9 ms·

I've long felt that my intelligence is only average, and I've always tried to compensate by working hard. It had been 20 years since my last calculus class whe

by unoti 14y ago

I've long felt that my intelligence is only average, and I've always tried to compensate by working hard. It had been 20 years since my last calculus class when I returned to college, and I was quite worried I'd not be able to keep up. I worked my way through most of a small calculus book before starting the class, to refresh what I'd forgotten. During the class, I spent something like 5-6 hours per day during the week working on Calculus, and around 10 hours per day on the weekends. I worked and reworked every problem until I fully understood what was going on, comparing my answers to the answer key for the odd problems, and computer algebra systems for the even ones when possible. I worked so hard it would have been embarrassing to admit it to my classmates. Only a retard would have to work so much, I thought, but I was determined to be the best I could. I ended up at the top of the class. The point is, if you're really determined, working hard can go a long way. The key is to try not to worry about the other people that make it look easy. Later I heard this quote: "If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all." - Michaelangelo

kiba 14y ago
It had been 20 years since my last calculus class when I returned to college The greatest problem with our educational system is to neglect the fact that students begin to forget immediately after graduation. All these years in k-12 education gradually turns to dust until only reading, writing, and some basic agelbra are left, and some career related knowledge. Trignometry? Biology? Chemistry? These are subjects that all adults once know in their high school years, now all forgotten. Instead of documentaries assuming we know chemistry, or trignometery, or biology, they introduced "DNA" as if we never been in a biology class. They only skims the top of the scientific knowledge cake because they never assume everybody knows. Imagine the complexity and increased believablity of fiction and non-fiction if they have to wrestle with an audience that know those things by heart, even if they only took a chemistry class that single semester? Alas, we forgotten and our educational dollars disappeared in a puff of smoke.
- bithive123 14y ago
  You seem to think education should be like putting music on an iPod. As with all skills, what doesn't find use decays. I believe education should create well rounded people by exposing them to the the breadth of human achievements in the arts as well as sciences. I don't remember all the books we read in English class either, but I appreciate literature more in general having been there. The real tragedy is that many educational programs emphasize the kind of rote learning you seem to want everyone to aspire to instead of critical thinking faculties which, properly instilled, will assert themselves for a lifetime.
  - kiba 14y ago
    I believe education should create well rounded people by exposing them to the the breadth of human achievements in the arts as well as sciences. I don't remember all the books we read in English class either, but I appreciate literature more in general having been there. I don't particularly care about English literature or any <subject x> for the sake of building a well rounded education. The more important thing is retaining what you learned and building on that. The real tragedy is that many educational programs emphasize the kind of rote learning you seem to want everyone to aspire to instead of critical thinking faculties which, properly instilled, will assert themselves for a lifetime. To think memorization is bad is incredibly short sighted and stupid. Would you like to look up a book every time you do programming? No. You remember certain methods and certain part of the standard library so that you don't have to spend 10 minutes googling method x to accomplish result y. Principles is nice and all, but what make you an efficient problem solver is because you have access to an inner world of factoids and knowledge. Sure, memorization for the sake of memorization is useless. That's why you learn critical thinking skills that you love so much so that memorization will be useful.
    - bithive123 14y ago
      I don't understand your tone. I never said memorization is "bad" or that I "love" critical thinking skills. I disagree that what makes people efficient problem solvers is having an "inner world of factoids". Knowledge isn't irrelevant, but knowing where to look is key. Sometimes the knowledge is internal, but the CS whiz who jumps into coding his own libraries for everything without having the wisdom to browse the standard documentation first is surely not a model of efficiency.
- theshadow 14y ago
  I don't see this as a problem at all. I don't know if remembering the entire body of knowledge by heart is even possible for the average human being. I like to compare learning in University and schools similar to how memory works in computers. When you are taking a course it is similar to transferring data over a slow 28 kbps modem onto the computer, the process is slow and frustrating however as the course goes on and you understand the material better it starts to percolate up to faster caches. When you write a final exam the material is in the L1 cache, you can instantaneously rattle off answers to complex problems like it's no one's business, there's a question on Red-Black Tree deletion- no problem, question about quick select - too easy! 5 years go by and you've not touched the subject in any meaningful way so of-course if someone asks you to write a Red-Black Tree or implement Quick Select you probably will not be able to do it from the top of your head. There's a cache miss as the material is no longer in the L1 cache, you have to go down to perhaps the harddrive, which involves dusting off that copy of CLRS and reviewing what all the cases of a Red-Black tree insertion and deletion are and within a couple of hours you'll be able to start implementing it. Sure it's not the same as writing the answer in 15 minutes on the exam but it's significantly faster than learning the material for the first time which would the equivalent of getting data over a network. This process works well enough, there's little that you've learned a long time ago that you can't pick up again in a relatively short amount of time. This property of brain to forget less use facts to make room for what you use more often has been acquired over a very long period of evolution. I don't know what schools can do to make sure that the students NEVER FORGET what they learn in a class. And imo to expect that is completely unreasonable.
  - kiba 14y ago
    I don't see this as a problem at all. I don't know if remembering the entire body of knowledge by heart is even possible for the average human being It's possible, if you practice. I don't know what schools can do to make sure that the students NEVER FORGET what they learn in a class. And imo to expect that is completely unreasonable. You can't do this, but adults could take some time out of their days to practice what they learned. That way, they will keep retaining what they learned over decades, and the amount of practices should keep going down. This process works well enough, there's little that you've learned a long time ago that you can't pick up again in a relatively short amount of time. Those residual knowledge help make practicing and maintenance of our existing knowledge much easier. We could take advantage of it. Anyway, if you want to retain everything you learned, you should take a look into spaced repetition which is a learning technique that help make knowledge maintenance an efficient process. All that is left is our educational system to recognize that knowledge maintenance is important.
gliese1337 14y ago
Reminds me of a quote from Teller of Penn & Teller (the magicians). I can't find the reference at the moment, but the point is that much of the time, tricks are only mysterious because most people are unable to imagine that maybe you just spent 6 hours a day for a month getting ready for it.
- mike 14y ago
  Are you thinking of the quote from this article? http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-Hi... "You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest."
- adwf 14y ago
  I read something similar in this interview: http://www.esquire.com/features/teller-magician-interview-1012 http://www.esquire.com/features/teller-magician-interview-10... "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect"
  - gliese1337 14y ago
    Yup, that's the one I was looking for. Thanks!
  - kamaal 14y ago
    No wonder most successful people just look lucky to the masses. Because they achieve feats which can't be achieved with ordinary efforts. If you go by the normal effort, it isn't surprising successful people look lucky, just like magic.
- adamnemecek 14y ago
  "Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth. You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest. My partner, Penn, and I once produced 500 live cockroaches from a top hat on the desk of talk-show host David Letterman. To prepare this took weeks. We hired an entomologist who provided slow-moving, camera-friendly cockroaches (the kind from under your stove don’t hang around for close-ups) and taught us to pick the bugs up without screaming like preadolescent girls. Then we built a secret compartment out of foam-core (one of the few materials cockroaches can’t cling to) and worked out a devious routine for sneaking the compartment into the hat. More trouble than the trick was worth? To you, probably. But not to magicians." [1] [1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-Hi...
swah 14y ago
And they probably perceived you as really smart instead of dedicated. :) I noticed something similar happens when I want to pickup some basic skill I wish I had, like juggling, shuffling decks of cards, or emacs or walking the slackline: first it seems impossible, then I insist for a few days, many hours per day, sleep on it, and then its trivial. But most people won't go to youtube to learn how to shuffle a deck of cards, and probably consider that very nerdy.
- unoti 14y ago
  I had to look up "walking a slackline"... fascinating! How long did it take you to learn?
  - swah 14y ago
    About 5 days I think to be able to mostly walk without falling. (The crazy tricks I won't even try, because that kind of agility doesn't go well with my body weight/motor coordination - I'm one of those kids who could never do ollies :P)
    - JadeNB 14y ago
      > (The crazy tricks I won't even try, because that kind of agility doesn't go well with my body weight/motor coordination - I'm one of those kids who could never do ollies :P) While I have no doubt that this is a carefully considered evaluation, I think one has to be careful making this kind of remark; just imagine the student who says "The crazy mathematics I won't even try, because that kind of thinking doesn't go well with my mindset --I'm one of those kids who could never do algebra."
wting 14y ago
It's funny to compare and contrast this article's responses with a recent one about gamifying his study for a Google interview: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4855928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4855928 The truth is people learn at different rates, and compensating intelligence with effort works a lot of the time.
- klibertp 14y ago
  It's not funny. But it's easy to explain. Practicing violin since before birth is a thing that is just impossible to do for anyone here not to mention not many would really like to play violin. As such, it's hypothetical, abstract situation that can be discussed safely. On the other hand, putting tremendous amount of work into preparation for Google interview is something everyone here could, but is not doing, and a good deal of people would really like to do (or, at least, they would like to work at Google). As such, it triggers defensive mechanisms, many of which we could see in the linked thread. It's not funny at all.
matwood 14y ago
Your story reminds of a girl I dated in college. Her and her sister were #2 and #3 in their HS. They were straight A students in college. People assumed they were just 'smart' and they obviously were not stupid, but what they didn't tell people was just how much they studied. 24 hour study sessions were common. Multiple egg timers around the house they shared going off at all hours during exam time. I was someone who had it easy in HS and almost failed out of college because I simple didn't know how to study. Watching these two taught me the level of effort required to really do well.
- GuiA 14y ago
  I have a similar story but it ends differently. I dated a girl in college who was #1 in her high school. Similar to your ex, she studied like crazy, and extended studying sessions without end were routine. She proceeded with college in the same way; and while it worked for the first ~2 years, she was completely burnt out and exhausted by graduation time, leaving her deeply depressed. While she had always intended on going to grad school, she instead gave up on that and is now working in a low paying, low intellectual demand manual job. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is.
  - goldfeld 14y ago
    I'm often impressed by how some people can command sheer levels of effort without being passionate about what they're doing. Not saying it's particularly the case. When you have that obstination coupled with fiery passion, you get an unstoppable force--like those who can trod on for a decade.
jordan0day 14y ago
You know, the title of the article is "Never mind talent, practice, practice, practice." I really think that this ability to doggedly focus, practice, and maintain this level of effort is, itself, a talent. I mean, I can't study for 10 minutes straight, much less 10 hours. It's certainly a talent I wish I had.
- TheCowboy 14y ago
  Speaking from personal experience, that talent itself can also be developed and improved. It's not easy, and can definitely take awhile. 'The Art of Learning' by Josh Waitzkin could be a good start for someone who wants to improve in this area. Of course, one could also learn how to make their study technique more effective so they don't need to spend 10 hours. See 'Your Memory: How It Works and How To Improve It' by Higbee for that.
- Retric 14y ago
  Few people in the US are shown how to study. People end up doing a wide range of things. But most of the methods that work seem to be something along the lines of: Clunking things so you use about 2/3 of your natural attention span 'studying' then review and repeat as needed. Get a good rhythm going and you can loose track of time. So, it's a good idea to take regular short breaks, just get back to it when your done. You need to cover enough material that reviewing is not quite trivial, but no so much that your mind starts to wonder.
- hosh 14y ago
  Concentration is not a talent. It's a very specific practice, fundamental to anything you want to accomplish. Concentration itself is a skill that grows with daily practice. When I was a kid, I had difficulty staying on the same task. My daydreams were (and still are) incredibly vivid. I had a lot of physical energy, and I wanted to run around as a kid. And when I can't, being stuck inside studying, I'd have near lucid daydreams of running around outside. Combined with being able to pick up many things up, I become more and more intolerant of my own mistakes and challenging situations. As I entered my early adulthood, my experiences of life started narrowing down as I avoided challenges. And when I try taking on those challenges, I'd run straight into them. It was later in life that I learned the methods for concentration practice. There are no shortcuts to concentration. There are no clever hacks. Searching for a shortcut is precisely why most people have difficulty concentrating. Your mind does not want to accept what you are doing here and now. So you think you have to "force" yourself to concentrate, and end up burning a lot of energy keeping you on track. This is NOT how you concentrate. Concentration grows a little bit each time you practice, and the more you practice, the more you learn about how your mind works. Growing the raw skill of concentration as you learn your primary art is itself the reason other skills take years of practice to master. It is also why, without practice, talent does not blossom into mastery. Someone asked me to post up a cheatsheet on how to practice concentration; maybe other people here will find it useful: http://www.quora.com/Meditation/Whats-a-nice-little-cheat-sheet-on-mindfulness-meditation/answer/Ho-Sheng-Hsiao http://www.quora.com/Meditation/Whats-a-nice-little-cheat-sh...
ramblerman 14y ago
This post has been really inspirational for me. Thank you for sharing. Just out of curiosity, how old were you when you took up calculus, and did you go back to college full time?
gitelep 14y ago
The point to me is, don't care about the rate at which others go at all. It is completely meaningless. People see my art and they think it came easy to me. I've been drawing and painting for 20 years. It wasn't easy. Lately, I weave in and out of painting, coding, and studying mathematics. The switch between the fields often has me feeling lost when initially starting back up into one or the other, since I sort of go through these manic cycles of learning rather than something continuous and balanced throughout. When I switch from painting to math or coding, I usually feel very dumb for a while, relearning all of the new terminology I have missed. It is often a significant blow to my ego, and over the years it has required me to develop sort of a thick skin to approaching sets of people who are technically minded, while my mind is still in the la-la land art world, and vice-verse. But I mean, out of everything I have approached to learn to do or learn about, the one thing I know that is true for all of them is that nothing is actually simple. Doing calculus and memorizing formula to apply to a very specific set of a problems requires a strong memory, which younger people tend have the advantage on (not myself though, 26 and my memory is garbage). But actually understanding the concepts, and being capable of applying them after you take the class, that's different. I surprised someone, in grad school I think, explaining how to calculate how large a container we would need to clean the espresso machine (it drips water through), based on some simple dimensions of the input container, and the flow rate. That's calculus. I knew a lot of students in engineering who did really well in the class, and are doing really well in their specific sub-field. But to actually understand what one is learning, that is different. Everyone can do it no matter what age, it just requires dedication and actually being able to think about what confuses you. And it is often a person's ego or fear of their ego appearing 'less than' that hinders progress in learning and doing. Or probably, it is always the case that that is why people stop learning and doing. It is not difficult to ask simple questions. I mean last night I spent about 6 hours thinking about what a point on a number line actually is. Had anyone seen my notes, they would probably look like they came from a 1st grade maths class. But I'm connecting it to many other topics I understand - and that is something those people don't see, the tangential thought process that develops along with my learning and questioning. So when someone asks a simple question that may seem trivial, instead of scoffing at the fact that that person does not know the answer, I prefer to ask myself "Why did they ask that question?", or, "Why is it important that this thing is so clearly defined or understood - what about this thing is necessary or important to understanding of the whole?". And those are my favorite kinds of questions to ask in learning, because it keeps every topic interesting.

by unoti 14y ago

kiba 14y ago

It had been 20 years since my last calculus class when I returned to college The greatest problem with our educational system is to neglect the fact that students begin to forget immediately after graduation. All these years in k-12 education gradually turns to dust until only reading, writing, and some basic agelbra are left, and some career related knowledge. Trignometry? Biology? Chemistry? These are subjects that all adults once know in their high school years, now all forgotten. Instead of documentaries assuming we know chemistry, or trignometery, or biology, they introduced "DNA" as if we never been in a biology class. They only skims the top of the scientific knowledge cake because they never assume everybody knows. Imagine the complexity and increased believablity of fiction and non-fiction if they have to wrestle with an audience that know those things by heart, even if they only took a chemistry class that single semester? Alas, we forgotten and our educational dollars disappeared in a puff of smoke.

bithive123 14y ago
You seem to think education should be like putting music on an iPod. As with all skills, what doesn't find use decays. I believe education should create well rounded people by exposing them to the the breadth of human achievements in the arts as well as sciences. I don't remember all the books we read in English class either, but I appreciate literature more in general having been there. The real tragedy is that many educational programs emphasize the kind of rote learning you seem to want everyone to aspire to instead of critical thinking faculties which, properly instilled, will assert themselves for a lifetime.
- kiba 14y ago
  I believe education should create well rounded people by exposing them to the the breadth of human achievements in the arts as well as sciences. I don't remember all the books we read in English class either, but I appreciate literature more in general having been there. I don't particularly care about English literature or any <subject x> for the sake of building a well rounded education. The more important thing is retaining what you learned and building on that. The real tragedy is that many educational programs emphasize the kind of rote learning you seem to want everyone to aspire to instead of critical thinking faculties which, properly instilled, will assert themselves for a lifetime. To think memorization is bad is incredibly short sighted and stupid. Would you like to look up a book every time you do programming? No. You remember certain methods and certain part of the standard library so that you don't have to spend 10 minutes googling method x to accomplish result y. Principles is nice and all, but what make you an efficient problem solver is because you have access to an inner world of factoids and knowledge. Sure, memorization for the sake of memorization is useless. That's why you learn critical thinking skills that you love so much so that memorization will be useful.
  - bithive123 14y ago
    I don't understand your tone. I never said memorization is "bad" or that I "love" critical thinking skills. I disagree that what makes people efficient problem solvers is having an "inner world of factoids". Knowledge isn't irrelevant, but knowing where to look is key. Sometimes the knowledge is internal, but the CS whiz who jumps into coding his own libraries for everything without having the wisdom to browse the standard documentation first is surely not a model of efficiency.
theshadow 14y ago
I don't see this as a problem at all. I don't know if remembering the entire body of knowledge by heart is even possible for the average human being. I like to compare learning in University and schools similar to how memory works in computers. When you are taking a course it is similar to transferring data over a slow 28 kbps modem onto the computer, the process is slow and frustrating however as the course goes on and you understand the material better it starts to percolate up to faster caches. When you write a final exam the material is in the L1 cache, you can instantaneously rattle off answers to complex problems like it's no one's business, there's a question on Red-Black Tree deletion- no problem, question about quick select - too easy! 5 years go by and you've not touched the subject in any meaningful way so of-course if someone asks you to write a Red-Black Tree or implement Quick Select you probably will not be able to do it from the top of your head. There's a cache miss as the material is no longer in the L1 cache, you have to go down to perhaps the harddrive, which involves dusting off that copy of CLRS and reviewing what all the cases of a Red-Black tree insertion and deletion are and within a couple of hours you'll be able to start implementing it. Sure it's not the same as writing the answer in 15 minutes on the exam but it's significantly faster than learning the material for the first time which would the equivalent of getting data over a network. This process works well enough, there's little that you've learned a long time ago that you can't pick up again in a relatively short amount of time. This property of brain to forget less use facts to make room for what you use more often has been acquired over a very long period of evolution. I don't know what schools can do to make sure that the students NEVER FORGET what they learn in a class. And imo to expect that is completely unreasonable.
- kiba 14y ago
  I don't see this as a problem at all. I don't know if remembering the entire body of knowledge by heart is even possible for the average human being It's possible, if you practice. I don't know what schools can do to make sure that the students NEVER FORGET what they learn in a class. And imo to expect that is completely unreasonable. You can't do this, but adults could take some time out of their days to practice what they learned. That way, they will keep retaining what they learned over decades, and the amount of practices should keep going down. This process works well enough, there's little that you've learned a long time ago that you can't pick up again in a relatively short amount of time. Those residual knowledge help make practicing and maintenance of our existing knowledge much easier. We could take advantage of it. Anyway, if you want to retain everything you learned, you should take a look into spaced repetition which is a learning technique that help make knowledge maintenance an efficient process. All that is left is our educational system to recognize that knowledge maintenance is important.

gliese1337 14y ago

Reminds me of a quote from Teller of Penn & Teller (the magicians). I can't find the reference at the moment, but the point is that much of the time, tricks are only mysterious because most people are unable to imagine that maybe you just spent 6 hours a day for a month getting ready for it.

mike 14y ago
Are you thinking of the quote from this article? http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-Hi... "You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest."
adwf 14y ago
I read something similar in this interview: http://www.esquire.com/features/teller-magician-interview-1012 http://www.esquire.com/features/teller-magician-interview-10... "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect"
- gliese1337 14y ago
  Yup, that's the one I was looking for. Thanks!
- kamaal 14y ago
  No wonder most successful people just look lucky to the masses. Because they achieve feats which can't be achieved with ordinary efforts. If you go by the normal effort, it isn't surprising successful people look lucky, just like magic.
adamnemecek 14y ago
"Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth. You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest. My partner, Penn, and I once produced 500 live cockroaches from a top hat on the desk of talk-show host David Letterman. To prepare this took weeks. We hired an entomologist who provided slow-moving, camera-friendly cockroaches (the kind from under your stove don’t hang around for close-ups) and taught us to pick the bugs up without screaming like preadolescent girls. Then we built a secret compartment out of foam-core (one of the few materials cockroaches can’t cling to) and worked out a devious routine for sneaking the compartment into the hat. More trouble than the trick was worth? To you, probably. But not to magicians." [1] [1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-Hi...

swah 14y ago

And they probably perceived you as really smart instead of dedicated. :) I noticed something similar happens when I want to pickup some basic skill I wish I had, like juggling, shuffling decks of cards, or emacs or walking the slackline: first it seems impossible, then I insist for a few days, many hours per day, sleep on it, and then its trivial. But most people won't go to youtube to learn how to shuffle a deck of cards, and probably consider that very nerdy.

unoti 14y ago
I had to look up "walking a slackline"... fascinating! How long did it take you to learn?
- swah 14y ago
  About 5 days I think to be able to mostly walk without falling. (The crazy tricks I won't even try, because that kind of agility doesn't go well with my body weight/motor coordination - I'm one of those kids who could never do ollies :P)
  - JadeNB 14y ago
    > (The crazy tricks I won't even try, because that kind of agility doesn't go well with my body weight/motor coordination - I'm one of those kids who could never do ollies :P) While I have no doubt that this is a carefully considered evaluation, I think one has to be careful making this kind of remark; just imagine the student who says "The crazy mathematics I won't even try, because that kind of thinking doesn't go well with my mindset --I'm one of those kids who could never do algebra."

wting 14y ago

It's funny to compare and contrast this article's responses with a recent one about gamifying his study for a Google interview: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4855928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4855928 The truth is people learn at different rates, and compensating intelligence with effort works a lot of the time.

klibertp 14y ago
It's not funny. But it's easy to explain. Practicing violin since before birth is a thing that is just impossible to do for anyone here not to mention not many would really like to play violin. As such, it's hypothetical, abstract situation that can be discussed safely. On the other hand, putting tremendous amount of work into preparation for Google interview is something everyone here could, but is not doing, and a good deal of people would really like to do (or, at least, they would like to work at Google). As such, it triggers defensive mechanisms, many of which we could see in the linked thread. It's not funny at all.

matwood 14y ago

Your story reminds of a girl I dated in college. Her and her sister were #2 and #3 in their HS. They were straight A students in college. People assumed they were just 'smart' and they obviously were not stupid, but what they didn't tell people was just how much they studied. 24 hour study sessions were common. Multiple egg timers around the house they shared going off at all hours during exam time. I was someone who had it easy in HS and almost failed out of college because I simple didn't know how to study. Watching these two taught me the level of effort required to really do well.

GuiA 14y ago
I have a similar story but it ends differently. I dated a girl in college who was #1 in her high school. Similar to your ex, she studied like crazy, and extended studying sessions without end were routine. She proceeded with college in the same way; and while it worked for the first ~2 years, she was completely burnt out and exhausted by graduation time, leaving her deeply depressed. While she had always intended on going to grad school, she instead gave up on that and is now working in a low paying, low intellectual demand manual job. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is.
- goldfeld 14y ago
  I'm often impressed by how some people can command sheer levels of effort without being passionate about what they're doing. Not saying it's particularly the case. When you have that obstination coupled with fiery passion, you get an unstoppable force--like those who can trod on for a decade.

jordan0day 14y ago

You know, the title of the article is "Never mind talent, practice, practice, practice." I really think that this ability to doggedly focus, practice, and maintain this level of effort is, itself, a talent. I mean, I can't study for 10 minutes straight, much less 10 hours. It's certainly a talent I wish I had.

TheCowboy 14y ago
Speaking from personal experience, that talent itself can also be developed and improved. It's not easy, and can definitely take awhile. 'The Art of Learning' by Josh Waitzkin could be a good start for someone who wants to improve in this area. Of course, one could also learn how to make their study technique more effective so they don't need to spend 10 hours. See 'Your Memory: How It Works and How To Improve It' by Higbee for that.
Retric 14y ago
Few people in the US are shown how to study. People end up doing a wide range of things. But most of the methods that work seem to be something along the lines of: Clunking things so you use about 2/3 of your natural attention span 'studying' then review and repeat as needed. Get a good rhythm going and you can loose track of time. So, it's a good idea to take regular short breaks, just get back to it when your done. You need to cover enough material that reviewing is not quite trivial, but no so much that your mind starts to wonder.
hosh 14y ago
Concentration is not a talent. It's a very specific practice, fundamental to anything you want to accomplish. Concentration itself is a skill that grows with daily practice. When I was a kid, I had difficulty staying on the same task. My daydreams were (and still are) incredibly vivid. I had a lot of physical energy, and I wanted to run around as a kid. And when I can't, being stuck inside studying, I'd have near lucid daydreams of running around outside. Combined with being able to pick up many things up, I become more and more intolerant of my own mistakes and challenging situations. As I entered my early adulthood, my experiences of life started narrowing down as I avoided challenges. And when I try taking on those challenges, I'd run straight into them. It was later in life that I learned the methods for concentration practice. There are no shortcuts to concentration. There are no clever hacks. Searching for a shortcut is precisely why most people have difficulty concentrating. Your mind does not want to accept what you are doing here and now. So you think you have to "force" yourself to concentrate, and end up burning a lot of energy keeping you on track. This is NOT how you concentrate. Concentration grows a little bit each time you practice, and the more you practice, the more you learn about how your mind works. Growing the raw skill of concentration as you learn your primary art is itself the reason other skills take years of practice to master. It is also why, without practice, talent does not blossom into mastery. Someone asked me to post up a cheatsheet on how to practice concentration; maybe other people here will find it useful: http://www.quora.com/Meditation/Whats-a-nice-little-cheat-sheet-on-mindfulness-meditation/answer/Ho-Sheng-Hsiao http://www.quora.com/Meditation/Whats-a-nice-little-cheat-sh...

ramblerman 14y ago

This post has been really inspirational for me. Thank you for sharing. Just out of curiosity, how old were you when you took up calculus, and did you go back to college full time?

gitelep 14y ago

The point to me is, don't care about the rate at which others go at all. It is completely meaningless. People see my art and they think it came easy to me. I've been drawing and painting for 20 years. It wasn't easy. Lately, I weave in and out of painting, coding, and studying mathematics. The switch between the fields often has me feeling lost when initially starting back up into one or the other, since I sort of go through these manic cycles of learning rather than something continuous and balanced throughout. When I switch from painting to math or coding, I usually feel very dumb for a while, relearning all of the new terminology I have missed. It is often a significant blow to my ego, and over the years it has required me to develop sort of a thick skin to approaching sets of people who are technically minded, while my mind is still in the la-la land art world, and vice-verse. But I mean, out of everything I have approached to learn to do or learn about, the one thing I know that is true for all of them is that nothing is actually simple. Doing calculus and memorizing formula to apply to a very specific set of a problems requires a strong memory, which younger people tend have the advantage on (not myself though, 26 and my memory is garbage). But actually understanding the concepts, and being capable of applying them after you take the class, that's different. I surprised someone, in grad school I think, explaining how to calculate how large a container we would need to clean the espresso machine (it drips water through), based on some simple dimensions of the input container, and the flow rate. That's calculus. I knew a lot of students in engineering who did really well in the class, and are doing really well in their specific sub-field. But to actually understand what one is learning, that is different. Everyone can do it no matter what age, it just requires dedication and actually being able to think about what confuses you. And it is often a person's ego or fear of their ego appearing 'less than' that hinders progress in learning and doing. Or probably, it is always the case that that is why people stop learning and doing. It is not difficult to ask simple questions. I mean last night I spent about 6 hours thinking about what a point on a number line actually is. Had anyone seen my notes, they would probably look like they came from a 1st grade maths class. But I'm connecting it to many other topics I understand - and that is something those people don't see, the tangential thought process that develops along with my learning and questioning. So when someone asks a simple question that may seem trivial, instead of scoffing at the fact that that person does not know the answer, I prefer to ask myself "Why did they ask that question?", or, "Why is it important that this thing is so clearly defined or understood - what about this thing is necessary or important to understanding of the whole?". And those are my favorite kinds of questions to ask in learning, because it keeps every topic interesting.