5 ms·

Get specific (2008)

102 points by duck 9y ago

d--b 9y ago
Well, it is sort of obvious that you need to get specific at some point to get anything done. The problem is we tend to resist the work needed to get specific, because: 1. it kills the dream. Dreaming about being a successful actor is nice. Getting specific about working as a waiter while taking acting classes for years is not exactly the fun part. Yes, maybe it's stupid to dream about stuff that won't happen ever, but it's completely human, and it should be totally fine. 2. sometimes it's good not to dive into specifics too early. You may have your goals wrong, or you may have multiple specific ways to get there, but need to carefully mature your thoughts about the problem so that you take the right decision. To take the same example as the article: if a musician comes to you saying: "I need a booking agent", well perhaps the first question to ask is "why?" rather than "who?".
abhiminator 9y ago
Interesting article. As the saying goes, the first step is always the hardest; and from my personal experience, I can attest that writing (especially through the old school 'pen and paper' way [0]) can serve as a very effective tool in de-cluttering the mental muddle that comes with formulating anything new. Think of writing as an extension of the brain's working memory -- by offloading cognitively taxing task of keeping track of nitty-gritty details of task at hand, the prefrontal cortex gets a bigger pie of the mental energy -- which helps one to focus on the stuff that actually matters. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/science/researching-the-brain-of-writers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/science/researching-the-b...
sivers 9y ago
No need for the (2008) thing in the title. This is actually a new article from February 2018. I had an old post there, but completely re-wrote it last week, keeping only the title and URL. Thought you guys might like a programming example that I edited out of the article: Back in 2004, I wanted to be a great Ruby programmer. I had dabbled, but wanted to accelerate my learning to the expert level. So I called Tony Robbins' company, and signed up for a personal coach. We had a phone call once per week, to help me stay on track achieve my goals. On the very first call, when I said I wanted to be a great Ruby programmer, he asked, “What does that look like? How will you know you're great?” Whoa. Hmm. I had never actually defined it. He was waiting for an answer, so I picked something. I said, “If I have read all of these six Ruby books, completed all of the exercises in them, and memorized what I've learned.” He said, “How many chapters in all?” So he had me go add up the total numbers of chapters across all six books. Then he had me predict how many chapters I could do per week. I said 6. Then he said, “OK so now you've got your plan. One chapter per day, six days per week, including doing the exercises, saving what you've learned in flash cards and quizzing yourself later, and in 12 weeks you'll be a great Ruby programmer, by this definition. If by then you don't feel great, we'll pick a new goal.” And just like that - a year of vague procrastination was now a specific list of goals to be achieved each day. It helped me more than anything. It's tough to talk about because it sounds so simple, but man, it's effective!
- duck 9y ago
  Loved this advise and thanks for the example! And I'm guessing a mod added that year as I didn't when I posted it... but it is too late for me to edit it.
- ronilan 9y ago
  I like the premise but... Football analogy: run your playbook, keep moving the chains. This works for most games, but sometimes QB needs a read option. Music analogy: if you got all the notes down how will you play the jazz? ;) Ps - thanks for writing through the years and especially for this: https://sivers.org/kimo https://sivers.org/kimo
  - sivers 9y ago
    Thanks Ron!
- arry 9y ago
  Did you feel great? Did you become a great Ruby programmer?
  - sivers 9y ago
    Yes and yes, I think. Now I think it’s better to describe it as “fluent” instead of “great”, but yeah this approach made me completely fluent in Ruby.
    - sivers 9y ago
      P.S. Using Anki spaced repetition flash cards helped a lot : https://sivers.org/srs https://sivers.org/srs
- devgutt 9y ago
  I did this when I set myself to learn cell structure. It was years since high scholl biology, but I was motivated to study. I planned my studies with a textbook, chapters, sections, days, etc. I started and 2 weeks in I realized that I would need a better chemistry foundation. My whole plan was broken and I needed to start another one with the new information. The thing is, it is good to have goals, but it is almost impossible to foresee what you actually need to do in order to accomplish what you want early on. And I think that this is true for anything.
0xCMP 9y ago
I think something that usually keeps me from doing this is that I don't want to accidentally set the wrong specific goal and make myself go off in a tangent.
- EmilStenstrom 9y ago
  In practice, my projects more often fail because I don’t do anything, than me going off in the wrong direction.
Kuiper 9y ago
The example Derek uses in this post about looking for a booking agent reminds me of an anecdote he told several years ago (as I recall, it was part of a speech or a Q&A he did at Berklee College of Music) about how he went about reverse engineering the process for getting into Rolling Stone -- he phoned Rolling Stone masquerading as someone working for a label trying to find a new publicist, and asked if they had any recommendations. From this he got a list of publicists that Rolling Stone liked, which were the publicists who were most likely to be capable of getting him written up in Rolling Stone. I actually put a version of this into practice several years ago when I was a looking at how to break into the world of trade publishing -- I had a manuscript for a fantasy novel, and decided my ideal outcome was to get published by Tor (a name that appeared on the spine of many of my favorite fantasy novels growing up). I went to the bookstore and compiled a list of books that had Tor's name on the spine, then went through the books and identified the ones that were most similar to my own manuscript in terms of subject matter/tone, length, and target demographic. Then I opened each book, flipped to the "acknowledgments" section, where most authors take the time to thank their agent. This game me a list of agents who A) represented books similar to mine, and B) had successfully sold books to Tor. I think the lesson is that if you don't know the specific way forward, it's often as simple as starting at the goal and working your way backward -- want to know which publicists are on good terms with Rolling Stone? Ask Rolling Stone. Want to find out which agents have sold books to a specific publisher? Grab some books by that publisher and open them up.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >I think the lesson is that if you don't know the specific way forward, it's often as simple as starting at the goal and working your way backward This is kind of how behavior and test driven development works too.
- sivers 9y ago
  Great example, reading the acknowledgements. The Rolling Stone story is here at “Call the destination, and ask for directions” : https://sivers.org/destdir https://sivers.org/destdir
- aidenn0 9y ago

Get specific (2008)

102 points by duck 9y ago

d--b 9y ago

Well, it is sort of obvious that you need to get specific at some point to get anything done. The problem is we tend to resist the work needed to get specific, because: 1. it kills the dream. Dreaming about being a successful actor is nice. Getting specific about working as a waiter while taking acting classes for years is not exactly the fun part. Yes, maybe it's stupid to dream about stuff that won't happen ever, but it's completely human, and it should be totally fine. 2. sometimes it's good not to dive into specifics too early. You may have your goals wrong, or you may have multiple specific ways to get there, but need to carefully mature your thoughts about the problem so that you take the right decision. To take the same example as the article: if a musician comes to you saying: "I need a booking agent", well perhaps the first question to ask is "why?" rather than "who?".

abhiminator 9y ago

Interesting article. As the saying goes, the first step is always the hardest; and from my personal experience, I can attest that writing (especially through the old school 'pen and paper' way [0]) can serve as a very effective tool in de-cluttering the mental muddle that comes with formulating anything new. Think of writing as an extension of the brain's working memory -- by offloading cognitively taxing task of keeping track of nitty-gritty details of task at hand, the prefrontal cortex gets a bigger pie of the mental energy -- which helps one to focus on the stuff that actually matters. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/science/researching-the-brain-of-writers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/science/researching-the-b...

sivers 9y ago

No need for the (2008) thing in the title. This is actually a new article from February 2018. I had an old post there, but completely re-wrote it last week, keeping only the title and URL. Thought you guys might like a programming example that I edited out of the article: Back in 2004, I wanted to be a great Ruby programmer. I had dabbled, but wanted to accelerate my learning to the expert level. So I called Tony Robbins' company, and signed up for a personal coach. We had a phone call once per week, to help me stay on track achieve my goals. On the very first call, when I said I wanted to be a great Ruby programmer, he asked, “What does that look like? How will you know you're great?” Whoa. Hmm. I had never actually defined it. He was waiting for an answer, so I picked something. I said, “If I have read all of these six Ruby books, completed all of the exercises in them, and memorized what I've learned.” He said, “How many chapters in all?” So he had me go add up the total numbers of chapters across all six books. Then he had me predict how many chapters I could do per week. I said 6. Then he said, “OK so now you've got your plan. One chapter per day, six days per week, including doing the exercises, saving what you've learned in flash cards and quizzing yourself later, and in 12 weeks you'll be a great Ruby programmer, by this definition. If by then you don't feel great, we'll pick a new goal.” And just like that - a year of vague procrastination was now a specific list of goals to be achieved each day. It helped me more than anything. It's tough to talk about because it sounds so simple, but man, it's effective!

duck 9y ago
Loved this advise and thanks for the example! And I'm guessing a mod added that year as I didn't when I posted it... but it is too late for me to edit it.
ronilan 9y ago
I like the premise but... Football analogy: run your playbook, keep moving the chains. This works for most games, but sometimes QB needs a read option. Music analogy: if you got all the notes down how will you play the jazz? ;) Ps - thanks for writing through the years and especially for this: https://sivers.org/kimo https://sivers.org/kimo
- sivers 9y ago
  Thanks Ron!
arry 9y ago
Did you feel great? Did you become a great Ruby programmer?
- sivers 9y ago
  Yes and yes, I think. Now I think it’s better to describe it as “fluent” instead of “great”, but yeah this approach made me completely fluent in Ruby.
  - sivers 9y ago
    P.S. Using Anki spaced repetition flash cards helped a lot : https://sivers.org/srs https://sivers.org/srs
devgutt 9y ago
I did this when I set myself to learn cell structure. It was years since high scholl biology, but I was motivated to study. I planned my studies with a textbook, chapters, sections, days, etc. I started and 2 weeks in I realized that I would need a better chemistry foundation. My whole plan was broken and I needed to start another one with the new information. The thing is, it is good to have goals, but it is almost impossible to foresee what you actually need to do in order to accomplish what you want early on. And I think that this is true for anything.

0xCMP 9y ago

I think something that usually keeps me from doing this is that I don't want to accidentally set the wrong specific goal and make myself go off in a tangent.

EmilStenstrom 9y ago
In practice, my projects more often fail because I don’t do anything, than me going off in the wrong direction.

Kuiper 9y ago

The example Derek uses in this post about looking for a booking agent reminds me of an anecdote he told several years ago (as I recall, it was part of a speech or a Q&A he did at Berklee College of Music) about how he went about reverse engineering the process for getting into Rolling Stone -- he phoned Rolling Stone masquerading as someone working for a label trying to find a new publicist, and asked if they had any recommendations. From this he got a list of publicists that Rolling Stone liked, which were the publicists who were most likely to be capable of getting him written up in Rolling Stone. I actually put a version of this into practice several years ago when I was a looking at how to break into the world of trade publishing -- I had a manuscript for a fantasy novel, and decided my ideal outcome was to get published by Tor (a name that appeared on the spine of many of my favorite fantasy novels growing up). I went to the bookstore and compiled a list of books that had Tor's name on the spine, then went through the books and identified the ones that were most similar to my own manuscript in terms of subject matter/tone, length, and target demographic. Then I opened each book, flipped to the "acknowledgments" section, where most authors take the time to thank their agent. This game me a list of agents who A) represented books similar to mine, and B) had successfully sold books to Tor. I think the lesson is that if you don't know the specific way forward, it's often as simple as starting at the goal and working your way backward -- want to know which publicists are on good terms with Rolling Stone? Ask Rolling Stone. Want to find out which agents have sold books to a specific publisher? Grab some books by that publisher and open them up.

crdoconnor 9y ago
>I think the lesson is that if you don't know the specific way forward, it's often as simple as starting at the goal and working your way backward This is kind of how behavior and test driven development works too.
sivers 9y ago
Great example, reading the acknowledgements. The Rolling Stone story is here at “Call the destination, and ask for directions” : https://sivers.org/destdir https://sivers.org/destdir
aidenn0 9y ago