4 ms·

My writing skills only improved after I stopped thinking about it. I’m still trying to figure out how to tap into this with other skills.

Jtsummers 6y ago
Practice, relaxation and the relief of (self-induced and exaggerated) pressure. By practicing your writing and getting feedback (from self-critique or others) you have an opportunity to properly internalize things you'd been consciously thinking of before. Maybe it's your style, your choice of terms, whatever. Practice permits the internalization. Relaxation and relief of pressure permit you to actually practice without fear of failure. Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements. In other skills, physical or mental, removing pressure and practicing more permits the same kind of growth and development.
- borroka 6y ago
  "Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements." - It certainly sounds reasonable in at least some situations (e.g. failing at losing weight does not teach much), but is it true? Luck is necessary to succeed, since most complex situations or actions have probabilistic outcomes, but I have not seen many people being taught much by failure, and for good reasons. In theory, failure can be a good teacher: one has to analyze the causal relationship between the events that led to failure and with a cool and serene mind make a better plan for tomorrow. No judgement, no regrets, no mortification of mind and flesh. They wake up feeling energized thinking about what they have learned by the previous day's failure and they are even more ready for success than yesterday. But this is not realistic; it is easy and common to feel depressed, useless, and small after failure, energy goes down, not up (of course there are exceptions everywhere) and causal relationships are challenging to unravel (when at all possible) and also may change over time and space. Success, on the hand, means that something worked (at least once!).
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    You're overthinking it. First, what I wrote was not an absolute. Second, if you feel like a failure because you tried something challenging and failed, and couldn't be bothered to try again, you need psychiatric help. I don't mean that flippantly, you really need help. Giving up on something challenging because you fail once is not at all healthy. Very few people succeed on their first try at challenging, skilled activities. You don't need a cool and serene mind. That's an extreme that most people don't get to. But you also don't need to be filled with anger and self-hatred and depression. It's perfectly feasible, and most healthy people are in this range emotionally, to be somewhere between a zen master and a raging, depressed Hulk. Some people learn from their own mistakes, some people learn from mistakes made in a live performance (or at a critical juncture), some people learn from mistakes in practice, some people learn from mistakes by just imagining the possibility, some learn from the failings of others. Healthy people do all of those things, with an objective of avoiding failure in the live moment. But you can't just study successes because it's never enough.
r-bryan 6y ago
The book _Writing on Both Sides of the Brain_ (Henriette Klauser) got me unstuck. Ignoring the left-brain/right-brain stuff, imagine that you have a creative, let it fly part and a critical editor part. Constant criticism from the editor can slow all creativity to a stop. Instead, tell the editor, "I promise you'll get your chance. For now, sit down and shut up." Then create in peace, but follow through on that promise.

Jtsummers 6y ago

Practice, relaxation and the relief of (self-induced and exaggerated) pressure. By practicing your writing and getting feedback (from self-critique or others) you have an opportunity to properly internalize things you'd been consciously thinking of before. Maybe it's your style, your choice of terms, whatever. Practice permits the internalization. Relaxation and relief of pressure permit you to actually practice without fear of failure. Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements. In other skills, physical or mental, removing pressure and practicing more permits the same kind of growth and development.

borroka 6y ago
"Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements." - It certainly sounds reasonable in at least some situations (e.g. failing at losing weight does not teach much), but is it true? Luck is necessary to succeed, since most complex situations or actions have probabilistic outcomes, but I have not seen many people being taught much by failure, and for good reasons. In theory, failure can be a good teacher: one has to analyze the causal relationship between the events that led to failure and with a cool and serene mind make a better plan for tomorrow. No judgement, no regrets, no mortification of mind and flesh. They wake up feeling energized thinking about what they have learned by the previous day's failure and they are even more ready for success than yesterday. But this is not realistic; it is easy and common to feel depressed, useless, and small after failure, energy goes down, not up (of course there are exceptions everywhere) and causal relationships are challenging to unravel (when at all possible) and also may change over time and space. Success, on the hand, means that something worked (at least once!).
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  You're overthinking it. First, what I wrote was not an absolute. Second, if you feel like a failure because you tried something challenging and failed, and couldn't be bothered to try again, you need psychiatric help. I don't mean that flippantly, you really need help. Giving up on something challenging because you fail once is not at all healthy. Very few people succeed on their first try at challenging, skilled activities. You don't need a cool and serene mind. That's an extreme that most people don't get to. But you also don't need to be filled with anger and self-hatred and depression. It's perfectly feasible, and most healthy people are in this range emotionally, to be somewhere between a zen master and a raging, depressed Hulk. Some people learn from their own mistakes, some people learn from mistakes made in a live performance (or at a critical juncture), some people learn from mistakes in practice, some people learn from mistakes by just imagining the possibility, some learn from the failings of others. Healthy people do all of those things, with an objective of avoiding failure in the live moment. But you can't just study successes because it's never enough.

r-bryan 6y ago

The book _Writing on Both Sides of the Brain_ (Henriette Klauser) got me unstuck. Ignoring the left-brain/right-brain stuff, imagine that you have a creative, let it fly part and a critical editor part. Constant criticism from the editor can slow all creativity to a stop. Instead, tell the editor, "I promise you'll get your chance. For now, sit down and shut up." Then create in peace, but follow through on that promise.