8 ms·

When you are young and inexperienced, you don't know the difficulty of a subject. So as long as each step you take to advance your skill is achievable, and the

When you are young and inexperienced, you don't know the difficulty of a subject. So as long as each step you take to advance your skill is achievable, and the feedback loop is good enough, you'll keep going. But as soon as you realize that you've only scratched maybe 1% of what is needed for mastery (when prior to that realization you felt like you were 90% there), it can be difficult to keep going. As you get older and more experienced you get exposed to many things that appear to be "easy" but you then find out how much work it is (after you've sunk a bunch of time and effort into it). After enough of this exposure you realize that any skill that isn't realized by a majority of the population takes an immense amount of dedication and opportunity cost. So after a while you tend to stick with what you already know (sunk cost). Of course your life satisfaction can improve with more skills you have, especially if they are skills that don't become too obsolete. For example being able to do some maintenance on your car (brake job, oil change, tire rotations, radiator flush...) can save money at a mechanic. And being able to take apart a sewer trap under a sink to clean out the hair clog is better than pouring a strong alkaline solution down the drain and hoping it works. So it is really important to learn enough life skills while you are young to help build up a health and satisfying life later.

Cribbin 6y ago
Well the counter-argument to that is: why do you need to achieve mastery? You can be happy with the slow progress you make along the way. You don't need to be Picasso to enjoy painting.
- Retric 6y ago
  Yea, the counter to mastery is the realization that you can get to a useful place in most areas with 100 hours or less of effort. It’s nowhere near enough time to become say a short order cook, but plenty of time to learn to make bacon and eggs for breakfast in whatever specific way you want it.
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    Learning when to stop at a satisfactory level is equally hard as learning when to floor it and push against some difficult goal. I think even 100 honest hours learning something will get you further than you probably need to go, e.g. basic home maintenance stuff that is just 1. find the right youtube video, 2. have the tools, 3. don't be a moron. god knows that my far beyond satisfactory level of dotfile / config tweaking has probably paid fewer dividends than I'd like to think...
    - unlaxedneurotic 6y ago
      Not being a moron is a skill that is getting harder to find everyday.
  - cheschire 6y ago
    Your first sentence stands well on its own. I suspect if you shadowed a short order cook for 2.5x 40 hour work weeks, you would be able to function as a short order cook yourself. The entire point of that job is to prepare food that takes a short time to deliver. This means lots of rote tasks which can be performed rapidly.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      Cook doesn’t only cook by the way. The fact that you can remember a recipe doesn’t mean you will be able to easily adapt to the lack of certain ingredients on the market and/or optimise the cost of the finished product.
- ehnto 6y ago
  Even Picasso was a jack of many trades. I am in no position to decide whether or not he was a master in every field by the end of his life, but I know for certain he was mediocre at all of them at some point.
  - alimw 6y ago
    You'd have to go back into his very early childhood to find a time when he couldn't paint.
    - nerdponx 6y ago
      I find this is true for the handful of multi-talented people I know in my personal life. They truly have innate talent/ability in at least one area. Sometimes they have a remarkable ability to learn new things quicker than most people, other times they have to work hard for everything else, but they always have their natural talent to fall back on, in times of duress or limited energy. I'd be interested to see some research in this area.
      - rland 6y ago
        I'm not sure. I know a lot of seemingly "talented" people. How do they pick up a new instrument in 2-3 months? Or be able to balance on a skateboard after just a little while? Or get kills better than me with only 200 CS GO hours clocked? The answer is always that they spent a lot of focused time earlier in life, or that they spend a lot of time that I wasn't aware of -- like I find out that they have 2500 hours in CS:S on another account... yeah that makes a lot more sense. I don't believe innate talent exists. Other than that some people are mentally quicker, or have faster reflexes, or are physically more capable -- "general" things. But talent exists only from both hard work and time, which for many things can start at age 2 or 3.
        ImprobableTruth 6y ago
        >I don't believe innate talent exists. Other than that some people are mentally quicker, or have faster reflexes, or are physically more capable -- "general" things I don't understand how this distinction is supposed to work. If someone has exactly the 'general natural inclinations' that fit to a certain activity, it seems asinine to not call them talented in it. Sure, they won't be skilled in it unless they actually put in the work, but they'll comparatively have an easier time with it.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  I don't think most people strive for mastery. But many things just aren't that fun or satisfying if you don't at least achieve competence. A lot of hobbies, crafts, and activities really only start to become fun (rather than "rewarding but tiring") when you start to get good at them, because you have to think/work less hard to achieve basic satisfying outcomes.
  - tmh88j 6y ago
    >I don't think most people strive for mastery. But many things just aren't that fun or satisfying if you don't at least achieve competence. Learning how to play the guitar was frustrating for me, but my stubbornness to be able to play the music I listened to is what kept me going. I'm constantly listening to music and I knew I would enjoy it in the long run so I'm glad I stuck with it, but man, the first hundred hours or so of learning honestly wasn't enjoyable to me. I love it now but it felt like a chore at the time.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      I always laugh when people remark that some dancer "makes it look easy". Because it is easy when you've trained enough. And the more you train at it, the funner it gets.
      - mudita 6y ago
        What style of dance do you mean? I think this "making it look easy" is probably most relevant for ballet, where high level dancers still train very "basic" movements or use a lot of muscular effort to create the illusion of lightness etc.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        Pretty much any style that has prescribed technique to it (not just random movements). Partnership dancing comes to mind. It takes years of training to make it look effortless, and it is (for the dancers). Even the best regularly go over the basics again and again.
hndudette2 6y ago
Scott Adams has a way of thinking about this that he casts as "Systems vs Goals", where he advocates developing a talent stack of skills that work well together towards unspecified, undefined future goals. He says his talent stack is comedian+cartoonist, he's not amazing at either individual skill but he's one of the best at the combination which allowed him to create Dilbert. I got value from this way of thinking but I also think specific goals are necessary (e.g. as a startup founder targeting a specific market, product or vision) and that there are some domains that demand you to be the best in a single talent vertical due to a winner take all tendency (e.g. athelete, musician, professional gambler - although in any of these we can still distinguish systems & talent stacks from goals).
- paulpauper 6y ago
  This is good advice. the hard part is finding the skills you can intersect
  - hndudette2 6y ago
    I think Adam's approach is mostly lacking deliberation, it's only after the fact that the synergy is realized but it's hard to intentionally engineer it. I can definitely see the validity in the other school of thought though; i.e. that we should deliberately seek out synergistic talent verticals. I know this is Conor Mcgregor's approach, he's very much systems over goals (in Adam's vein, and explicitly so) but is deliberate about the specific talent stack he's working towards. Ironically it is all done towards a specific goal (to be the best fighter) although the path towards that goal is underspecified. Here's a very common talent stack here on HN that works pretty well: math + CS + data science + one domain (e.g. finance or biology).
    - stevesimmons 6y ago
      > Here's a very common talent stack here on HN that works pretty well: math + CS + data science + one domain (e.g. finance or biology). Nice formulation! The domain expertise is key, I think. And often underappreciated by people at the start of their career.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mjklin 6y ago
“The passionate state of mind is often indicative of a lack of skill, talent or power. Moreover, passionate intensity can serve as a substitute for the confidence born of proficiency and the possession of power. A workingman sure of his skill goes leisurely about his job, and accomplishes much though he works as if at play. On the other hand, the workingman who is without confidence attacks his work as if he were saving the world, and he must do so if he is to get anything done.” - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
- njanirudh 6y ago
  I Disagree with this passionately. Some people are really passionate about posting their subject, knowledge forward. This inherently requires passion to overcome the difficulties that comes with working in the cutting edge.
dan-robertson 6y ago
There’s an opposite view argued here: https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ with the claim that it isn’t that hard to get to 95%ile of many activities but that this level of skill is still useful.
- borroka 6y ago
  It misses an important qualifier: 95% among who and for which activity? It is relatively easy to get to 95% for a skill/activity few care about. But try to become 95%ile in like baseball among the Texas 13-17 years old cohort and the music changes. I mean, I agree you can get to the top 5% in your neighborhood, but does it matter to any soul?
  - dan-robertson 6y ago
    That is literally specified in the first or second paragraph
agumonkey 6y ago
I think adults become seekers of efficient learning. You know 1) time is limited 2) the map is huge 3) the topic might be totally unknown You have to devise ways to explore neither too fast nor too slow.
singhrac 6y ago
This comment really resonated with a feeling I’ve had over the past few years. When I was younger, especially at the beginning of college, I loved to build things by programming. I learned new languages, new patterns, wrote an OS, a website with all the front end complexity, etc. I could hack something on the weekend outside of schoolwork. For a few years it has felt so difficult to start something - perhaps a curse of “experience” is that you see the failure modes ahead of time. I think I’m overall more efficient, but my motivation to just strike out there and try something has been wrung out of me. Lately I’ve been trying to trick myself into working through that feeling and learning on the side. A desire to “finish” (i.e. write up as a blog post, publish software, send to a friend) is what gets me to overcome this bias to inaction. But it still shocks me how much more creative energy I had as an 18 year old than I do now.
- Doxin 6y ago
  My trick for avoiding that feeling is to intentionally set out to do projects in a terrible way, just to see what that'd be like. So for example I might write a project all in a single file, or entirely without classes, or with wildly too many classes, or with weird fp-trickery for no reason. There's a million weird ways to write a project badly, and in practice you'll discover it's almost never a real hindrance to progress compared to best practices.
dehrmann 6y ago
I've also heard it argued that youth still don't know what's impossible, so from time to time, they approach a problem that's deemed "impossible" from a different angle and find a solution.
swiley 6y ago
I strongly believe the key to learning new complex skills is to just enjoy the journey and recognize that you're going to be a beginner for years.

Cribbin 6y ago

Well the counter-argument to that is: why do you need to achieve mastery? You can be happy with the slow progress you make along the way. You don't need to be Picasso to enjoy painting.

Retric 6y ago
Yea, the counter to mastery is the realization that you can get to a useful place in most areas with 100 hours or less of effort. It’s nowhere near enough time to become say a short order cook, but plenty of time to learn to make bacon and eggs for breakfast in whatever specific way you want it.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  Learning when to stop at a satisfactory level is equally hard as learning when to floor it and push against some difficult goal. I think even 100 honest hours learning something will get you further than you probably need to go, e.g. basic home maintenance stuff that is just 1. find the right youtube video, 2. have the tools, 3. don't be a moron. god knows that my far beyond satisfactory level of dotfile / config tweaking has probably paid fewer dividends than I'd like to think...
  - unlaxedneurotic 6y ago
    Not being a moron is a skill that is getting harder to find everyday.
- cheschire 6y ago
  Your first sentence stands well on its own. I suspect if you shadowed a short order cook for 2.5x 40 hour work weeks, you would be able to function as a short order cook yourself. The entire point of that job is to prepare food that takes a short time to deliver. This means lots of rote tasks which can be performed rapidly.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Cook doesn’t only cook by the way. The fact that you can remember a recipe doesn’t mean you will be able to easily adapt to the lack of certain ingredients on the market and/or optimise the cost of the finished product.
ehnto 6y ago
Even Picasso was a jack of many trades. I am in no position to decide whether or not he was a master in every field by the end of his life, but I know for certain he was mediocre at all of them at some point.
- alimw 6y ago
  You'd have to go back into his very early childhood to find a time when he couldn't paint.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    I find this is true for the handful of multi-talented people I know in my personal life. They truly have innate talent/ability in at least one area. Sometimes they have a remarkable ability to learn new things quicker than most people, other times they have to work hard for everything else, but they always have their natural talent to fall back on, in times of duress or limited energy. I'd be interested to see some research in this area.
    - rland 6y ago
      I'm not sure. I know a lot of seemingly "talented" people. How do they pick up a new instrument in 2-3 months? Or be able to balance on a skateboard after just a little while? Or get kills better than me with only 200 CS GO hours clocked? The answer is always that they spent a lot of focused time earlier in life, or that they spend a lot of time that I wasn't aware of -- like I find out that they have 2500 hours in CS:S on another account... yeah that makes a lot more sense. I don't believe innate talent exists. Other than that some people are mentally quicker, or have faster reflexes, or are physically more capable -- "general" things. But talent exists only from both hard work and time, which for many things can start at age 2 or 3.
      - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
        >I don't believe innate talent exists. Other than that some people are mentally quicker, or have faster reflexes, or are physically more capable -- "general" things I don't understand how this distinction is supposed to work. If someone has exactly the 'general natural inclinations' that fit to a certain activity, it seems asinine to not call them talented in it. Sure, they won't be skilled in it unless they actually put in the work, but they'll comparatively have an easier time with it.
nerdponx 6y ago
I don't think most people strive for mastery. But many things just aren't that fun or satisfying if you don't at least achieve competence. A lot of hobbies, crafts, and activities really only start to become fun (rather than "rewarding but tiring") when you start to get good at them, because you have to think/work less hard to achieve basic satisfying outcomes.
- tmh88j 6y ago
  >I don't think most people strive for mastery. But many things just aren't that fun or satisfying if you don't at least achieve competence. Learning how to play the guitar was frustrating for me, but my stubbornness to be able to play the music I listened to is what kept me going. I'm constantly listening to music and I knew I would enjoy it in the long run so I'm glad I stuck with it, but man, the first hundred hours or so of learning honestly wasn't enjoyable to me. I love it now but it felt like a chore at the time.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I always laugh when people remark that some dancer "makes it look easy". Because it is easy when you've trained enough. And the more you train at it, the funner it gets.
    - mudita 6y ago
      What style of dance do you mean? I think this "making it look easy" is probably most relevant for ballet, where high level dancers still train very "basic" movements or use a lot of muscular effort to create the illusion of lightness etc.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Pretty much any style that has prescribed technique to it (not just random movements). Partnership dancing comes to mind. It takes years of training to make it look effortless, and it is (for the dancers). Even the best regularly go over the basics again and again.

hndudette2 6y ago

Scott Adams has a way of thinking about this that he casts as "Systems vs Goals", where he advocates developing a talent stack of skills that work well together towards unspecified, undefined future goals. He says his talent stack is comedian+cartoonist, he's not amazing at either individual skill but he's one of the best at the combination which allowed him to create Dilbert. I got value from this way of thinking but I also think specific goals are necessary (e.g. as a startup founder targeting a specific market, product or vision) and that there are some domains that demand you to be the best in a single talent vertical due to a winner take all tendency (e.g. athelete, musician, professional gambler - although in any of these we can still distinguish systems & talent stacks from goals).

paulpauper 6y ago
This is good advice. the hard part is finding the skills you can intersect
- hndudette2 6y ago
  I think Adam's approach is mostly lacking deliberation, it's only after the fact that the synergy is realized but it's hard to intentionally engineer it. I can definitely see the validity in the other school of thought though; i.e. that we should deliberately seek out synergistic talent verticals. I know this is Conor Mcgregor's approach, he's very much systems over goals (in Adam's vein, and explicitly so) but is deliberate about the specific talent stack he's working towards. Ironically it is all done towards a specific goal (to be the best fighter) although the path towards that goal is underspecified. Here's a very common talent stack here on HN that works pretty well: math + CS + data science + one domain (e.g. finance or biology).
  - stevesimmons 6y ago
    > Here's a very common talent stack here on HN that works pretty well: math + CS + data science + one domain (e.g. finance or biology). Nice formulation! The domain expertise is key, I think. And often underappreciated by people at the start of their career.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mjklin 6y ago

“The passionate state of mind is often indicative of a lack of skill, talent or power. Moreover, passionate intensity can serve as a substitute for the confidence born of proficiency and the possession of power. A workingman sure of his skill goes leisurely about his job, and accomplishes much though he works as if at play. On the other hand, the workingman who is without confidence attacks his work as if he were saving the world, and he must do so if he is to get anything done.” - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

njanirudh 6y ago
I Disagree with this passionately. Some people are really passionate about posting their subject, knowledge forward. This inherently requires passion to overcome the difficulties that comes with working in the cutting edge.

dan-robertson 6y ago

There’s an opposite view argued here: https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ with the claim that it isn’t that hard to get to 95%ile of many activities but that this level of skill is still useful.

borroka 6y ago
It misses an important qualifier: 95% among who and for which activity? It is relatively easy to get to 95% for a skill/activity few care about. But try to become 95%ile in like baseball among the Texas 13-17 years old cohort and the music changes. I mean, I agree you can get to the top 5% in your neighborhood, but does it matter to any soul?
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  That is literally specified in the first or second paragraph

agumonkey 6y ago

I think adults become seekers of efficient learning. You know 1) time is limited 2) the map is huge 3) the topic might be totally unknown You have to devise ways to explore neither too fast nor too slow.

singhrac 6y ago

This comment really resonated with a feeling I’ve had over the past few years. When I was younger, especially at the beginning of college, I loved to build things by programming. I learned new languages, new patterns, wrote an OS, a website with all the front end complexity, etc. I could hack something on the weekend outside of schoolwork. For a few years it has felt so difficult to start something - perhaps a curse of “experience” is that you see the failure modes ahead of time. I think I’m overall more efficient, but my motivation to just strike out there and try something has been wrung out of me. Lately I’ve been trying to trick myself into working through that feeling and learning on the side. A desire to “finish” (i.e. write up as a blog post, publish software, send to a friend) is what gets me to overcome this bias to inaction. But it still shocks me how much more creative energy I had as an 18 year old than I do now.

Doxin 6y ago
My trick for avoiding that feeling is to intentionally set out to do projects in a terrible way, just to see what that'd be like. So for example I might write a project all in a single file, or entirely without classes, or with wildly too many classes, or with weird fp-trickery for no reason. There's a million weird ways to write a project badly, and in practice you'll discover it's almost never a real hindrance to progress compared to best practices.

dehrmann 6y ago

I've also heard it argued that youth still don't know what's impossible, so from time to time, they approach a problem that's deemed "impossible" from a different angle and find a solution.

swiley 6y ago

I strongly believe the key to learning new complex skills is to just enjoy the journey and recognize that you're going to be a beginner for years.