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Maybe your fallen stars were secretly using grit before. Working harder than necessary ahead of when it’s needed seems questionable. yagni .

wenc 8y ago
Not sure about that. The high school stars in my example were the effortlessly smart sort (high IQ, crammed before exams). But to your other point about working hard only when it's needed, there is a class of skills (so called "bicycle skills" [1]) that have to be learned in advance, and cannot be picked up on the fly. Mastering those skills early in life can lead to compound interest payoffs later on. So I don't agree with YAGNI as a general rule. Furthermore, even if the material you learn isn't going to be useful, it doesn't mean that the process of learning them is necessarily wasted. On the contrary, the process of acquiring mastery itself can pay dividends in the form of meta-skills. Take learning to play the piano for instance. The blogger "Ask a Korean" has this to say: [2] "The point of learning the piano is NOT about acquiring the skill of playing the piano so that the student can earn a living as a pianist. It is about building the character of the person. Here is the thing about character -- you can't build it by explicitly setting out to build it. Character is not a skill like tying your shoelaces. If it must be put in terms of "skill", character is a "meta-skill" -- a foundational human skill that is necessary to perfect any number of mechanical skills. And the only way to develop this meta-skill is to develop at least one highly sophisticated mechanical skill, such that the student may acquire the meta-skill in the course of building the mechanical skill." [1] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/01/bicycle-skills/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/01/bicycle-skills/ [2] http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/05/confucianism-and-korea-part-v-what-can.html http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/05/confucianism-and-kore...

wenc 8y ago

Not sure about that. The high school stars in my example were the effortlessly smart sort (high IQ, crammed before exams). But to your other point about working hard only when it's needed, there is a class of skills (so called "bicycle skills" [1]) that have to be learned in advance, and cannot be picked up on the fly. Mastering those skills early in life can lead to compound interest payoffs later on. So I don't agree with YAGNI as a general rule. Furthermore, even if the material you learn isn't going to be useful, it doesn't mean that the process of learning them is necessarily wasted. On the contrary, the process of acquiring mastery itself can pay dividends in the form of meta-skills. Take learning to play the piano for instance. The blogger "Ask a Korean" has this to say: [2] "The point of learning the piano is NOT about acquiring the skill of playing the piano so that the student can earn a living as a pianist. It is about building the character of the person. Here is the thing about character -- you can't build it by explicitly setting out to build it. Character is not a skill like tying your shoelaces. If it must be put in terms of "skill", character is a "meta-skill" -- a foundational human skill that is necessary to perfect any number of mechanical skills. And the only way to develop this meta-skill is to develop at least one highly sophisticated mechanical skill, such that the student may acquire the meta-skill in the course of building the mechanical skill." [1] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/01/bicycle-skills/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/01/bicycle-skills/ [2] http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/05/confucianism-and-korea-part-v-what-can.html http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/05/confucianism-and-kore...