4 ms·

I have heard this, but as cute as the story is, I can’t find evidence it is true.

by rileymat2 7y ago

Swizec 7y ago
It’s not a factual story, it’s a parable.
- rileymat2 7y ago
  After I typed that I worried it would be misinterpreted. Not true as in a something that happened, but true as in the underlying concept. Gladwell talks about hours of practice, but it has to be conscious practice. But this parable has always been strange to me because if your target is quantity, it seems errors, in that context, are things that slow you down in production not quality issues. You will learn to be fast, not good.
  - barrkel 7y ago
    Deliberate practice is definitely required to improve beyond basic proficiency, but mere practice is what gets you to proficiency. Mistakes will be reduced, but technique may be imperfect.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    In Spain, around 1600 and the height of the Spanish empire, there were two particularly well known writers. One was Cervantes (Don Quixote); the other Lope de Vega ("the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature" [0]). It makes an interesting case study for this sort of thing. Both were prolific; but Don Quixote is clearly the greatest work in the Spanish corpus despite Lope having vastly more written. But to some degree both authors are remembered. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega
  - Swizec 7y ago
    I think the underlying mechanism is feedback (even your own). The more times you try, see the result, and adjust, the better you’ll get. You need to either have good taste yourself or an arbiter who can tell you where you went wrong. Of course at some point you reach a skill level where this no longer works. You still need as many cycles as you can get, but the cycles get longer because it just takes time to do the bigger and better things you can do now.
- michaelbrave 7y ago
  I want to say it was based on a true story about photographers, unsure why it was changed into a parable instead.
aaronbrethorst 7y ago
The story is from Art and Fear, if memory serves. https://sivers.org/book/ArtAndFear https://sivers.org/book/ArtAndFear

I have heard this, but as cute as the story is, I can’t find evidence it is true.

Swizec 7y ago

It’s not a factual story, it’s a parable.

rileymat2 7y ago
After I typed that I worried it would be misinterpreted. Not true as in a something that happened, but true as in the underlying concept. Gladwell talks about hours of practice, but it has to be conscious practice. But this parable has always been strange to me because if your target is quantity, it seems errors, in that context, are things that slow you down in production not quality issues. You will learn to be fast, not good.
- barrkel 7y ago
  Deliberate practice is definitely required to improve beyond basic proficiency, but mere practice is what gets you to proficiency. Mistakes will be reduced, but technique may be imperfect.
- roenxi 7y ago
  In Spain, around 1600 and the height of the Spanish empire, there were two particularly well known writers. One was Cervantes (Don Quixote); the other Lope de Vega ("the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature" [0]). It makes an interesting case study for this sort of thing. Both were prolific; but Don Quixote is clearly the greatest work in the Spanish corpus despite Lope having vastly more written. But to some degree both authors are remembered. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega
- Swizec 7y ago
  I think the underlying mechanism is feedback (even your own). The more times you try, see the result, and adjust, the better you’ll get. You need to either have good taste yourself or an arbiter who can tell you where you went wrong. Of course at some point you reach a skill level where this no longer works. You still need as many cycles as you can get, but the cycles get longer because it just takes time to do the bigger and better things you can do now.
michaelbrave 7y ago
I want to say it was based on a true story about photographers, unsure why it was changed into a parable instead.

aaronbrethorst 7y ago

The story is from Art and Fear, if memory serves. https://sivers.org/book/ArtAndFear https://sivers.org/book/ArtAndFear