19 ms·

Everything Is a Practice

207 points by gtzi 4y ago

brw12 3y ago
I really liked this -- it's so true about my road to programming (pseudo-) expertise. Almost everything I've been paid to do, I first did on a hobby level, just messing around with my own projects and ideas.
dswalter 3y ago
Something about not being young anymore is that I am much more comfortable leveraging small changes consistently over time. When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge. I needed things to improve over the course of days or hours. (In this, I was terribly short-sighted). But now that I'm considerably older than that, I can mentally afford to allocate a little bit of time over the next six months toward achieving a goal like improving my typing, or getting better at vocal onsets. Being better at something a year or two from now feels very worthwhile, and I know I'll be at that future me fairly quickly. It would have been better for me, of course, to have gained this ability back when I had lots of time at my disposal. But I can still have an impact because I can be the drop of water shaping the stone over time.
- adversaryIdiot 3y ago
  I say that its the exact same situation for me. Except by being older, I'm only 25 now. My suspicion is that this effect to due to my prefrontal cortex maturing? Because I'm much more introspective and meticulous now when it comes to learning, thinking, feeling etc.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    At 25, this is a superpower. Even if you just practice a thing for 10 minutes a day, by the time you're in your 40s (which is about when life starts getting really good) you will be fantastic at it.
    - Scalestein 3y ago
      What makes your 40s so good? I'm approaching them and would love some more things to look forward to!
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        A million things. Of course, there's no hard date such that when you turn 40 then everything changes. It's just a rough age range. I'll answer your question by repeating the most common things I've heard from others, not my own experience, in an attempt to reduce the error band by not having a sample size of 1. By your 40s, you generally have at least a direction you're going. People tend to take you more seriously. You have a greater sense of what's actually important and what's not, and stop wasting energy getting as worked up by things that don't really matter. You are still young enough that you aren't yet battling many adverse effects of aging. You also tend to be at your most physically attractive point. Your career path is likely to be established and less uncertain. Romantic partners tend to be more stable, so your love life brings more joy. Speaking of romantic partners... relationships are better because (as a friend of mine once put it) "sex isn't such a fucking emergency anymore". Your relationships tend to be more balanced. And so forth. I think, really, it's an age where you have gained more perspective and are still young enough to use that to live a better life.
      - RHSman2 3y ago
        The ‘fuck it’ bucket. You realize that life is here and you stop caring about the social constructs you’ve been part of. Also, while you aren’t your virulent former self, you can do things well OR you can dive into something with the curiosity of a kid knowing you don’t need to be great.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > The ‘fuck it’ bucket. Damn! You managed to say in four words what it took me a small essay to say. A tip of my hat to you, sir!
        3y ago
- Starwatcher2001 3y ago
  I'm doing something similar. I've decided at 62 to learn to play the keyboard and be able to read music. It's late in the day but I'm slowly getting there 30 minutes a day.
  - sureglymop 3y ago
    That's awesome!!
  - MrVandemar 3y ago
    Never, ever, too late. Heard a story of an 80 year-old who said, "If I'd taken up violin when I was 60, I'd have been playing for 20 years by now." Anything you can do that brings you satifaction or exercises your brain and keeps it sharp is a great thing.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      I did the math on the 10,000 hours theory once and concluded that this gives me permission to start something late in life. If you went as hard as you can you could reach expert level in a dozen things in a single lifetime, if that was your goal. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to expect to be able to achieve two or three. Even if they consider their youth 'wasted'. Used to know a guy who was as old as I am now when he took up Go. Took him less than ten years to reach a 3 dan rating, which is on the edge of where common wisdom says you need to start as a child to achieve better than that. But any time he wasn't working, he was looking at Go games (and I suspect sometimes when he was working). If he started 5 years younger or lives long enough I expect he'll disprove that rule. Of course it always helps if you're a polymath. There's a lot of social friction involved with picking up something that is expected of 14 year olds. If you can teach yourself you can skip over a lot of that.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
      I met a woman who picked up painting after she retired. After a few years she got pretty good, and after a decade she got really good, and by the time I met her she was in her late 70s, happy as hell, and making more money painting than she ever did during her actual career as a teacher. She was doing a lot more than 30 minutes per day, but it was pretty comforting for me to realize that nothing's really stopping most people from continuing to learn and grow deep into their twilight years if that's what they want to do.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I don't know if it's age or not (I'm no spring chicken), but I do the same. As an example, I became quite skilled with the slingshot exactly this way. I set up a target catchbox between my office and my kitchen, and for a couple of years now, I take a couple of practice shots when I go between the two, or when I'm waiting for the microwave to finish, etc. It was a year or so of doing this before I became a consistently good shot. Not quick, but if I had tried to set aside longer blocks of practice time, I wouldn't have done it at all. Slow progress gets you to the finish line. No progress does not.
- krat0sprakhar 3y ago
  Exact same mindset change happened with me (and I wish I had known the power of small changes over time earlier). I picked up the guitar at the age of 33 and just playing 15-30mins a day over a year has led to so much improvement. The slow but steady process is so rewarding.
- screwturner68 3y ago
  It doesn't hurt that now a month goes by in a blink of an eye but when you are 16 a month feels like forever.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  For me the increased awareness of time has been a double-edged sword. More patience for slow progress and sustained practice, maybe; but there's also come a much greater awareness of the immense investment of time it takes to reach mastery, which leaves me feeling like it's usually not worth beginning at all.
  - RHSman2 3y ago
    The journey, not the destination. The destination is death so have some enjoyment!
- kashunstva 3y ago
  > When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge. And this is probably true of most 16 y/o. I work as a collaborative pianist, which means essentially “accompanist”; so I work with young musicians a lot. This transition to tolerating and embracing slow incremental work in service of a larger goal is what distinguishes those kids who are successful from those who get stuck. But it’s really a mindset that they can acquire at any point. Some are ready earlier than others. I try to get the students I work with to adopt at least the habit of reflecting on their practice by writing down three things each day: Where did I put in honest effort? Where did I experience some resulting success? And where did I make some measurable progress? So E,S,P prompts. It’s based on the work of psychologist Nate Zinsser. The idea is to make visible the input and output of slow incremental effort.
itsmemattchung 3y ago
> There is no finish line. There is no winning, no losing. There is a finish line, but I think the goal post moves over and over and over again. Historically, every time I set a goal, I would think to myself, "once I do/get/achieve X, I'll be happy." In retrospective, I care less about the goal and find myself most joyful throughout the process of achieving said goal.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I don't think you're disagreeing with what you quote. Constantly moving the finish line is functionally the same as there being no finish line. The "finish line" becomes a milestone instead of an end. > I care less about the goal and find myself most joyful throughout the process of achieving said goal. People often misunderstand the concept of "enlightenment" by thinking of it as an end state to be achieved. It's not. "Enlightenment" is not an achievable goal, it's a direction to walk along your path. The real thing is the walking of the path itself.
- epolanski 3y ago
  That's baceause society bombs us with slogans such as "you'll be truly happy when you will obtain X", it's hard to deprogram.
adversaryIdiot 3y ago
I've become a 'handyman' in the way that this article alludes to. A big problem that I come across when saying "yes" to every problem that peaks my curiosity is that Ive become mentally drained. I end up spending a lot of time and energy hacking away at problems. The problem is, it seems like my mind isn't resilient enough to keep up with it. After a certain point there comes an onset of fatigue, frustration, and just general feelings of discomfort that drones on in the back of my conscious. I guess this is to be expected. The muscles of my mind have been overexerted and need rest. A remedy to this is to "go with the flow" of my mood/feelings. Which sometimes contradicts my undying feeling of curiosity. It becomes a balancing act between the two. I dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- JohnFen 3y ago
  My overall philosophy about attaining skills is that for most of them, I am content with learning something well enough that I could muddle through if I had to do it for real. I'm not shooting for becoming an expert at all. I aim for expertise in the much smaller subset of skills that are of genuine value to me. I aim at being a "jack of all trades, master of a couple".
- epolanski 3y ago
  I used to suffer of the same and then went with the time limiting: I can't do that stuff on weekends or after 7 pm, I stick to it and it became a habit in few weeks time.
iamdbtoo 3y ago
My perspective on programming shifted heavily when I adopted this idea for myself. Fully accepting the idea that there is no end to my learning and growth freed my mind so much and has actually made it easier to learn and grow.
carbonx 3y ago
I used to play pool a fair amount and it reminds me of a quote an older player shared with me one time: "Every shot is a practice shot". His point was that every time you shot you were building up either good or bad habits, so every time you shoot you were to shoot the same way. Don't ever just "fuck around" because that contributes to bad habits or at least not building good habits.
- nikanj 3y ago
  Pool should be mandatory part of Y Combinator. Really teaches you that ideas are worth jack all, and solid reliable execution wins the game every time
- juliogreff 3y ago
  I saw this worded as "you play like you practice", many years ago: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3504-you-play-like-you-practice https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3504-you-play-like-you-practi... It mentions how people that took self-defense classes would hand a gun back to their assailant after disarming them, and that stuck with me.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > His point was that every time you shot you were building up either good or bad habits This is a really key point about practice. "Practice" doesn't automatically mean improvement -- it can just as easily lock in the opposite. You have to actively practice. That is, you have to analyze your performance and consciously practice changes that lead to improvement.
- nerbitz 3y ago
  "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." — Aristotle
  - nkantar 3y ago
    This is one of my favorite quote and last year I learned it wasn’t actually Aristotle’s: https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-time-is-a-misattribution-66356f22843d https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-tim...
bogrollben 3y ago
I'm at the point where I feel fed up with too much talk about self-improvement. It's ok to not be productive and just enjoy things. Enjoy relationships, the sunshine, even video games or something that is literally a waste of time. Maybe I got burned out by goal-setting and productivity talk. It also might be some remnants of some mild depression I had lately. I guess I just don't like feeling pressured to constantly improve, otherwise I'm not "living 100%" like I should be. So when I read things like this, it grates my nerves: >> "In this process though you will become a better human being. You will get better at living. You will have less pain down the road. Your path will be smoother." It suggests the inverse: that if you're not improving, you're less of a human being. I'm not sure if the author meant it that way, but that's definitely the way I took it.
- scarecrowbob 3y ago
  That's a relatable feeling. My understanding is that the larger culture context, in which our worth is determined by our value as a worker, would be the locus of that feeling. Like, I really don't feel like a "better" person because I learned how to use the CLI more efficiently. I may even find the term "better" in that context to be offensive: I'm not better because I learned how to deal with the shambling tower of shit that is WordPress at the institutional level. I enjoy the money and the security of a job, but I hate that my security is premised on my willingness to put up with that shitty system. Ironically, the way that I've dealt with my own feelings about this has been to lean into dumb crap that obviously has no value in a larger context. Learning chess or getting better at math are a couple of examples of things that it just felt fun and freeing to be better at, simply because I like them. Lately it's been card manipulations. I've leaned into playing a lot of musical instruments, and I am fortunate to work from home as I play literally all day. And that's been somewhat freeing because as much as I enjoy the feeling of improving some of my skills, that enjoyment has been often leveraged against me to get me to do jobs I hate. Like, I've spent a lot of time fixing dumb stuff just because I have learned how to enjoy the process, but since it's dumb stuff it's a bit soul crushing to do it unless I just want to do it. In that context, I feel like I can draw a line between the stuff that really is fun and useful to me and the stuff I'm able to grind on because that's what I was trained to do. That distinction has made my practice on a lot of things (from music to working on getting better at relating to people) feel more liberating and less like shitty hustle culture.
nico 3y ago
Yes
DotaFan 3y ago
For me habit is everything, in a sense that, creating a good habits relieves me the majority of the effort of trying to do it. I just do it without an effort, as I am used to it. Often, while I was getting into this field I was asked how am I able to put so much effort into learning, but it was just a habit that fed my self-worth and curiosity. With habit comes a practice imo.
Zetice 3y ago
Super duper no, could not more strongly disagree. Practice is not the same as performance, as in practice you ignore the outcome and focus on specific aspects of your skill. If you practice with the full outcome in mind all the time, you severely hinder your ability to narrowly improve, which is critical to growth. I understand this is written to speak more about “practice” in the trade sense, but even there I think that’s wrong.
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  Right there with you. If I am practicing something, it is usually a specific aspect of the overall skill. A certain aspect of form while I row, a specific approach to shading with a pencil, a certain hand position as I work on a difficult guitar piece... some element of the larger whole that is given my full attention for that session. If I only ever had the full sequence of $whatever in mind, I would severely limit my growth.
paulpauper 3y ago
'Practice' seems like yet another overused buzzword. Same for the expression 'doing the work'. I am not sure who popularized it...maybe Seth Godin or Ryan Holiday. I think too many people waste too much time with practice when what they need is to learn better execution and cut losses sooner. Sometimes practice is not good enough. Doing more is not better. Persistence does not always pay off.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404094639if_/https://luxagraf.net/essay/everything-is-a-practice https://web.archive.org/web/20230404094639if_/https://luxagr... (luxagraf.net is redirecting to www.google.com at the moment)
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I really liked that! This has been my experience. I've done a lot of things, in my life. Taken a number of paths, but I've found designing end-user applications and device control programming to be most gratifying. But one aspect of my Practice, is finishing stuff. It has to have an exit. It's my Practice, and I do it every day.
shironononon 3y ago
agree with this article very much. I came to the same conclusion after years of.. not programming .. but yoga. My practice of yoga extended to everything else in my life and has helped me accept that I am a human be-ing. Every day in your human body will be different, new versions and push requests are happening RIGHT NOW to your favorite tools and repositories that you're not aware of so how can you possibly expect yourself to be an expert? Release your labels and expectations to practice your art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori
an_aparallel 3y ago
i gifted my old man a drum kit a few years ago. He was shocked, and surprised and flattered - but said "there's no band anymore, i cant play this!" So - of i went - set it up...im into production so i thought "cool...i'll sample this every now and then"...turns out - futzing around on the kit - ended up with me selling it and replacing it with a top shelf kit, with top line cymbals...i play around 15 minutes twice/thrice a week.... i went from nothing - to - playing the tastiest funk grooves, with barely any effort...just savoring the fun while i was playing...literally no expectations...i wish more things were like that :)
w10-1 3y ago
Let's not forget some of the origins of this wisdom: - Aristotle's distinction between activities/beings that are an end in themselves vs. activities that end with the achievement of their goals, and the realization that one activity can be both - Buddhist practice of focusing on the activity of mind Both address directly what this article does indirectly: the brain's reward system prunes reality and self-expression as necessary to get things done, so often improvement comes only after deconstructing those blinders. And that in turn is super, super difficult, and virtually never happens unless it has to, because someone is traumatized by reward-system-induced failures like addiction, violence, social ostracism, personal shame, etc. In the "best" case, one's compassion for others' suffering sensitizes one to sniff and shun reward-system fast-paths. It's ALWAYS better to avoid reward-system hysteresis, since it's almost never fixable. And remember, the more capable and well-funded you are, the less the environment will offer any guardrails. It's all on you.

207 points by gtzi 4y ago

I really liked this -- it's so true about my road to programming (pseudo-) expertise. Almost everything I've been paid to do, I first did on a hobby level, just messing around with my own projects and ideas.

dswalter 3y ago

Something about not being young anymore is that I am much more comfortable leveraging small changes consistently over time. When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge. I needed things to improve over the course of days or hours. (In this, I was terribly short-sighted). But now that I'm considerably older than that, I can mentally afford to allocate a little bit of time over the next six months toward achieving a goal like improving my typing, or getting better at vocal onsets. Being better at something a year or two from now feels very worthwhile, and I know I'll be at that future me fairly quickly. It would have been better for me, of course, to have gained this ability back when I had lots of time at my disposal. But I can still have an impact because I can be the drop of water shaping the stone over time.

adversaryIdiot 3y ago
I say that its the exact same situation for me. Except by being older, I'm only 25 now. My suspicion is that this effect to due to my prefrontal cortex maturing? Because I'm much more introspective and meticulous now when it comes to learning, thinking, feeling etc.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  At 25, this is a superpower. Even if you just practice a thing for 10 minutes a day, by the time you're in your 40s (which is about when life starts getting really good) you will be fantastic at it.
  - Scalestein 3y ago
    What makes your 40s so good? I'm approaching them and would love some more things to look forward to!
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      A million things. Of course, there's no hard date such that when you turn 40 then everything changes. It's just a rough age range. I'll answer your question by repeating the most common things I've heard from others, not my own experience, in an attempt to reduce the error band by not having a sample size of 1. By your 40s, you generally have at least a direction you're going. People tend to take you more seriously. You have a greater sense of what's actually important and what's not, and stop wasting energy getting as worked up by things that don't really matter. You are still young enough that you aren't yet battling many adverse effects of aging. You also tend to be at your most physically attractive point. Your career path is likely to be established and less uncertain. Romantic partners tend to be more stable, so your love life brings more joy. Speaking of romantic partners... relationships are better because (as a friend of mine once put it) "sex isn't such a fucking emergency anymore". Your relationships tend to be more balanced. And so forth. I think, really, it's an age where you have gained more perspective and are still young enough to use that to live a better life.
    - RHSman2 3y ago
      The ‘fuck it’ bucket. You realize that life is here and you stop caring about the social constructs you’ve been part of. Also, while you aren’t your virulent former self, you can do things well OR you can dive into something with the curiosity of a kid knowing you don’t need to be great.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > The ‘fuck it’ bucket. Damn! You managed to say in four words what it took me a small essay to say. A tip of my hat to you, sir!
        3y ago
Starwatcher2001 3y ago
I'm doing something similar. I've decided at 62 to learn to play the keyboard and be able to read music. It's late in the day but I'm slowly getting there 30 minutes a day.
- sureglymop 3y ago
  That's awesome!!
- MrVandemar 3y ago
  Never, ever, too late. Heard a story of an 80 year-old who said, "If I'd taken up violin when I was 60, I'd have been playing for 20 years by now." Anything you can do that brings you satifaction or exercises your brain and keeps it sharp is a great thing.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I did the math on the 10,000 hours theory once and concluded that this gives me permission to start something late in life. If you went as hard as you can you could reach expert level in a dozen things in a single lifetime, if that was your goal. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to expect to be able to achieve two or three. Even if they consider their youth 'wasted'. Used to know a guy who was as old as I am now when he took up Go. Took him less than ten years to reach a 3 dan rating, which is on the edge of where common wisdom says you need to start as a child to achieve better than that. But any time he wasn't working, he was looking at Go games (and I suspect sometimes when he was working). If he started 5 years younger or lives long enough I expect he'll disprove that rule. Of course it always helps if you're a polymath. There's a lot of social friction involved with picking up something that is expected of 14 year olds. If you can teach yourself you can skip over a lot of that.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    I met a woman who picked up painting after she retired. After a few years she got pretty good, and after a decade she got really good, and by the time I met her she was in her late 70s, happy as hell, and making more money painting than she ever did during her actual career as a teacher. She was doing a lot more than 30 minutes per day, but it was pretty comforting for me to realize that nothing's really stopping most people from continuing to learn and grow deep into their twilight years if that's what they want to do.
JohnFen 3y ago
I don't know if it's age or not (I'm no spring chicken), but I do the same. As an example, I became quite skilled with the slingshot exactly this way. I set up a target catchbox between my office and my kitchen, and for a couple of years now, I take a couple of practice shots when I go between the two, or when I'm waiting for the microwave to finish, etc. It was a year or so of doing this before I became a consistently good shot. Not quick, but if I had tried to set aside longer blocks of practice time, I wouldn't have done it at all. Slow progress gets you to the finish line. No progress does not.
krat0sprakhar 3y ago
Exact same mindset change happened with me (and I wish I had known the power of small changes over time earlier). I picked up the guitar at the age of 33 and just playing 15-30mins a day over a year has led to so much improvement. The slow but steady process is so rewarding.
screwturner68 3y ago
It doesn't hurt that now a month goes by in a blink of an eye but when you are 16 a month feels like forever.
marssaxman 3y ago
For me the increased awareness of time has been a double-edged sword. More patience for slow progress and sustained practice, maybe; but there's also come a much greater awareness of the immense investment of time it takes to reach mastery, which leaves me feeling like it's usually not worth beginning at all.
- RHSman2 3y ago
  The journey, not the destination. The destination is death so have some enjoyment!
kashunstva 3y ago
> When I was 16, the idea of doing a little bit of practicing vocal exercises each day in order to improve over time would have seemed an insurmountable challenge. And this is probably true of most 16 y/o. I work as a collaborative pianist, which means essentially “accompanist”; so I work with young musicians a lot. This transition to tolerating and embracing slow incremental work in service of a larger goal is what distinguishes those kids who are successful from those who get stuck. But it’s really a mindset that they can acquire at any point. Some are ready earlier than others. I try to get the students I work with to adopt at least the habit of reflecting on their practice by writing down three things each day: Where did I put in honest effort? Where did I experience some resulting success? And where did I make some measurable progress? So E,S,P prompts. It’s based on the work of psychologist Nate Zinsser. The idea is to make visible the input and output of slow incremental effort.

itsmemattchung 3y ago

> There is no finish line. There is no winning, no losing. There is a finish line, but I think the goal post moves over and over and over again. Historically, every time I set a goal, I would think to myself, "once I do/get/achieve X, I'll be happy." In retrospective, I care less about the goal and find myself most joyful throughout the process of achieving said goal.

JohnFen 3y ago
I don't think you're disagreeing with what you quote. Constantly moving the finish line is functionally the same as there being no finish line. The "finish line" becomes a milestone instead of an end. > I care less about the goal and find myself most joyful throughout the process of achieving said goal. People often misunderstand the concept of "enlightenment" by thinking of it as an end state to be achieved. It's not. "Enlightenment" is not an achievable goal, it's a direction to walk along your path. The real thing is the walking of the path itself.
epolanski 3y ago
That's baceause society bombs us with slogans such as "you'll be truly happy when you will obtain X", it's hard to deprogram.

adversaryIdiot 3y ago

I've become a 'handyman' in the way that this article alludes to. A big problem that I come across when saying "yes" to every problem that peaks my curiosity is that Ive become mentally drained. I end up spending a lot of time and energy hacking away at problems. The problem is, it seems like my mind isn't resilient enough to keep up with it. After a certain point there comes an onset of fatigue, frustration, and just general feelings of discomfort that drones on in the back of my conscious. I guess this is to be expected. The muscles of my mind have been overexerted and need rest. A remedy to this is to "go with the flow" of my mood/feelings. Which sometimes contradicts my undying feeling of curiosity. It becomes a balancing act between the two. I dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

JohnFen 3y ago
My overall philosophy about attaining skills is that for most of them, I am content with learning something well enough that I could muddle through if I had to do it for real. I'm not shooting for becoming an expert at all. I aim for expertise in the much smaller subset of skills that are of genuine value to me. I aim at being a "jack of all trades, master of a couple".
epolanski 3y ago
I used to suffer of the same and then went with the time limiting: I can't do that stuff on weekends or after 7 pm, I stick to it and it became a habit in few weeks time.

iamdbtoo 3y ago

My perspective on programming shifted heavily when I adopted this idea for myself. Fully accepting the idea that there is no end to my learning and growth freed my mind so much and has actually made it easier to learn and grow.

carbonx 3y ago

I used to play pool a fair amount and it reminds me of a quote an older player shared with me one time: "Every shot is a practice shot". His point was that every time you shot you were building up either good or bad habits, so every time you shoot you were to shoot the same way. Don't ever just "fuck around" because that contributes to bad habits or at least not building good habits.

nikanj 3y ago
Pool should be mandatory part of Y Combinator. Really teaches you that ideas are worth jack all, and solid reliable execution wins the game every time
juliogreff 3y ago
I saw this worded as "you play like you practice", many years ago: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3504-you-play-like-you-practice https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3504-you-play-like-you-practi... It mentions how people that took self-defense classes would hand a gun back to their assailant after disarming them, and that stuck with me.
JohnFen 3y ago
> His point was that every time you shot you were building up either good or bad habits This is a really key point about practice. "Practice" doesn't automatically mean improvement -- it can just as easily lock in the opposite. You have to actively practice. That is, you have to analyze your performance and consciously practice changes that lead to improvement.
nerbitz 3y ago
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." — Aristotle
- nkantar 3y ago
  This is one of my favorite quote and last year I learned it wasn’t actually Aristotle’s: https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-time-is-a-misattribution-66356f22843d https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-tim...

bogrollben 3y ago

I'm at the point where I feel fed up with too much talk about self-improvement. It's ok to not be productive and just enjoy things. Enjoy relationships, the sunshine, even video games or something that is literally a waste of time. Maybe I got burned out by goal-setting and productivity talk. It also might be some remnants of some mild depression I had lately. I guess I just don't like feeling pressured to constantly improve, otherwise I'm not "living 100%" like I should be. So when I read things like this, it grates my nerves: >> "In this process though you will become a better human being. You will get better at living. You will have less pain down the road. Your path will be smoother." It suggests the inverse: that if you're not improving, you're less of a human being. I'm not sure if the author meant it that way, but that's definitely the way I took it.

scarecrowbob 3y ago
That's a relatable feeling. My understanding is that the larger culture context, in which our worth is determined by our value as a worker, would be the locus of that feeling. Like, I really don't feel like a "better" person because I learned how to use the CLI more efficiently. I may even find the term "better" in that context to be offensive: I'm not better because I learned how to deal with the shambling tower of shit that is WordPress at the institutional level. I enjoy the money and the security of a job, but I hate that my security is premised on my willingness to put up with that shitty system. Ironically, the way that I've dealt with my own feelings about this has been to lean into dumb crap that obviously has no value in a larger context. Learning chess or getting better at math are a couple of examples of things that it just felt fun and freeing to be better at, simply because I like them. Lately it's been card manipulations. I've leaned into playing a lot of musical instruments, and I am fortunate to work from home as I play literally all day. And that's been somewhat freeing because as much as I enjoy the feeling of improving some of my skills, that enjoyment has been often leveraged against me to get me to do jobs I hate. Like, I've spent a lot of time fixing dumb stuff just because I have learned how to enjoy the process, but since it's dumb stuff it's a bit soul crushing to do it unless I just want to do it. In that context, I feel like I can draw a line between the stuff that really is fun and useful to me and the stuff I'm able to grind on because that's what I was trained to do. That distinction has made my practice on a lot of things (from music to working on getting better at relating to people) feel more liberating and less like shitty hustle culture.

nico 3y ago

Yes

DotaFan 3y ago

For me habit is everything, in a sense that, creating a good habits relieves me the majority of the effort of trying to do it. I just do it without an effort, as I am used to it. Often, while I was getting into this field I was asked how am I able to put so much effort into learning, but it was just a habit that fed my self-worth and curiosity. With habit comes a practice imo.

Zetice 3y ago

Super duper no, could not more strongly disagree. Practice is not the same as performance, as in practice you ignore the outcome and focus on specific aspects of your skill. If you practice with the full outcome in mind all the time, you severely hinder your ability to narrowly improve, which is critical to growth. I understand this is written to speak more about “practice” in the trade sense, but even there I think that’s wrong.

Baeocystin 3y ago
Right there with you. If I am practicing something, it is usually a specific aspect of the overall skill. A certain aspect of form while I row, a specific approach to shading with a pencil, a certain hand position as I work on a difficult guitar piece... some element of the larger whole that is given my full attention for that session. If I only ever had the full sequence of $whatever in mind, I would severely limit my growth.

paulpauper 3y ago

'Practice' seems like yet another overused buzzword. Same for the expression 'doing the work'. I am not sure who popularized it...maybe Seth Godin or Ryan Holiday. I think too many people waste too much time with practice when what they need is to learn better execution and cut losses sooner. Sometimes practice is not good enough. Doing more is not better. Persistence does not always pay off.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230404094639if_/https://luxagraf.net/essay/everything-is-a-practice https://web.archive.org/web/20230404094639if_/https://luxagr... (luxagraf.net is redirecting to www.google.com at the moment)

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I really liked that! This has been my experience. I've done a lot of things, in my life. Taken a number of paths, but I've found designing end-user applications and device control programming to be most gratifying. But one aspect of my Practice, is finishing stuff. It has to have an exit. It's my Practice, and I do it every day.

shironononon 3y ago

agree with this article very much. I came to the same conclusion after years of.. not programming .. but yoga. My practice of yoga extended to everything else in my life and has helped me accept that I am a human be-ing. Every day in your human body will be different, new versions and push requests are happening RIGHT NOW to your favorite tools and repositories that you're not aware of so how can you possibly expect yourself to be an expert? Release your labels and expectations to practice your art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori

an_aparallel 3y ago

i gifted my old man a drum kit a few years ago. He was shocked, and surprised and flattered - but said "there's no band anymore, i cant play this!" So - of i went - set it up...im into production so i thought "cool...i'll sample this every now and then"...turns out - futzing around on the kit - ended up with me selling it and replacing it with a top shelf kit, with top line cymbals...i play around 15 minutes twice/thrice a week.... i went from nothing - to - playing the tastiest funk grooves, with barely any effort...just savoring the fun while i was playing...literally no expectations...i wish more things were like that :)

w10-1 3y ago

Let's not forget some of the origins of this wisdom: - Aristotle's distinction between activities/beings that are an end in themselves vs. activities that end with the achievement of their goals, and the realization that one activity can be both - Buddhist practice of focusing on the activity of mind Both address directly what this article does indirectly: the brain's reward system prunes reality and self-expression as necessary to get things done, so often improvement comes only after deconstructing those blinders. And that in turn is super, super difficult, and virtually never happens unless it has to, because someone is traumatized by reward-system-induced failures like addiction, violence, social ostracism, personal shame, etc. In the "best" case, one's compassion for others' suffering sensitizes one to sniff and shun reward-system fast-paths. It's ALWAYS better to avoid reward-system hysteresis, since it's almost never fixable. And remember, the more capable and well-funded you are, the less the environment will offer any guardrails. It's all on you.