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> if you want to master something, you should study the highest achievements of your field > Thinking about this question, I wrote down a list of twenty names

> if you want to master something, you should study the highest achievements of your field > Thinking about this question, I wrote down a list of twenty names—von Neumann, Tolstoy, Curie, Pascal, etc So the author advocates that we learn from geniuses how to master something? I'm not sure if this premise is true to start with. Von Neumann could solve complex PDE systems in his mind in minutes if not seconds, can we no matter how hard we try? Poincare worked only four hours day, can we? Euler wrote faster than people could digest his writings, can we? Galois invented group theory when he was 19, yet how many people could really understand the simplest college-level abstract algebra after they graduate from a STEM field? Feynman (or Einstein?) self taught himself calculus by 12 or 14, yet how many students struggled with the concept of variables when they were at the same age no matter how hard they and their teachers tried? Those are extraordinary people with extraordinary capabilities. I'm not sure how much we can learn from them to master something. Rather, I would learn from ordinary people who struggle from time to time yet somehow manage to master something.

eldritch_4ier 4y ago
As someone who's followed pretty much this exact advice the article lays out since I was maybe 14 or so, I found it very useful in my life. I was interested in physics actually. So at 14 as a B student at a school district in the middle of nowhere, I went on to self-learn calculus up to what amounts to AP Calculus by 15, published a minor physics paper by 16 (when I started working in the particle physics lab at my state college), and graduated high school a year early at 17 and entered a top-tier public school. That was years ago, but I've done pretty well since, and I attribute a lot of it to constantly comparing myself to larger-than-life masters like these to be constantly paranoid about how I can move faster (this comes with a need to be self aware and to self-manage well, including giving yourself breaks and listening to your mental/physical health of course, you don't need to be a Terminator and I don't recommend it). The big value for me I'd say was a replacement for the lack of role models in my surroundings and getting a sense for what a really high bar looks like. At least for myself, striving to be a flawed human that has also mastered something is a bad target (but inevitably where every human ends up). If you actually want to land there, you have to aim even higher.

eldritch_4ier 4y ago

As someone who's followed pretty much this exact advice the article lays out since I was maybe 14 or so, I found it very useful in my life. I was interested in physics actually. So at 14 as a B student at a school district in the middle of nowhere, I went on to self-learn calculus up to what amounts to AP Calculus by 15, published a minor physics paper by 16 (when I started working in the particle physics lab at my state college), and graduated high school a year early at 17 and entered a top-tier public school. That was years ago, but I've done pretty well since, and I attribute a lot of it to constantly comparing myself to larger-than-life masters like these to be constantly paranoid about how I can move faster (this comes with a need to be self aware and to self-manage well, including giving yourself breaks and listening to your mental/physical health of course, you don't need to be a Terminator and I don't recommend it). The big value for me I'd say was a replacement for the lack of role models in my surroundings and getting a sense for what a really high bar looks like. At least for myself, striving to be a flawed human that has also mastered something is a bad target (but inevitably where every human ends up). If you actually want to land there, you have to aim even higher.