12 ms·

On the slow productivity of John Wick

346 points by lawgimenez 3y ago

spacemadness 3y ago
It seems like commenters have to do the authors job here since the author asks a good question then basically stops writing and doesn’t explore any of the ideas proposed.
deleted 3y ago
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Aqueous 3y ago
It often strikes me as difficult to fathom that it took only a couple engineers a few months to build the MVP of the company I work for - that has since grown to be a global, publicly traded corporation with many thousands of employees - but it somehow takes thousands of engineers multiple years to, in effect, build it again. In fact, it makes no sense whatsoever to me and can only be explained by how much time is thrown away, day after day, with all the busy work involved in prioritizing and coordinating their activity, and by the possibility that an awful lot of us are not contributing anything whatsoever. Is this incredibly wasteful utilization of labor really be the best way to do things? I cannot accept that it is. The coordination tax is simply too high. If people were just permitted to focus on something, anything, I feel the velocity of the entire organization would lift.
- cjcenizal 3y ago
  How much of your company’s revenue is earned through that product? If it’s significant then the cost of introducing regressions in quality or functionality goes up. As companies grow and mistakes become more costly, they become more risk-averse and invest more resources into reducing risk. This slows things down and requires more people.
  - Aqueous 3y ago
    Very good point - a huge chunk of the slowdown also comes from all the work around ensuring operational excellence. Monitoring, dashboards, testing, logging, CI. It's an incredible amount of labor to create production quality software on a continuous basis.
    - yolovoe 3y ago
      Don't forget security updates, migrations, correctness and reliability. It's quick to get an MVP running that "mostly" works in the happy path. It's much more time consuming to get something that thoughtfully and correctly deals with most edge cases, and has some more 9s.
Havoc 3y ago
That strikes me as the classic manager schedule vs maker schedule with different words
slim 3y ago
neon noir makes me want to invent this genre
nosefrog 3y ago
Very interesting essay. Reminds me of how Donald Knuth describes his job: > Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study. https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html It's an aspiration for how I want my career to go, though I haven't been very effective at moving in that direction.
- amelius 3y ago
  Too bad the money always goes first to the people who are on the top, and then you have to hope some of it trickles down to the bottom.
- systems 3y ago
  I am not under the impression that Don Knuth books are accessible, I am under the impression that they are exactly the opposite His books are books you read them last and you add reading them in your CV as a lifetime achievement
- senortumnus 3y ago
  Odd question but are you reading Algorithms to Live By? This quote & a related anecdote features in the book. Or maybe this is just a really famous Knuth quote.
  - wepple 3y ago
    It is indeed a very famous quote: Cal Newport (OP link) also quotes it in his book “Deep Work”
  - nosefrog 3y ago
    I'm not reading it, though it sounds interesting. I found this quote when I was browsing through Donald Knuth's website 10 years ago for inspiration on where to take my life next.
arcanus 3y ago
> In office jobs, by contrast, productivity remains rooted in notions of busyness and multi-faceted activity. The most productive knowledge workers are those who stay on top of their inboxes and somehow juggle the dozens of obligations, from the small tasks to major projects, hurled in their direction every week. I disagree. I think this looks productive, but people who only do this will hit a terminal level and find themselves stuck. Getting above this, into Principle/Director/Executive ranks certainly requires being a great communicator, but also typically involves __success__. I see this as shipping a successful product, closing a key customer deal, etc. It's easy to see productive people and expect that being on top of email and product plans is what made them successful, but this is only an effect of their productivity and mastery of the product development. Note that John Wick did have great production values: it needed much more than 'just' Keano. That logistics happened in the background.
- OldManRyan 3y ago
  You might be misunderstanding what Cal Newport is saying here because he agrees with you. He is saying is the people who stay on top of their inboxes and multitask are perceived as being the most productive, not that they are in fact the most productive. He also wrote an entire book that might as well be about his hatred of email titled "A World Without Email," if you need further evidence of his position.
  - xpe 3y ago
    Cal’s writing isn’t clear on where he lands. But he’s probably around to clarify, somewhere. Let’s all send him emails, tweets, etc and see how quickly he replies.
- PKop 3y ago
  You missed the sarcasm. The quoted statement is actually one that Cal does not agree with.
wonderwonder 3y ago
This is a good article. The amount of context switching I have to do day to day means my actual productivity is almost nothing. 4 to 8 meetings a day. 100+ emails Teams and slack constantly going off Yet I'm still supposed to produce actual quality code as well. It's like trying to work in a mosh pit
- deterministic 3y ago
  If you are in 4 or more meetings in a day and receive 100+ emails then your manager is incompetent and should be fired. The whole point of being a good manager is to maximise the real work produced by the team. Which means minimising interruptions.
- binkHN 3y ago
  Yep. And this is why my work calendar contains several hour blocks where I can focus on the things that I want to focus on and other blocks here and there to do the things you noted.
  - wonderwonder 3y ago
    So is mine. People just ignore it, most of my meetings are large group meetings.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      The only solution is, with sufficient bravado, you can refuse the meetings and risk getting fired if need be. If you are good and they ain’t struggling then they probably will work around your preference and keep you. If you ain’t good work on that. If they are struggling then the decision is whether to stay (based on your ethics and situation) Too many meetings indicates some issue with the division or prioritization at work. Tell them if you do 2 unrelated tasks and switch between them then it is guaranteed they will get work product later than if you do one at a time. This is guaranteed. If the tasks are related it might be OK but this is a rare exception in coding. Building sheds it may be ok (lay all the foundations first). But then laying all the foundations is the task unit so again this might apply. Tell them that if management keep changing their mind, it is like calling the pizza restaurant and changing your order every 15 minutes. Food will come late. Also context switching loses time. For non technicals that don’t understand this give them an IQ test, them every 10 minutes pull the sheet away from them and swap it for a reading comp. test and then every 5 minutes tap them on the shoulder and ask about their pets. Just describing that means they should get it as almost every person had been subjected to those tests in interviews at one point.
doctor_eval 3y ago
I've literally just come home from a meeting with a colleague where we were discussing software/IT project management. We were discussing how terrible modern software project management generally is, and how identifying and focussing on a small number of priorities and clearing them is way more productive than doing "everything everywhere all at once". I've been working on turning this into a training course for my domain, and have come to ask the question, "why oh why do we prioritise deadlines over productivity"? Building a software team which can reliably deliver high quality features is way more efficient than grinding out huge piles of barely working crap to a deadline. But deadline management really is still how most of us are forced to do things. Formal Road Maps, Gantt Charts and Microsoft Project put productivity against the wall before the project even starts. Teams don't get to push back on features that they know will kill a project, and project managers seem to think their role is to hit people over the head until morale improves and features are delivered, no matter what. (I've had a project manager who quite literally refused to prioritise features because "they are all important"). What a stupid way to build things. No wonder 27%+ of software projects end up in the bin. Keanu Reeves focussed on the top priorities that everything else in the franchise relied on, delivered them with high quality, and was able to build the rest of the franchise around that central effort. Loads of work up front, much less work over time. I only wish this was how most companies approached software.
- 8note 3y ago
  Deadlines are a proxy for dependencies The deadline is important because of scheduling, and whoever needs to use your thing has a certain stretch of time where they can implement their part. I've been liking to instead model the dependencies explicitly, and make the project plan a dag rather than a gannt charts. You could make a gannt charts from it, if you add all the estimates, and define the available parallelism, but the reason for doing some piece of work is whatever depends on it, and you can follow the dag up to the end feature
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    Don't disagree, but deadlines are a very indirect and poor proxy which focuses on time rather than deliverables. > whoever needs to use your thing has a certain stretch of time where they can implement their part But the idea that timelines are critical to a project's progress must be a myth, because software projects are almost always delivered late. The dependency is always on the feature or deliverable, not on the date. The depending team will work out how to cope because that's what happens every day in most software shops anyway. I'm not saying that deadlines and timelines are bad. I'm just saying that they should not be the core organising principle for delivering a project.
prpl 3y ago
In the sciences we just call this grad school
falcor84 3y ago
This whole post sounds like a very false dichotomy to me. The author makes it sound as if `trained eight hours a day, four months in a row` is a single activity. But of course that to be productive, Keanu had to be on top of many different activities, in different locations with different trainers, in addition to what I believe would have been a myriad of other work activities he had to perform for unrelated professional responsibilities. Keanu Reeves is not a monk practicing the same activity day in and day out, but rather a very busy professional, with a team of people working for him to help manage his schedule.
- xpe 3y ago
  I don’t think the author nor readers should take it as a false dichotomy. This style falls into a common pattern of highlighting two examples. There’s no language that says the two examples are disjoint.
dogleash 3y ago
This is a weird comparison. On one hand you have an independent contractor preparing for an engagement. The other is actively collaborating with a team to make a thing. The less bad (but still not great) comparison is to Reeves' allocation of time during principal photography. On multiple occasions I've spent weeks out of the office in training sessions. Even with on-site training we were pretty good at turning peoples' responsibilities off so they could maximize the time spent with someone we flew in for a few days. Or there's that big bit of training before getting a job at all: university. (That's another rabbit hole of arguing about topical focus within education, but still a portion of someone's life dedicated to learning.) I can kinda see what the author is trying to get at, but it's weird to use training to make a point about time management. Training is the main type of work I've seen offices willing to let someone go fully incommunicado. Unless you work somewhere that doesn't believe in training. And cramming an online module in between normal tasks isn't training, it's more like reading documentation (it's a con so the personnel software can get an entry that X is trained in Foo).
- xpe 3y ago
  > This is a weird comparison. Oh?… I like weird! (I don’t care for how you use the word though.) Stylistically, semantically, and philosophically I think you’ll get more mileage by avoiding your negative, constrained, unfamiliar-is-bad usage of “weird”. And now my unsolicited advice comes to a close.
  - pproe 3y ago
    Maybe 'unfit', 'ill-suited' or 'irrelevant' would be more suitable. I love Cal's writing, but I feel like it's really going against his mantra (of Deep Work) to be making posts like this that try to pluck meaning out of nothing for the sake of marketing.
  - helmholtz 3y ago
    Your comment is so bloody weird. It gives off vibes of those dudes who one day shave their heads and then spend the rest of their lives telling you you should get rid of anger and embrace the light and all that rubbish. Or of Christian assholes wailing on repeat "Jesus still loves you" whenever you disagree with them.
clouddrover 3y ago
> the film, made on a modest budget, went on to earn $86 million, kicking off a franchise that has since brought in hundreds of millions more. John Wick has done well as a franchise. Each subsequent movie has made more money than the last. That's good going across 4 movies. John Wick: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick#tab=summary John Wick 2: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-Two#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-Two#tab=... John Wick 3: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-3-Parabellum-(2019)#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-3-Parabe... John Wick 4: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-4-(2023)#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-4-(2023)... John Wick 3 had the best return on the budget.
deleted 3y ago
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mdisc 3y ago
Funny that this is the exact opposite of "Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295) from a couple days ago here. Both speed and "slow productivity" have their place depending on the type of work you do. I think for junior and mid level ICs, and leadership/management focused people (maybe even senior ICs), speed is paramount. For staff/principal roles, the balance shifts toward being able to be able to focus more singularly on very challenging problems.
- cudgy 3y ago
  “I think for junior and mid level ICs, and leadership/management focused people (maybe even senior ICs), speed is paramount.” Why? I would argue they need to move slower and methodically so they understand what they are doing instead of thrashing a bunch of crappy code that has to be fixed by others. More experienced people can move faster because they are doing tasks that have parallels to prior tasks. For example, Keanu Reaves was able to singularly focus on “gun fu” as he is an experienced actor for whom remembering lines and handling himself on set is second nature, requiring less effort than from a rookie actor.
- kraftman 3y ago
  I don't think they are opposite. There's a difference between rushing to do something, and shortening the feedback loop. It says "slow productivity" but learning enough martial arts in 4 months to look good in a film doesn't sound slow to me, it sounds like he shortened the feedback loop as much as possible by learning every single day instead maybe once a week like a normal person would.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > It says "slow productivity" but learning enough martial arts in 4 months to look good in a film doesn't sound slow to me Remember the kung fu scenes in Matrix? It's not the first time Reeves has trained in martial arts. This time he crammed in a particular martial art for this movie. Tbh I'd bet he practices something regularly, just not often enough for it to make the news.
j2kun 3y ago
I don't believe that top actors don't have similarly busy schedules. Meetings with producers, reading scripts, practicing lines, jetsetting around the world for shoots, trying to maintain a family and social life, making public appearances, physical training, managing diets, makeup and costumes, having charitable foundations, etc. If anything they're busier than the average software dev.
kamaal 3y ago
>>In office jobs, by contrast, productivity remains rooted in notions of busyness and multi-faceted activity. The most productive knowledge workers are those who stay on top of their inboxes and somehow juggle the dozens of obligations, from the small tasks to major projects, hurled in their direction every week. The deal here is focus. You can focus on anything, anything. Even on emails. The real problem is most people aren't even doing that properly. People while away their time on Insta reels, Twitter, Facebook fighting etc etc. The best productivity example I saw was when I was working with a Chinese colleague. He would have 2 monitors. One split, exclusively for Slack, Jira and Email. He would watch every issue, every communication, every PR, every darnest little thing going on in the project. He would review, it, or learn about it. He knew what code was going in, what was getting deleted, the pipeline of features, bugs and what not. The other monitor was for the terminal, coding and other work tools. He would also find spare time in a day for TIL, and other long term learning. There was zero FB, Twitter, Insta, TikToK, whatever. There was lots of 'productive context switching'. Or in other words, the context switch was in the boundaries of work. The biggest lesson is not to avoid context switching. But to not waste time. Wasting time is the biggest time drain here. I define wasting time as doing something that is not relevant to the thing you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to have fun, working in periods would be equally unproductive to having fun. Same with work.
rhaway84773 3y ago
This is an interesting piece. I guess the programming equivalent of Reeves’s approach to John Wick would be a programmer spending a few weeks in simply becoming an expert in any new technologies they may have to adopt for a new project and then starting the project once they’re really good at the technologies, frameworks, etc concerned.
- NKosmatos 3y ago
  That’s exactly how I understand it as well. The bad thing is that with the modern ways of working and with the fast paced environment, we don’t have anymore the “luxury” of dedicating project time to better ourselves. This is something that each one should/must/has to do on its own, instead of an activity that should be taken under consideration when project time plans are created ;-) I also liked this phrase from the post, “…creating things that are too good to be ignored, regardless of the setting, is an activity that almost without exception requires undivided attention”.
deafpolygon 3y ago
He's not really saying anything new.
ftxbro 3y ago
this was written by gpt, or if it wasn't then it should have been.
ftxbro 3y ago
Not just John Wick but also Squidward! In the world of SpongeBob SquarePants, the character Squidward Q. Tentacles exemplifies the concept of "Thinking Fast and Slow" in his problem-solving abilities. Squidward, being a more sophisticated and intellectual character compared to SpongeBob and Patrick, often finds himself in situations where he must rely on both System 1 and System 2 thinking. One situation that highlights Squidward's use of System 1 thinking is when he is tasked with completing a complex painting for an art exhibition. Squidward quickly uses his instinctive and emotional response to choose a subject matter that will appeal to the judges. By tapping into his creative side and relying on his fast, automatic thought processes, Squidward is able to produce a visually striking painting that catches the attention of the judges. On the other hand, Squidward also demonstrates his proficiency in System 2 thinking during situations where he needs to carefully analyze and make logical decisions. For instance, when he is entrusted with managing the Krusty Krab restaurant in Mr. Krabs' absence, Squidward employs slow, effortful, and deliberative thinking to ensure the smooth operation of the establishment. He meticulously manages inventory, schedules, and customer service, making logical and calculated decisions to maintain a high level of efficiency and customer satisfaction. Another example of Squidward's utilization of both thinking systems is when he engages in a musical competition. As a clarinet player, Squidward has honed his skills through countless hours of practice, allowing him to execute complex musical pieces effortlessly using System 1 thinking. However, when faced with a particularly challenging musical composition, Squidward switches to System 2 thinking to carefully analyze the notes, rhythms, and dynamics, ensuring an accurate and flawless performance. Through these examples, it becomes evident that Squidward harnesses the power of both fast and slow thinking to navigate various challenges and achieve success in his endeavors. He recognizes the importance of relying on instinctive and emotional responses when appropriate, as well as the need for deliberate and logical thinking in more complex scenarios. By seamlessly integrating both thinking systems, Squidward consistently demonstrates his mastery of "Thinking Fast and Slow" and consistently comes out on top in his endeavors.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
  This is only marginally more stupid than the actual book.
- 3y ago
exitb 3y ago
1. There are hundreds of people listed in the end credits, most of whom worked in a much more hectic manner. The film couldn’t have happened without them. 2. There are people who already know what Keanu Reeves needed to learn to play the role, but they’re not internationally recognizable actors. The movie wouldn’t make as much money without him playing the lead, only for very superficial reasons.
- actuallyalys 3y ago
  I'm not sure no. 1 contradicts the post's main point, but it certainly complicates it. There are definitely many people who are rapidly flipping between task to task (my sense is that producers, production assistants, and personal assistants fall into this category). There are also jobs like focus pullers and various techs who are working in a chaotic, changing environment, but are focused on one (difficult) task. It seems like a large film has people across varying both in how focused they are (few versus many tasks) and how responsive they have to be.
- irjustin 3y ago
  1. But that contrary-to-the-article doesn't really lead to greatness the way the film achieved it. Like the Dune films, there is a critical artistic dogma that exists and propels the movie to greatness. All hectic/frantic actions are in belief/support of that narrow focus. This applies to work in so many ways. The greatest restaurants exhibit this same focus/pattern. So it becomes introspective - what thing should you focus on to achieve your "greatness"? All hectic actions support that focus.
  - tgv 3y ago
    Greatness, another word that can join "genius" on the scrapheap.
fallat 3y ago
Weird "essay". The movie is hundreds of people other than Keanu also.
keiferski 3y ago
The work environment of the film industry is a bit different than most jobs too, even for the “technical” production staff that aren’t famous stars. It’s pretty common for people to work 60-hour weeks for a few months, then take the next 3 months off. I wonder if that kind of setup is even possible for the typical startup/software firm.
gnicholas 3y ago
I've read Cal's pieces when they've popped up from time to time. It seems like he's always banging the same drum, and that he doesn't realize how different his job is than most people's jobs (being married to a professor, I am familiar with the benefits of its unique cadence). Can anyone recommend posts he's written that perhaps show a different side of his thinking? Have there been any good analyses or critiques of his work, which describe the types of people his writing is useful for? As a founder, who necessarily wears a lot of hats, I find it to be aspirational but not especially actionable.
- A_Venom_Roll 3y ago
  I listen to his podcast on a regular basis and he does realize and emphasize that his job is different than most people jobs. The type of job his advice is most applicable to is the typical office job, involving people who receive a lot of emails, slack messages, and other requests during the day. This can really damage real productivity, due to context switching and 'being available' all the time. He gives strategies to minimize disruptions and ways to apply these. With regard to "banging the same drum", it's true that the core of his advice stays the same, but I really like his way of approaching these kind things. And repetition isn't necessarily bad. Being in a office job myself, I sometimes need to be reminded of the simple fact that I'm far more productive when I work in predetermined time blocks focusing on output. It's easy to fall into the trap of opening new emails and Slack messages all day long and wondering where all your time went.
- ftxbro 3y ago
  it always looks like some marketing blogspam to me, like the seth godin posts
- deleted 3y ago
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- TheAlchemist 3y ago
  While I share a bit of this feeling, I think what he says is true. And he does bang the same drum as you say, but it doesn't change the fact that he is mostly right. I worked for the most part in jobs related to trading - trading floors can be crazy. But once the mathematicians and modern quants arrived, suddenly everybody realized how much more powerful this slow, methodological approach is. I think it's similar with investing - if you do it right, it's ... boring. It should be boring, long term strategy. So people feel the urge to act. Trade something. Tune your portfolio a bit. etc etc. Don't do it ! Just sit down on your ass and wait !
moomin 3y ago
There’s a huge element missing here: the ability to take that risk. What would have happened if John Wick had bombed? Keanu Reeves would still have been a movie star, might have considered doing Marvel to raise his profile. In your regular-ass salaried job, what happens if you spent 8 months on something and have nothing to show for it?
gniv 3y ago
I think this is the featurette mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F9z0nQTt8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F9z0nQTt8A
Guthur 3y ago
There is quite a bit of short termism in some businesses, this allows for a direct deal of busyness and the cost can just be paid by more busyness in the future. The problem with a movie is that no amount of busyness in the future can resolve the cost of shoddy rushed work.
blowski 3y ago
Western economies are obsessed with why their productivity has flat-lined. Companies wonder why they have such high tech budgets and so little to show for it. Cal Newport says ”your tech people are spending 90% of their time context switching”. Perhaps these observations are connected. At an individual level, tech people get ahead by being very active on Slack. At a company and country level, we get ahead by organising our people in a way that senior engineers most of their time focused on solving difficult and valuable problems. We need to align individual progress with macro growth.
- ftxbro 3y ago
  > "Western economies are obsessed with why their productivity has flat-lined." Their productivity hasn't flatlined though. It is increasing. And increasing share of the productivity gains has been going to the richest ones.
t0bia_s 3y ago
While fight scenes and work behind may impress some, the story of John Wick is flat. I honestly don't remember what happend in previous episodes much.
epolanski 3y ago
I wouldn't define it "slow" productivity rather than "focused". Office workers too are often at their best productivity when they are focused on a specific task.
thom 3y ago
Most of the people working on a film aren’t Keanu Reeves spending four months learning to fight. Most of them are very similar to the distracted, fungible office workers mentioned in the article and nobody would have seen these films without them juggling their inboxes.
CapsAdmin 3y ago
I feel a big difference here is that that Reeves is also the product, whereas in a company the website/app/service is the product.
gwd 3y ago
Keanu spent 8 hours a day for months doing one thing. You can bet your bottom dollar that the director, Stahelski, didn't do that; and that if he had, the movie wouldn't have been a success. I think the proper recognition here is that there are different kinds of work. In order to scale past a single person, there needs to be coordination work; the work of coordination necessarily means that someone throws a ball to you, you ponder it briefly, and then toss it to someone else. The deep, full-throttled, do-only-one-thing kind of work that Keanu did was made possible by the juggle-dozens-of-obligations work that Stahelski and the other support staff did. Division of labor: Stahelski juggled the balls so that Keanu could focus. I think where this breaks down is where managers don't realize these different kinds of work. They must juggle lots of balls; this kind of juggling is necessary for scale; and usually people who do well as managers actually like the juggling at some level. So they naturally project that onto the people working for them. Whereas the ideal manager will recognize that their primary job is to juggle balls so that their stars can do a completely different kind of work than they do.
- wepple 3y ago
  Cal does actually address this in his book “Deep Work”; unfortunately in this blog post he takes a fairly myopic view, perhaps just to reiterate the value of deep work, for those for whom it makes sense. In the book, he has a section “what about Jack Dorsey” where he explains that the role of folks like a CEO is to make lots of small decisions fairly quickly, and therefore they’re constantly interrupt-driven. But most people get interrupted more than necessary and do focus work less than they could
- brandall10 3y ago
  Keanu wasn't producing anything - it was entirely skills acquisition. If anything, it was so the production could move faster, reducing takes, reducing the use of CGI or special camera work using a stunt double in his place, etc, ultimately creating a better, more believable product. Of course credit to Keanu for having the focus/drive to do this. He gets alot of flack for being a mediocre actor, but like Tom Cruise he is a fantastic action star. He IS Neo, he IS John Wick.
  - 3y ago
buster3000 3y ago
At first I wondered why such a link, devoid of anything substantial, was so highly upvoted. Then I saw who I wrote it.
otikik 3y ago
> I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. -- Bruce Lee

346 points by lawgimenez 3y ago

It seems like commenters have to do the authors job here since the author asks a good question then basically stops writing and doesn’t explore any of the ideas proposed.

deleted 3y ago

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Aqueous 3y ago

It often strikes me as difficult to fathom that it took only a couple engineers a few months to build the MVP of the company I work for - that has since grown to be a global, publicly traded corporation with many thousands of employees - but it somehow takes thousands of engineers multiple years to, in effect, build it again. In fact, it makes no sense whatsoever to me and can only be explained by how much time is thrown away, day after day, with all the busy work involved in prioritizing and coordinating their activity, and by the possibility that an awful lot of us are not contributing anything whatsoever. Is this incredibly wasteful utilization of labor really be the best way to do things? I cannot accept that it is. The coordination tax is simply too high. If people were just permitted to focus on something, anything, I feel the velocity of the entire organization would lift.

cjcenizal 3y ago
How much of your company’s revenue is earned through that product? If it’s significant then the cost of introducing regressions in quality or functionality goes up. As companies grow and mistakes become more costly, they become more risk-averse and invest more resources into reducing risk. This slows things down and requires more people.
- Aqueous 3y ago
  Very good point - a huge chunk of the slowdown also comes from all the work around ensuring operational excellence. Monitoring, dashboards, testing, logging, CI. It's an incredible amount of labor to create production quality software on a continuous basis.
  - yolovoe 3y ago
    Don't forget security updates, migrations, correctness and reliability. It's quick to get an MVP running that "mostly" works in the happy path. It's much more time consuming to get something that thoughtfully and correctly deals with most edge cases, and has some more 9s.

Havoc 3y ago

That strikes me as the classic manager schedule vs maker schedule with different words

slim 3y ago

neon noir makes me want to invent this genre

nosefrog 3y ago

Very interesting essay. Reminds me of how Donald Knuth describes his job: > Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study. https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html It's an aspiration for how I want my career to go, though I haven't been very effective at moving in that direction.

amelius 3y ago
Too bad the money always goes first to the people who are on the top, and then you have to hope some of it trickles down to the bottom.
systems 3y ago
I am not under the impression that Don Knuth books are accessible, I am under the impression that they are exactly the opposite His books are books you read them last and you add reading them in your CV as a lifetime achievement
senortumnus 3y ago
Odd question but are you reading Algorithms to Live By? This quote & a related anecdote features in the book. Or maybe this is just a really famous Knuth quote.
- wepple 3y ago
  It is indeed a very famous quote: Cal Newport (OP link) also quotes it in his book “Deep Work”
- nosefrog 3y ago
  I'm not reading it, though it sounds interesting. I found this quote when I was browsing through Donald Knuth's website 10 years ago for inspiration on where to take my life next.

arcanus 3y ago

> In office jobs, by contrast, productivity remains rooted in notions of busyness and multi-faceted activity. The most productive knowledge workers are those who stay on top of their inboxes and somehow juggle the dozens of obligations, from the small tasks to major projects, hurled in their direction every week. I disagree. I think this looks productive, but people who only do this will hit a terminal level and find themselves stuck. Getting above this, into Principle/Director/Executive ranks certainly requires being a great communicator, but also typically involves __success__. I see this as shipping a successful product, closing a key customer deal, etc. It's easy to see productive people and expect that being on top of email and product plans is what made them successful, but this is only an effect of their productivity and mastery of the product development. Note that John Wick did have great production values: it needed much more than 'just' Keano. That logistics happened in the background.

OldManRyan 3y ago
You might be misunderstanding what Cal Newport is saying here because he agrees with you. He is saying is the people who stay on top of their inboxes and multitask are perceived as being the most productive, not that they are in fact the most productive. He also wrote an entire book that might as well be about his hatred of email titled "A World Without Email," if you need further evidence of his position.
- xpe 3y ago
  Cal’s writing isn’t clear on where he lands. But he’s probably around to clarify, somewhere. Let’s all send him emails, tweets, etc and see how quickly he replies.
PKop 3y ago
You missed the sarcasm. The quoted statement is actually one that Cal does not agree with.

wonderwonder 3y ago

This is a good article. The amount of context switching I have to do day to day means my actual productivity is almost nothing. 4 to 8 meetings a day. 100+ emails Teams and slack constantly going off Yet I'm still supposed to produce actual quality code as well. It's like trying to work in a mosh pit

deterministic 3y ago
If you are in 4 or more meetings in a day and receive 100+ emails then your manager is incompetent and should be fired. The whole point of being a good manager is to maximise the real work produced by the team. Which means minimising interruptions.
binkHN 3y ago
Yep. And this is why my work calendar contains several hour blocks where I can focus on the things that I want to focus on and other blocks here and there to do the things you noted.
- wonderwonder 3y ago
  So is mine. People just ignore it, most of my meetings are large group meetings.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    The only solution is, with sufficient bravado, you can refuse the meetings and risk getting fired if need be. If you are good and they ain’t struggling then they probably will work around your preference and keep you. If you ain’t good work on that. If they are struggling then the decision is whether to stay (based on your ethics and situation) Too many meetings indicates some issue with the division or prioritization at work. Tell them if you do 2 unrelated tasks and switch between them then it is guaranteed they will get work product later than if you do one at a time. This is guaranteed. If the tasks are related it might be OK but this is a rare exception in coding. Building sheds it may be ok (lay all the foundations first). But then laying all the foundations is the task unit so again this might apply. Tell them that if management keep changing their mind, it is like calling the pizza restaurant and changing your order every 15 minutes. Food will come late. Also context switching loses time. For non technicals that don’t understand this give them an IQ test, them every 10 minutes pull the sheet away from them and swap it for a reading comp. test and then every 5 minutes tap them on the shoulder and ask about their pets. Just describing that means they should get it as almost every person had been subjected to those tests in interviews at one point.

doctor_eval 3y ago

I've literally just come home from a meeting with a colleague where we were discussing software/IT project management. We were discussing how terrible modern software project management generally is, and how identifying and focussing on a small number of priorities and clearing them is way more productive than doing "everything everywhere all at once". I've been working on turning this into a training course for my domain, and have come to ask the question, "why oh why do we prioritise deadlines over productivity"? Building a software team which can reliably deliver high quality features is way more efficient than grinding out huge piles of barely working crap to a deadline. But deadline management really is still how most of us are forced to do things. Formal Road Maps, Gantt Charts and Microsoft Project put productivity against the wall before the project even starts. Teams don't get to push back on features that they know will kill a project, and project managers seem to think their role is to hit people over the head until morale improves and features are delivered, no matter what. (I've had a project manager who quite literally refused to prioritise features because "they are all important"). What a stupid way to build things. No wonder 27%+ of software projects end up in the bin. Keanu Reeves focussed on the top priorities that everything else in the franchise relied on, delivered them with high quality, and was able to build the rest of the franchise around that central effort. Loads of work up front, much less work over time. I only wish this was how most companies approached software.

8note 3y ago
Deadlines are a proxy for dependencies The deadline is important because of scheduling, and whoever needs to use your thing has a certain stretch of time where they can implement their part. I've been liking to instead model the dependencies explicitly, and make the project plan a dag rather than a gannt charts. You could make a gannt charts from it, if you add all the estimates, and define the available parallelism, but the reason for doing some piece of work is whatever depends on it, and you can follow the dag up to the end feature
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  Don't disagree, but deadlines are a very indirect and poor proxy which focuses on time rather than deliverables. > whoever needs to use your thing has a certain stretch of time where they can implement their part But the idea that timelines are critical to a project's progress must be a myth, because software projects are almost always delivered late. The dependency is always on the feature or deliverable, not on the date. The depending team will work out how to cope because that's what happens every day in most software shops anyway. I'm not saying that deadlines and timelines are bad. I'm just saying that they should not be the core organising principle for delivering a project.

prpl 3y ago

In the sciences we just call this grad school

falcor84 3y ago

This whole post sounds like a very false dichotomy to me. The author makes it sound as if `trained eight hours a day, four months in a row` is a single activity. But of course that to be productive, Keanu had to be on top of many different activities, in different locations with different trainers, in addition to what I believe would have been a myriad of other work activities he had to perform for unrelated professional responsibilities. Keanu Reeves is not a monk practicing the same activity day in and day out, but rather a very busy professional, with a team of people working for him to help manage his schedule.

xpe 3y ago
I don’t think the author nor readers should take it as a false dichotomy. This style falls into a common pattern of highlighting two examples. There’s no language that says the two examples are disjoint.

dogleash 3y ago

This is a weird comparison. On one hand you have an independent contractor preparing for an engagement. The other is actively collaborating with a team to make a thing. The less bad (but still not great) comparison is to Reeves' allocation of time during principal photography. On multiple occasions I've spent weeks out of the office in training sessions. Even with on-site training we were pretty good at turning peoples' responsibilities off so they could maximize the time spent with someone we flew in for a few days. Or there's that big bit of training before getting a job at all: university. (That's another rabbit hole of arguing about topical focus within education, but still a portion of someone's life dedicated to learning.) I can kinda see what the author is trying to get at, but it's weird to use training to make a point about time management. Training is the main type of work I've seen offices willing to let someone go fully incommunicado. Unless you work somewhere that doesn't believe in training. And cramming an online module in between normal tasks isn't training, it's more like reading documentation (it's a con so the personnel software can get an entry that X is trained in Foo).

xpe 3y ago
> This is a weird comparison. Oh?… I like weird! (I don’t care for how you use the word though.) Stylistically, semantically, and philosophically I think you’ll get more mileage by avoiding your negative, constrained, unfamiliar-is-bad usage of “weird”. And now my unsolicited advice comes to a close.
- pproe 3y ago
  Maybe 'unfit', 'ill-suited' or 'irrelevant' would be more suitable. I love Cal's writing, but I feel like it's really going against his mantra (of Deep Work) to be making posts like this that try to pluck meaning out of nothing for the sake of marketing.
- helmholtz 3y ago
  Your comment is so bloody weird. It gives off vibes of those dudes who one day shave their heads and then spend the rest of their lives telling you you should get rid of anger and embrace the light and all that rubbish. Or of Christian assholes wailing on repeat "Jesus still loves you" whenever you disagree with them.

clouddrover 3y ago

> the film, made on a modest budget, went on to earn $86 million, kicking off a franchise that has since brought in hundreds of millions more. John Wick has done well as a franchise. Each subsequent movie has made more money than the last. That's good going across 4 movies. John Wick: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick#tab=summary John Wick 2: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-Two#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-Two#tab=... John Wick 3: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-3-Parabellum-(2019)#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-3-Parabe... John Wick 4: https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-4-(2023)#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/John-Wick-Chapter-4-(2023)... John Wick 3 had the best return on the budget.

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mdisc 3y ago

Funny that this is the exact opposite of "Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295) from a couple days ago here. Both speed and "slow productivity" have their place depending on the type of work you do. I think for junior and mid level ICs, and leadership/management focused people (maybe even senior ICs), speed is paramount. For staff/principal roles, the balance shifts toward being able to be able to focus more singularly on very challenging problems.

cudgy 3y ago
“I think for junior and mid level ICs, and leadership/management focused people (maybe even senior ICs), speed is paramount.” Why? I would argue they need to move slower and methodically so they understand what they are doing instead of thrashing a bunch of crappy code that has to be fixed by others. More experienced people can move faster because they are doing tasks that have parallels to prior tasks. For example, Keanu Reaves was able to singularly focus on “gun fu” as he is an experienced actor for whom remembering lines and handling himself on set is second nature, requiring less effort than from a rookie actor.
kraftman 3y ago
I don't think they are opposite. There's a difference between rushing to do something, and shortening the feedback loop. It says "slow productivity" but learning enough martial arts in 4 months to look good in a film doesn't sound slow to me, it sounds like he shortened the feedback loop as much as possible by learning every single day instead maybe once a week like a normal person would.
- nottorp 3y ago
  > It says "slow productivity" but learning enough martial arts in 4 months to look good in a film doesn't sound slow to me Remember the kung fu scenes in Matrix? It's not the first time Reeves has trained in martial arts. This time he crammed in a particular martial art for this movie. Tbh I'd bet he practices something regularly, just not often enough for it to make the news.

j2kun 3y ago

I don't believe that top actors don't have similarly busy schedules. Meetings with producers, reading scripts, practicing lines, jetsetting around the world for shoots, trying to maintain a family and social life, making public appearances, physical training, managing diets, makeup and costumes, having charitable foundations, etc. If anything they're busier than the average software dev.

kamaal 3y ago

>>In office jobs, by contrast, productivity remains rooted in notions of busyness and multi-faceted activity. The most productive knowledge workers are those who stay on top of their inboxes and somehow juggle the dozens of obligations, from the small tasks to major projects, hurled in their direction every week. The deal here is focus. You can focus on anything, anything. Even on emails. The real problem is most people aren't even doing that properly. People while away their time on Insta reels, Twitter, Facebook fighting etc etc. The best productivity example I saw was when I was working with a Chinese colleague. He would have 2 monitors. One split, exclusively for Slack, Jira and Email. He would watch every issue, every communication, every PR, every darnest little thing going on in the project. He would review, it, or learn about it. He knew what code was going in, what was getting deleted, the pipeline of features, bugs and what not. The other monitor was for the terminal, coding and other work tools. He would also find spare time in a day for TIL, and other long term learning. There was zero FB, Twitter, Insta, TikToK, whatever. There was lots of 'productive context switching'. Or in other words, the context switch was in the boundaries of work. The biggest lesson is not to avoid context switching. But to not waste time. Wasting time is the biggest time drain here. I define wasting time as doing something that is not relevant to the thing you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to have fun, working in periods would be equally unproductive to having fun. Same with work.

rhaway84773 3y ago

This is an interesting piece. I guess the programming equivalent of Reeves’s approach to John Wick would be a programmer spending a few weeks in simply becoming an expert in any new technologies they may have to adopt for a new project and then starting the project once they’re really good at the technologies, frameworks, etc concerned.

NKosmatos 3y ago
That’s exactly how I understand it as well. The bad thing is that with the modern ways of working and with the fast paced environment, we don’t have anymore the “luxury” of dedicating project time to better ourselves. This is something that each one should/must/has to do on its own, instead of an activity that should be taken under consideration when project time plans are created ;-) I also liked this phrase from the post, “…creating things that are too good to be ignored, regardless of the setting, is an activity that almost without exception requires undivided attention”.

deafpolygon 3y ago

He's not really saying anything new.

ftxbro 3y ago

this was written by gpt, or if it wasn't then it should have been.

ftxbro 3y ago

Not just John Wick but also Squidward! In the world of SpongeBob SquarePants, the character Squidward Q. Tentacles exemplifies the concept of "Thinking Fast and Slow" in his problem-solving abilities. Squidward, being a more sophisticated and intellectual character compared to SpongeBob and Patrick, often finds himself in situations where he must rely on both System 1 and System 2 thinking. One situation that highlights Squidward's use of System 1 thinking is when he is tasked with completing a complex painting for an art exhibition. Squidward quickly uses his instinctive and emotional response to choose a subject matter that will appeal to the judges. By tapping into his creative side and relying on his fast, automatic thought processes, Squidward is able to produce a visually striking painting that catches the attention of the judges. On the other hand, Squidward also demonstrates his proficiency in System 2 thinking during situations where he needs to carefully analyze and make logical decisions. For instance, when he is entrusted with managing the Krusty Krab restaurant in Mr. Krabs' absence, Squidward employs slow, effortful, and deliberative thinking to ensure the smooth operation of the establishment. He meticulously manages inventory, schedules, and customer service, making logical and calculated decisions to maintain a high level of efficiency and customer satisfaction. Another example of Squidward's utilization of both thinking systems is when he engages in a musical competition. As a clarinet player, Squidward has honed his skills through countless hours of practice, allowing him to execute complex musical pieces effortlessly using System 1 thinking. However, when faced with a particularly challenging musical composition, Squidward switches to System 2 thinking to carefully analyze the notes, rhythms, and dynamics, ensuring an accurate and flawless performance. Through these examples, it becomes evident that Squidward harnesses the power of both fast and slow thinking to navigate various challenges and achieve success in his endeavors. He recognizes the importance of relying on instinctive and emotional responses when appropriate, as well as the need for deliberate and logical thinking in more complex scenarios. By seamlessly integrating both thinking systems, Squidward consistently demonstrates his mastery of "Thinking Fast and Slow" and consistently comes out on top in his endeavors.

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
This is only marginally more stupid than the actual book.
3y ago

exitb 3y ago

1. There are hundreds of people listed in the end credits, most of whom worked in a much more hectic manner. The film couldn’t have happened without them. 2. There are people who already know what Keanu Reeves needed to learn to play the role, but they’re not internationally recognizable actors. The movie wouldn’t make as much money without him playing the lead, only for very superficial reasons.

actuallyalys 3y ago
I'm not sure no. 1 contradicts the post's main point, but it certainly complicates it. There are definitely many people who are rapidly flipping between task to task (my sense is that producers, production assistants, and personal assistants fall into this category). There are also jobs like focus pullers and various techs who are working in a chaotic, changing environment, but are focused on one (difficult) task. It seems like a large film has people across varying both in how focused they are (few versus many tasks) and how responsive they have to be.
irjustin 3y ago
1. But that contrary-to-the-article doesn't really lead to greatness the way the film achieved it. Like the Dune films, there is a critical artistic dogma that exists and propels the movie to greatness. All hectic/frantic actions are in belief/support of that narrow focus. This applies to work in so many ways. The greatest restaurants exhibit this same focus/pattern. So it becomes introspective - what thing should you focus on to achieve your "greatness"? All hectic actions support that focus.
- tgv 3y ago
  Greatness, another word that can join "genius" on the scrapheap.

fallat 3y ago

Weird "essay". The movie is hundreds of people other than Keanu also.

keiferski 3y ago

The work environment of the film industry is a bit different than most jobs too, even for the “technical” production staff that aren’t famous stars. It’s pretty common for people to work 60-hour weeks for a few months, then take the next 3 months off. I wonder if that kind of setup is even possible for the typical startup/software firm.

gnicholas 3y ago

I've read Cal's pieces when they've popped up from time to time. It seems like he's always banging the same drum, and that he doesn't realize how different his job is than most people's jobs (being married to a professor, I am familiar with the benefits of its unique cadence). Can anyone recommend posts he's written that perhaps show a different side of his thinking? Have there been any good analyses or critiques of his work, which describe the types of people his writing is useful for? As a founder, who necessarily wears a lot of hats, I find it to be aspirational but not especially actionable.

A_Venom_Roll 3y ago
I listen to his podcast on a regular basis and he does realize and emphasize that his job is different than most people jobs. The type of job his advice is most applicable to is the typical office job, involving people who receive a lot of emails, slack messages, and other requests during the day. This can really damage real productivity, due to context switching and 'being available' all the time. He gives strategies to minimize disruptions and ways to apply these. With regard to "banging the same drum", it's true that the core of his advice stays the same, but I really like his way of approaching these kind things. And repetition isn't necessarily bad. Being in a office job myself, I sometimes need to be reminded of the simple fact that I'm far more productive when I work in predetermined time blocks focusing on output. It's easy to fall into the trap of opening new emails and Slack messages all day long and wondering where all your time went.
ftxbro 3y ago
it always looks like some marketing blogspam to me, like the seth godin posts
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TheAlchemist 3y ago
While I share a bit of this feeling, I think what he says is true. And he does bang the same drum as you say, but it doesn't change the fact that he is mostly right. I worked for the most part in jobs related to trading - trading floors can be crazy. But once the mathematicians and modern quants arrived, suddenly everybody realized how much more powerful this slow, methodological approach is. I think it's similar with investing - if you do it right, it's ... boring. It should be boring, long term strategy. So people feel the urge to act. Trade something. Tune your portfolio a bit. etc etc. Don't do it ! Just sit down on your ass and wait !

moomin 3y ago

There’s a huge element missing here: the ability to take that risk. What would have happened if John Wick had bombed? Keanu Reeves would still have been a movie star, might have considered doing Marvel to raise his profile. In your regular-ass salaried job, what happens if you spent 8 months on something and have nothing to show for it?

gniv 3y ago

I think this is the featurette mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F9z0nQTt8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F9z0nQTt8A

Guthur 3y ago

There is quite a bit of short termism in some businesses, this allows for a direct deal of busyness and the cost can just be paid by more busyness in the future. The problem with a movie is that no amount of busyness in the future can resolve the cost of shoddy rushed work.

blowski 3y ago

Western economies are obsessed with why their productivity has flat-lined. Companies wonder why they have such high tech budgets and so little to show for it. Cal Newport says ”your tech people are spending 90% of their time context switching”. Perhaps these observations are connected. At an individual level, tech people get ahead by being very active on Slack. At a company and country level, we get ahead by organising our people in a way that senior engineers most of their time focused on solving difficult and valuable problems. We need to align individual progress with macro growth.

ftxbro 3y ago
> "Western economies are obsessed with why their productivity has flat-lined." Their productivity hasn't flatlined though. It is increasing. And increasing share of the productivity gains has been going to the richest ones.

t0bia_s 3y ago

While fight scenes and work behind may impress some, the story of John Wick is flat. I honestly don't remember what happend in previous episodes much.

epolanski 3y ago

I wouldn't define it "slow" productivity rather than "focused". Office workers too are often at their best productivity when they are focused on a specific task.

thom 3y ago

Most of the people working on a film aren’t Keanu Reeves spending four months learning to fight. Most of them are very similar to the distracted, fungible office workers mentioned in the article and nobody would have seen these films without them juggling their inboxes.

CapsAdmin 3y ago

I feel a big difference here is that that Reeves is also the product, whereas in a company the website/app/service is the product.

gwd 3y ago

Keanu spent 8 hours a day for months doing one thing. You can bet your bottom dollar that the director, Stahelski, didn't do that; and that if he had, the movie wouldn't have been a success. I think the proper recognition here is that there are different kinds of work. In order to scale past a single person, there needs to be coordination work; the work of coordination necessarily means that someone throws a ball to you, you ponder it briefly, and then toss it to someone else. The deep, full-throttled, do-only-one-thing kind of work that Keanu did was made possible by the juggle-dozens-of-obligations work that Stahelski and the other support staff did. Division of labor: Stahelski juggled the balls so that Keanu could focus. I think where this breaks down is where managers don't realize these different kinds of work. They must juggle lots of balls; this kind of juggling is necessary for scale; and usually people who do well as managers actually like the juggling at some level. So they naturally project that onto the people working for them. Whereas the ideal manager will recognize that their primary job is to juggle balls so that their stars can do a completely different kind of work than they do.

wepple 3y ago
Cal does actually address this in his book “Deep Work”; unfortunately in this blog post he takes a fairly myopic view, perhaps just to reiterate the value of deep work, for those for whom it makes sense. In the book, he has a section “what about Jack Dorsey” where he explains that the role of folks like a CEO is to make lots of small decisions fairly quickly, and therefore they’re constantly interrupt-driven. But most people get interrupted more than necessary and do focus work less than they could
brandall10 3y ago
Keanu wasn't producing anything - it was entirely skills acquisition. If anything, it was so the production could move faster, reducing takes, reducing the use of CGI or special camera work using a stunt double in his place, etc, ultimately creating a better, more believable product. Of course credit to Keanu for having the focus/drive to do this. He gets alot of flack for being a mediocre actor, but like Tom Cruise he is a fantastic action star. He IS Neo, he IS John Wick.
- 3y ago

buster3000 3y ago

At first I wondered why such a link, devoid of anything substantial, was so highly upvoted. Then I saw who I wrote it.

otikik 3y ago

> I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. -- Bruce Lee