3 ms·

You were an undergrad when you read this, and you feel old? ;) (I was 15 years into my career when Eric wrote that. I really, really, feel old now) But I'd lov

• wsxcde 12y ago
  I started writing a long reply to this and realized I was rambling a little bit. I think there are two key insights. Sometimes if you're really good at what you do, you might get stuck in a local maximum. And the only way to break out of that is to try something completely different. This involves learning completely new things and is a little uncomfortable because it could be really slow going in the beginning. The second insight is that this slow progress is actually okay. Matt Frazier who has a popular running blog once wrote that most people overestimate the progress they can make in a year and underestimate the progress they can make in a decade. So that's the perspective I use for a lot of my goals. I'm fine with not becoming an expert in, say, first order theorem provers by the end of year. But I would like to make slow progress towards that goal and achieve it hopefully by the end of decade. And really this is a very very achievable goal and all I need to do to get there is learn just a little bit more each day. As a side note, I think a lot of people don't even try new things because they realize how much work it is to become good at these things. So just trying, i.e., maintaining a d/dt !=0 gives one a huge advantage over everyone else.