"When they score the winning point or sell their company for millions — you're seeing them in their moment of glory. What you don't see is the thousands of hours of preparation. You don't see the self doubt, the lost sleep, the lonely nights spent working. You don't see the moment they started. The moment they were just like you, wondering how they could ever be good."
This. Too often we hyperbolize the achievement at the expense of the work. Important to realize and appreciate that no one backs into success accidentally.
This reminds me of what Einstein had to say about discovering Relativity.. "In light of knowledge attained, the happy achievement seems almost a matter of course, and any intelligent student can grasp it without too much trouble. But the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alterations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it."
“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because… All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.” – Mark Cuban
I don't practice every day because I'm disciplined. I practice every day because I'm obsessed. I love dancing and my body craves it. If I didn't have this raw hunger, there's no way I would've had the discipline to practice every day.
This raw hunger is the part you can't fake. You might think you want something, but once you take a few steps toward it, you lose your drive. The trick seems to be connecting with a deep-down genuine intuitive desire and going with it. Once you're on that train, it's hard to imagine not walking the path towards your goal every day. More interesting than how to walk the path, for me, is how to find genuine hunger inside yourself...
Hey, I'm the dancer in the video. Totally agree with connecting with that deep-down hunger. I've tried many things - and quit many things. It's okay to quit. Quitting gives you the freedom to find the thing that you are truly passionate about.
That's a great point. I think we hear "winners never quit" so often that we think quitting is a "bad thing". But it's important to quit what you don't like to do so you don't lose that passion.
Passion is something that has been coming up in job interviews lately. Recruiters and managers keep saying "Your technical skills are great, but we didn't think you were passionate enough" and asking "What is it that really drives you?".
After spending my teens and 20s learning to accept that I can't have what I want, I'm having it thrust in front of me with people asking why I don't act like I want it.
Start by eating right, exercising, and forcing yourself. pick a small goal and achieve it. These things can help you establish a pattern of self discipline. Part of it can be fake it till you make it. But getting yourself moving, and the exercise part, can help get yourself into the right frame of mind and help defeat certain kinds of problems that can interfere with finding your drive.
This one thing is why I'm a programmer by profession. I still code almost everyday. Lots of it is just playing around and will never actually be published to the world. It's practice. I've never gone to school for it. It's just something I couldn't stop doing. I'm obsessed. Now I work for google.
People assume I must be epic smart when they hear I work for google. The reality is I'm just obsessed.
Her post is spot on. Daily practice does pay off and can work for any discipline.
I often say this to my guys whenever they ask me how I'm able to write code so fast and elegantly. Back story, I'm much younger than they are (29 as opposed to 35+). I was decent at writing software, but still wasn't that great. I'm a lot better than I am two years ago, but it was the result of learning little things everyday.
There's a fundamental to doing very well at something.
1) Know where you want to go
2) Spending time with your goal
Its exactly like a kid who wants to be a pro baseball player. He just doesn't think he can do it. He has posters of his favorite player in his room. Has his favorite team's hat on. Never leaves home with out a ball and a glove. Learns the lingo. Mimicks his favorite players' batting stance and throwing motion (on and off the field). Looks up stats. Looks up tutorials and common practices (for in game and for training).
Oh and watches the games.
Its all about putting yourself in that world. A lady in a recent TED talk mentioned that you should "Fake it until you become it", not "Fake it until you make it". Its the embodiment. If you want to be great at dance, just start dancing. Same for sports, politics, medicine. ANYTHING! Spend time in your chosen field, even if its for 10mins a day. You'd be surprise how much you'd grown.
Many people cannot get out of their daily routine. So they are experts of just living. But one can only imagine how amazing it is to change things up. A whole new world opens up. And to me, that's fantastic!
So the obvious question: What did you focus on that let you improve way more than other people? I do write code and learn something new every day and while I would say that I have improved a lot in the last few years I am still ways away of where I would like to be. Somehow I have the feeling this is not going to change.
I imagine that everyone has to decide specifically where they want to improve and figure out how to work precisely on that, but I would be interested to hear what exactly has worked for you?
paulkoer, what I did to become better was not to study techniques. I've actually did two specific things...
1) On the job full stack developing (by force). I had no choice really. All the other developers left leaving me as the loan developer. At that time I thought of ...
a) Leaving the organization myself -
Since my skill level wasn't that great (Only thing I knew was how to build web pages with Microsoft's VS tools) I would've became a junior developer somewhere else. Or worse, went back to help desk. I easily passed on that idea.
b) Learning all there is about the current environment that I'm developing on at work. This was tough especially since I was the only developer and working as a help desk tech. To do so I had to go through a lot of sleepless nights and hair pulling to deliver the product. I also showed up on the weekend at my office to finish up projects even though I didn't get paid for that work. I also had to really pinpoint the things I was afraid of (e.g. taking on tough tasks, JavaScript, asp.net 4.0, setting up databases, deploying systems in different environments, documentation, reading other people's code, reading/using open source software, etc.). It sounds silly to me now, but before that decision I really didn't want to deal with the pain of learning that stuff (and was glad to let the senior guys deal with).
2) Work on projects of my own outside the work. I started working on my site (artJutsu.com which is just a prototype of an idea right now) around the time the developers at work were leaving the organization. I wanted to get better, but I hate just reading tutorial after tutorial. The best way for me to learn something is to create something, get stuck, and then overcome it. The whole "Scratch your own itch".
This ended up not only helping me skill wise, but helping the organization that I work with. I'm able to develop software very quickly and (most importantly) correctly. Not only that but with these new skills, I am able to correct a lot of outstanding problems as well as build applications much more robustly. Its amazing what I've learned in the past 2 years just by surrounding myself in this field.
I've always wanted to start a business, and you don't do that just by thinking about it. You have to "put your nose to the grindstone". Now you don't have to go all out like I did. I would suggest to do #2 on my list. Think of a project (or join mines lol) and get yourself into some trouble with it (and you will :D). Think through it, and overcome. Trust me you're a lot smarter than you think, but it does take some work. Some "blood, sweat, and tears".
The good thing to know is that you are not alone. There are other people out there going through the same thing. The ones who are good and efficient are usually willing to help. All you have to do is ask.
This reminded me a lot of a previous HN story about a guy who did a sketch and painting every day for a year. The results from start to finish were stunning:
> I don't practice every day because I'm disciplined. I practice every day because I'm obsessed. I love dancing and my body craves it. If I didn't have this raw hunger, there's no way I would've had the discipline to practice every day.
Oh, come on. Enough with the personal development/startup advice bullshit habit of redefining every word to make a point.
Especially when two lines of text later you can read: "If you practice something every day, you're guaranteed to get good at it."
Obsession is a mental activity that consumes people. Discipline to act on this obsession often translate into improvement in the physical world but obsession and motivation alone don't make it. Discipline which brings continuous repeat of the activity is the source of improvement.
Some of us continuously have to get better at new things or learn new things in our professional life, which might be making it harder to learn new things outside of work. There are so many things that I would like to invest a year to get better at, outside of work. For some reason, I cannot manage the process of simultaneously self learning new things in completely different domains. Either one or both of the self-learning threads get sloppy for me. Perhaps, because self-learning is also an exploratory process so it needs time investment in large chunks, or because our learning resources are limited.
I think you're creating a false dichotomy in your mind though, since a lot of these other things you learn will actually be part of your down-time so to speak and they will cross-pollinate more than you think.
In this video you see more than just learning to dance for example, you see someone going from being afraid to fully express herself to purposefully giving everything she's got in the moment; a very powerful skill to have.
I recently started a writing course for example and I've been finding parallels between writing and coding that've been incredibly helpful in starting to do persuasive copy in my startup.
Or you could just, y'know, dance. However you want. Like children do, before we tell them they should be ashamed. "Dance like no-one's watching" is really easy to do when you're on your own.
But this seems good too.
EDIT: upon reading this again I realise it's a pretty worthless and stupid thing to say, but I can't really delete it now because someone's replied. Sorry people.
It's not just dancing though. I dance as well, and sometimes people tell me to stop, but I frankly don't care about those people. If you want to dance, dance. If you want to sing, sing. If you want to program, program. And frankly, I used to dance horribly in the beginning.
That's exactly what I'm doing on my latest side project. I'm the type of guy that keeps attempting side projects. I'm passionate at first and then all at once I lose interest and stop. Or I realize I should rewrite and lose interest in the middle of the rewrite. This time I'm doing it differently. Ever since I've started I try to work on as little as possible but I work on it every day. So far so good. I have the urge to restart using cooler technology but I've been resisting.
I'm a little concerned though because I'm about to go on a trip where I won't be able to work on it for 5 days. I hope I don't come back from the trip and lose all interest.
Maybe try sitting down for X minutes and just brainstorming, or thinking about, your project? I've often found that it's sometimes just keeping the idea in your mind every day is effective in continuing the chain.
Some people don't like the style of dance in the video (especially on the YouTube video, but I suppose the lesson to be learnt here is to never read YouTube comments), but complaining about that is completely missing the point. The approach she used to get there works for any other style of dance and many other things in life. It's why I have five juggling balls...
A year is much too long. I wanted to learn to swing dance, coming from a starting point of absolute incompetence. I took lessons once a week for about 20 weeks, and practiced 3 nights a week. Halfway through I was very comfortable, and could have continued without the lessons. By the end I was very good. It's not that hard. And if I knew it was that easy...
But you were focusing on a single style. You can finish a single college course in less than 2 weeks, but the entire curricullum will take you at least a year.
Thing is though that with diet and exercise it can be really easy being very dedicated to not doing the right thing! It's also very easy to get side tracked into being too dedicated to gathering information and not dedicated enough to doing something :-) I'd be interested to know what your methodology was?
Man I read everything I could possibly read. I read bodybuilding.com for years, reddit.com/r/fitness, t-nation, etc. I realized the following that helped me immensely:
- Calories, overall, are mostly the only thing that matters.
Lose weight? Less calories than your maintenance calories. Gain? Eat more above maintenance.
- Lifting weights is the most efficient way of losing weight or building muscle because you have an equal amount of resistance every workout. If you run, you can run 10km one week, 15 the next, and so on and so on. With lifting, its (mostly) the same workout, but the weight increases, so the intensity is always the same.
- Lifting, sleeping correctly, and eating really well will create a beautiful trifecta in your life. You don't get irritated, you're crazy confident, you love yourself, it helps SO much with depression, you are more focus and aware. Life is just better, you genuinely love life.
Every day I wake up BURSTING out of my bed with energy. None of that grogginess.
I basically just did powerlifting, (3 days a week with deadlifts, bench, squat, and technical weightlifting for fun like powercleans, cleans, front squats, clean and jerks).
Absolutely fantastic and inspiring story! I like your point that it's more than lifting. If you don't eat well, and don't get enough sleep, you do all that effort lifting to not get a benefit. Kind of like working for 8 hours and saying, "You only need to pay me for 5."
One question though... Doesn't your theory of "Just add weight" apply to running too? Instead of weight, you add speed. So if 10km over three 25 minute workouts gets too easy, then run 11 in the same time. Then 12... Then 13... Keep the target intensity (heart rate) the same. Similar applies to biking, swimming, incline walking, or any other cardio activity.
Don't get stuck to age. Just talk with your doctor, and ramp up slowly. A friend started at 65 after retirement, and he is doing great. Although, he was able to hire a coach, and he was already active before that.
I started doing Salsa over a year ago, and more recently Bachata. Probably the single best scary decision I've ever made.
It's my view that when you're dancing, I mean really dancing, everything else just fades away. It's just you, the music, and if it's a partner dance, your partner. It's practically a form of meditation. Probably one of the ultimate cures for depression.
I started dancing Boogie Woogie two years ago. A month ago us 5 dance-couples danced a choreographed routine in front of ~600 people having paid to watch us and other dancers. It was the scariest thing I've ever done walking in, and walking off the stage was maybe my proudest moment ever. Weirdly enough.
So I second your recommendation of starting to dance. And I recommend Boogie Woogie. It's a fun dance with a lot of moving and playing. Look up Torbjørn and Susanne on YouTube, the World Champions.
In addition to the specific type of dance, also take ballet technique classes. While it's unlikely to reach a performance level of ballet in one year the core physical habits that are trained carry over to all types of dance. Check the resume of any of the pros or contestants on the various tv competitions and you'll see ballet training.
But don't worry, the 10k hours rule is certainly in effect buy it really does not take a full year to get great results and have fun, just dance anywhere you can! Dance like no one is watching. Just Dance.
I got much inspiration from this. I like the Nietzche quote at the end which is quite different from the usual übermench stuff everybody uses:
"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."
I found the other part to be equally true:
"And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.""
Our body/brain needs its learning time. You can't rush things. But you can't force things either. If repeating stuff every day feels like a chore, you should try to find other way to do it. Like learning computer stuff: from a book, a blog post, experimenting with random code from Github.
When the thing you are trying to learn becomes something you can't feel like not doing, learning will happen without consious effort. Variety and interest are hard to conjure if you fail all the time or your resistance to change (be it in strength or memory) is great, but finding a different tack on things can make things easy again.
Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing and let things lie for a bit. When you have a goal, you move closer to it just by it being there. Measuring your progress externally (like this video, bugging friends to read your stuff, pull requests to open source projects) helps you learn from mistakes. Mistakes are better way to progress, since I can easily analyze them as opposed to success: what I did do to succeed?
I can only agree with this post. When I got to college, I somehow ended up signing up for the Ballroom Dance Team (yes there is such a thing as competitive ballroom dancing). It's not something that I would have ever dreamt I would end up doing and people that know me usually have a hard time believing that I do ballroom. Nevertheless, it has been the single most fun activity I've ever participated in and it is a great way to get my mind off work.
I did the same thing when I passed the Morse code exams for ham radio license years ago. 20 minutes of CW practice in the morning and evening, every day for several months. When I sat for the exams, the test was ridiculously easy.
Hi, I'm in the dancer in the video. I don't work for Lift, I'm a user. I found that once I started using it, I really didn't want to miss a day of dance. Something about having a 90+ day streak that other people are holding you accountable to makes you want to keep it up.
Name-dropping only Lift does seem slightly conspicuous because it's so specific and practical, it doesn't fit with the more general self-help motivational stuff in the rest of the page.
Hi, I'm the dancer in the video. Minikomi is right, I wanted to check my progress. Because I started out awkwardly though, I didn't take many videos in the beginning. I wish I had taken more.
Slightly O.T. but seeing as you're here and the youtube comments are unsurprisingly full of bile, props for not only 'dancing like no-one's watching' but going out and doing it in an out of context place where everybody definitely will be.
I also regret that somewhat now. It'd be nice to actually see where I started out from instead of just assuming that I did half-efforted head seperations.
When learning a physical activity, where form is important (whether to look good or prevent injury), watching videos of yourself can be INCREDIBLY useful. As a beginner, we often cannot feel the ways in which we are doing it wrong, which are clear and apparent to an observer. I've noticed this in fencing and crossfit, all activities where proper form is important to avoid injury. (I'm a beginner at both.)
One of the takeaways from the OP is that it's not either -or...the important thing about practice is that it is continuous, even if just 10 minutes on some days. Can you really say that your programming will suffer if you spend 10 min doing something else? I think it's well accepted that pouring time into one pursuit does not result in linear improvement
I'm pretty sure that more than a few people are going to watch this and choose to not quit learning how to dance, as it can be super frustrating and seemingly impossible at first.
this is awesome - i think personally doing something totally out of my element (like dancing) crossed with learning something new (like dancing) might be double beneficial
There are "born" dancers out there, which just kinda grew into it. The rest learned the stuff, and hell did it look akward in the beginning. If you want to dance, just start doing some moves, see how you can make them look good, and then see what other cool moves there are.
Nice story, you dance well, but you should definitely choose better dance for your final dance in the video. What you showed looked like you really wanted to use bathroom but tehre wasn't any... Sorry about that, but otherwise, very nice.
This is why you dance like nobody's watching, because giving a shit that someone thinks you look like you have to go to the bathroom or something is retarded. You are part of the problem!
This. Too often we hyperbolize the achievement at the expense of the work. Important to realize and appreciate that no one backs into success accidentally.