3 ms·
This kind of advice is a double-edged sword. It does point you in the right direction but when you meditate shortly on the meaning of the words "quality" and "q
by cJ0th 11y ago
This kind of advice is a double-edged sword. It does point you in the right direction but when you meditate shortly on the meaning of the words "quality" and "quantity" I think you're likely to conclude that the thesis "The Key to Higher Quality is Higher Quantity" can imply almost anything.
For a long time I've been an opponent to this mantra and in a way I still am. This is because in my opinion a lot of people define "higher quantity" wrongly. Learning flash cards mindlessly all day will hardly help you become more fluent in a foreign language; preparing loads of meals or even the same meal very often doesn't help you become a chef if you aren't fully concentrated on what you're doing.
Lately I am of the opinion that you have to practice with a zen attitude, like it is described in "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind". And because of that I think the author of this article also gets it wrong when he says:
As Ira Glass so famously put it, the best way to refine your craft is to create a huge volume of work. Not to create the most perfect piece you can, but to create many pieces of work.
I guess what Mr. Glass hints at is that you shouldn't become paralyzed by being caught up in thoughts. That is: It is useless to think "Oh this needs to be perfect" or "Oh this needn't be perfect because some clever guy said so" because in that instance you've already lost concentration and you are not really stretching your skills. You certainly have to TRY your best every time. In other words: Strive for perfection but don't get distracted by having dualistic thoughts about your practice.
- iolothebard 11y agoThe Ira quote reminds me of my opinion on startups, fail early and fail often. Maybe you'll get lucky and one won't fail. Failure is all in how you define it though.
- EthanHeilman 11y agoPracticing is not the same thing as doing something many times. Refinement requires identifying failure and the causes of that failure. Fail fast is a great mantra, but the fast part requires understanding that you have failed and using that failure to understand how to succeed. People don't get great at chess by playing lots of chess, they get good by studying and learning techniques often with advice from a teacher.
- jholman 11y agoAnd yet the quantity-over-quality potters were not making any effort to identify the failure and the causes of that failure.
- gavazzy 11y agoExcept that flash cards DO improve language acquisition skills! http://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/ http://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/
- xiaoma 11y agoThey do and they don't. Flashcards and SRS are great for very discrete bits of information. They're a pretty good for things like getting a faster start with the most commonly used 500 nouns, remembering verb tables or memorizing Chinese characters. They're pretty bad for language acquisition in general, though. They chop the language into decontextualized bits. Time spent doing vocab flashcards is time not spent learning how words fit together. Time spent on sentence flashcards is time not spent reading books and absorbing cultural stories and background. tldr; use flashcards to drill the basic phonics / alphabet of a language and maybe the most common words at the beginning and then focus on extensive reading + listening and having conversations with actual people about what you're learning. I've recorded a video about this topic before: http://toshuo.com/2012/spaced-repetition-systems-explained-in-2-minutes/ http://toshuo.com/2012/spaced-repetition-systems-explained-i...
- volaski 11y agoMr. Miyagi wouldn't agree! Wax on wax off training turns Karate kid into a master martial artist. One neglected factor is you're most creative when you're engaging in extremely routine (read "boring") tasks, which means by preparing loads of meals you train your skills but also--with the right mindset--have plenty of opportunities to come up with creative ideas. The important part is "the right mindset". If you're just a lazy guy who does work just to get by and not care about creating something of "quality", then it won't help no matter how many years you do it. Karate kid became good because he was motivated to become good. Otherwise he would have ended up becoming just a damn good car washer.