Everything Is a Practice
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Everything Is a Practice
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Re: Everything Is a Practice
#2I really liked this -- it's so true about my road to programming (pseudo-) expertise. Almost everything I've been paid to do, I first did on a hobby level, just messing around with my own projects and ideas.
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#3Something 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 older than that, I can mentally afford to allocate a little bit of time over the next six months toward achieving a goal like improving my typing, or getting better at vocal onsets. Being better at something a year or two from now feels very worthwhile, and I know I'll be at that future me fairly quickly.
It would have been better for me, of course, to have gained this ability back when I had lots of time at my disposal. But I can still have an impact because I can be the drop of water shaping the stone over time.
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#4Something 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 say that its the exact same situation for me. Except by being older, I'm only 25 now. My suspicion is that this effect to due to my prefrontal cortex maturing? Because I'm much more introspective and meticulous now when it comes to learning, thinking, feeling etc.
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#5> There is no finish line. There is no winning, no losing.
There is a finish line, but I think the goal post moves over and over and over again. Historically, every time I set a goal, I would think to myself, "once I do/get/achieve X, I'll be happy." In retrospective, I care less about the goal and find myself most joyful throughout the process of achieving said goal.
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#6I've become a 'handyman' in the way that this article alludes to. A big problem that I come across when saying "yes" to every problem that peaks my curiosity is that Ive become mentally drained.
I end up spending a lot of time and energy hacking away at problems. The problem is, it seems like my mind isn't resilient enough to keep up with it. After a certain point there comes an onset of fatigue, frustration, and just general feelings of discomfort that drones on in the back of my conscious.
I guess this is to be expected. The muscles of my mind have been overexerted and need rest. A remedy to this is to "go with the flow" of my mood/feelings. Which sometimes contradicts my undying feeling of curiosity. It becomes a balancing act between the two.
I dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#7My perspective on programming shifted heavily when I adopted this idea for myself. Fully accepting the idea that there is no end to my learning and growth freed my mind so much and has actually made it easier to learn and grow.
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#8I used to play pool a fair amount and it reminds me of a quote an older player shared with me one time: "Every shot is a practice shot". His point was that every time you shot you were building up either good or bad habits, so every time you shoot you were to shoot the same way. Don't ever just "fuck around" because that contributes to bad habits or at least not building good habits.
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#9I used to play pool a fair amount and it reminds me of a quote an older player shared with me one time: "Every shot is a practice shot". His point was that every time you shot you were building up either good or bad habits, so every time you shoot you were to shoot the same way. Don't ever just "fuck around" because that contributes to bad habits or at least not building good habits.
Pool should be mandatory part of Y Combinator. Really teaches you that ideas are worth jack all, and solid reliable execution wins the game every time
Re: Everything Is a Practice
#10Something 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.