

Are You a Guitar Player or a Club Owner? - ahlatimer
http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/12/08/are-you-a-guitar-player-or-club-owner/

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Xixi
I think you're getting close to the point but somewhat fail to nail it. The
thing is that most people can't actually do anything if not forced to do it.
They can't make anything on their own. They have barely enough will to put
themselves in a situation where they know they'll have to move their ass.

I'm actually like that when it comes to sport. I don't have the will to go to
a gym for instance, and I used to always find a last minute excuse not to go.
Then I joined a futsal club, because I have enough will to commit myself to
play next week. Then it's my culture to actually show up if I said I will...
Problem solved : I managed to protect myself from my own laziness.

Basically students loads themselves with classes, or employees with work,
because they have the will to commit themselves _now_ to work like crazy for
the next 3 months. But don't have the will everyday to work a little bit on
their own.

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fragmede
From the title, I thought the article would go the other way, admonishing the
lackadaisical one-a-week which becomes once-a-month practicing that simply
peters off.

The article compares the dedicated amateur to the club owner, not the starving
musician. The dedicated amateur, with an hour a day of self-motivated
practice, is able to succeed in a low-stress non-demanding environment,
whereas the club owner is a high-stress, high-demand environment.

I don't view either environments as being inherently better than the other.
Different people thrive in different environments. I have a researcher friend,
whom, given a task and some time, will come back with results and he'll do an
excellent job. Put him in a frazzling high-demand situation? He quickly falls
apart.

Someone else I know, given a task, will waste the day reading blogs and
watching TV and only start working on it after midnight, but put into a high-
stress situation does much better work than the researcher is able to output
in the same situation.

I see this akin to individually being a producer vs. a consumer. Neither is
inherently better, but, like consumers outnumber producers by a large margin,
so too, do the club owners vs the guitar players.

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SapphireSun
While the analogy can fall apart if you stare at it too hard, I think he has a
valid point. Hard concentration is one of the most productive useful things
you can do. It is also absurdly hard to get into the zone. If I'm a little
tired, or I think that I might want to do some other stuff, I might avoid it
the way I might avoid doing pushups (I'll do it later).

I don't know why this is either. If you master focus it will really pay off.

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jpwagner
nice thought.

wrench: the median club owner has more money than the median guitar player.

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blackguardx
I think this blog is trying to get people to transcend the thought that money
= happiness. If you read his other posts, you can see that he often talks in
terms of fulfillment, not money.

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christofd
I actually value the notion to try to attach a metric to a fuzzy term like
'happiness', even though it doesn't work. At least it displays the will to
measure everything.

Edit: happiness = serotonin level in spinal fluid. Suicide cases show low
levels after autopsy.

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anonjon
This is a bad analogy because if you are the club owner _you already own a
freaking club_. Of course I'd want to be the club owner, making big bucks as a
guitar player is a crap-shoot. You'll most likely fail as a musician and end
up a computer programmer. If i sell the club that's money in my pocket.

This analogy isn't a paradox. It has nothing to do with deep concentration. It
is a choice between a sure thing and most likely nothing.

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dasil003
All analogies break down eventually, but in this case I think you're jumping
the gun. Do you have any idea how many clubs open and fail? Anyone can get a
loan and open a club. Making it successful is a whole nother ball of wax.

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anonjon
Well I'm sure a lot of clubs open and fail. But one has to assume that if you
are opening a club, you have already been successful somewhere else. There is
a much greater portrayal of starving musicians than there are starving club
owners.

It clearly follows that if you were not elsewise successful, and able to buy a
club, your cousin Vinny has gifted this club to you in an offer that you
simply could not pass up.

Failing as a club owner almost directly implies that you failed in a
secondary, non-career pursuit. The only way you can really starve in that
situation is if you are a complete moron and actually invested your own money.

Millions of guitarists, however, go hungry in the streets every day.

Besides if you've taken out a loan to get the club, are you really a club
owner? It seems like you are a proprietor most.

Besides, the point of analogies is that they be based on easily falsifiable
things that /seem to be/ true. An analogy is a metaphor. You know, literature
fluff.

This comparison doesn't /seem/ to be true, whether it is or not.

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dasil003
I understood the point of the article to be what it takes to be a successful
club owner vs a successful guitarist and in that regard I think it worked even
if the analogy is very rough around the edges.

