Myth: Michael Jordan…
> Seems like a bit of a tail wagging the dog situation. How do we know the more relaxed/organized schedule leads to success, and not that success leads to a more relaxed/organized schedule? That's a facile rhetorical question. You could similarly ask, "How do we know that good food and exercise lead to healthy human beings, rather than that already-healthy human beings have access to good food and exercise?" The answ…
The proper research here would have been to make the student change their habit and see if they became better musicians as a result. This article isn't research, it's writing down a fact and then trying to extract conclusions when none can be made.