
The Pyramid Method: A Simple Strategy For Becoming Exceptionally Good - ankeshk
http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/06/03/the-pyramid-method-a-simple-strategy-for-becoming-exceptionally-good
======
wallflower
> As the months passed, Chris got better. His early halting performances gave
> way to the occasional not bad performance. He worked harder on his songs,
> trying, week after week, to craft that one beat or lyrical turn that could
> impress his skeptical crowd.

In the fair chance, you haven't heard this Ira Glass segment about the process
of creating/making - it inspires me and may well you.

Ira Glass: "Don't quit even when you know your stuff sucks"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE>

Via <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198935>

~~~
anigbrowl
Awesome, thank you.

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petercooper
It's easy to think there are ways to shortcut in the art and tech worlds, but
this technique is how sports people work. You don't get straight into the
Olympics or Formula 1, but you work your way up through local clubs and
divisions, represent your city, represent your state and work your way up.

Anyway, awesome article. It's easy to forget all this stuff when you're
working with computers and everything seems so accessible (when, in fact, it's
really no different to "real life").

~~~
pmichaud
It's important to realize though that the article leaves one of the most
important things out. It's just a happy coincidence that the metrics used at
the pyramid were representative of the metrics used in the industry as a
whole.

It's just /just/ about finding a place with metrics and concentrating--the
most important part is finding the venue with the RIGHT metrics, and that
takes an understanding of what the industry metrics are.

~~~
joe_the_user
Bingo!!

This is an awesome method __IF __you're in an industry or area which is close
enough to this description. __AND IF __your up-and-coming talent can fit into
this kind of process.

Albert Einstein did not appear at the academic equivalent of a Pyramid Club (A
major university).

~~~
petercooper
Wouldn't the academic equivalent of a Pyramid Club be academic journals?

~~~
joe_the_user
Perhaps so - and "publish or perish" is the academic equivalent of appearing
at the Pyramid club night after night. Einstein did publish but only once he
was, indeed, so good they couldn't ignore him.

So, the first part "be so good they can't ignore you" certainly works - if you
are really, really good. Of course, by the nature of a large scale society,
most people, even most really good people, aren't so good they can't be
ignored. Someone who is a bit smarter than an average full professor but who
has no official credentials would probably not be hired if they wrote a few
above average research papers and got them published in a modest journal.
Someone who writes an earth-shattering research paper would get hired but,
well, that's by its nature unusual.

Of course, every field has a somewhat different path to success, which is one
of my points...

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sunir
When it comes to startups, this seems to me mapable onto Crossing the Chasm by
Geoffrey Moore. Start by conquering the "underground" scene of early adopters
by iterating until you have a polished product. When they like it you can go
after a niche market where you will iterate until you have a polished pitch.
When you have that 1-2 punch you can't help but be successful.

Sorry for typos. Via iPhone tonight.

~~~
10ren
One distinction is making your product extraordinary vs. making your self
extraordinary (or your company). I like the idea of the former, that you just
need an adequate company if your product and marketing are great, but the
article gives me pause...

Keeping ahead of the competition is important, and so it's important for a
company to be good at "keeping ahead". This includes your explicit focus, and
the focus implied by how the company is organized, its methods and how it
approaches tasks.

One could perhaps define companies with long-term success as being _good at
getting better at some specific thing_ , as in the article. This could a
specific sub-field of engineering; or marketing to an specific industry etc.
When the environment no longer values that specific thing, that aspect of the
company fails. e.g. rap or minicomputers.

~~~
sunir
That reminds me of another excellent book: Good to Great by Jim Collins. Great
companies have a clear single metric of profitability (profit per x) and then
relentlessly iteratively optimize against it--what Collins refers to as the
Flywheel.

If there was any doubt this practice of having a small confined environment
with clear metrics and feedback and iterating against it relentlessly was a
Pattern of Success... Hmm.. Very enlightening.

------
jfornear
I disagree.

I think it really comes down to motivation. Everyone knows you have to
practice and practice to get good at anything. It's the motivation to practice
that is the hard part. It's easier to stay motivated when you set goals that
you actually like as opposed to goals that you think may lead to success.
That's how I learned to program. I told myself that I wanted to build Z. I
didn't try and practice first by building a bunch of little A's, B's, and C's
instead. I shot straight for Z from the start. Yeah, I screwed up a lot and
had to redo everything like 100 times, but I was motivated to get to Z. I
could care less about A, B, and C, but I ended up knocking them down along the
way anyway.

If your dream is to write a novel, make it your goal to write a novel! Why
would you be motivated to write in some literary journal instead? (I'm trying
to write a spy novel myself, and I sure as hell don't care about my college's
literary journal. I'm 100% certain that trying to get anything published in
something like that would suck all the motivation out of me. Plus, how can
someone honestly tell me that would help toward my original goal? I think you
get better at writing spy novels by... writing spy novels.)

If you've ever been in a band, you know the hardest part is keeping everyone
motivated enough to stick to a consistent practice schedule. I've been in
bands where a leader-type thinks he knows some guaranteed method to getting
'discovered'. Every time we would try to follow that method, we would all burn
out because it wasn't fun and it was demotivating when the method would
inevitably turn out to be flawed or unrealistically demanding. We would have
had a much longer life span if we stuck to setting goals that kept everyone
motivated instead of trying to follow some unproven method.

So, I say target the motivation, not the method.

~~~
Skeuomorph
_Outliers_ suggests it's neither the motivation nor the method we see as
genius or talent, but 10,000 hours of practice combined with the "luck" of
being in the right place at the right time.

While reading the Pyramid article, it seemed to me that both an amazing amount
of practice and exposure to (or in) the right venue figured in.

What the Pyramid article seems to add to practice and luck is accelerated
self-improvement through a feedback mechanism. Playing hockey needs a coach.
Writing a novel needs an editor. Rapping needs an audience.

~~~
pygy
The feedback mechanism is priceless here.

Becoming increddibly good at something nobody wants is somewhat useless.

------
limist
What's the Pyramid for software development? What comes to mind are code
reviews, and releasing open-source software that's good enough (or sucks less)
to be worth using by others. Code reviews can make a difference even when
reviewers are at the same level, or slightly below, though of course having a
guru on hand is killer.

For entrepreneurship and its Pyramid, money/cashflow is the obvious metric and
feedback mechanism - but just as important might be the entrepreneur's life-
satisfaction, though that's harder to measure and may fluctuate much more.

Would love to hear people's comments on how they keep their own score.

~~~
IsaacL
That's what I was going to ask. Contributing to Open Source projects springs
to mind, since you get involved in a community that can give you feedback,
experience on a potentially very large, complicated project (which is very
different to doing toy projects for class - I'm currently a student) and the
excitement of seeing something you work on actually being used.

I've never tried that, btw, but it's on my list when I get time. I'm currently
working on a small browser MMORPG, and while I get feedback on the design etc
from the playerbase, since no-one else looks at my code I don't get any
feedback on my own programming.

However, I did leave it for a few months (got too convoluted to work on) but
I've been persuaded to restart working on it, starting from scratch (moved
from PHP to Ruby). Since I'm basically trying to recode the same behaviour but
trying to avoid known bugs and pitfalls it's been a good way to see progress -
I've learned stuff about database normalisation, FP, etc, since version 1 and
it's good to see 'ah, doing it that way this time round has made stuff so much
easier'. So I guess the community feedback comes from myself.

I should probably github it, actually.

------
johnnybgoode
This might work for some things, but if you are radical enough, the single
venue will not give you appropriate feedback.

------
tybris
If you play, play to win.

------
Flankk
Practice makes perfect. tl;dr

~~~
chewbranca
I had a coach who used to say, practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice
makes perfect. Which I think is an important distinction, because you need to
have direction and focus, not just dedication.

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asdlfj2sd33
If I understood that stream of consciousness correctly, and I had to read it
twice, I think it's this:

1\. To be spectacularly successful you have to be extraordinary.

2\. There are no shortcuts.

3\. If well directed then intense focus and frequent practice can be a great
way to improve.

Is is just me or is the above obvious? Has anyone gotten anything else from
that article?

~~~
Zaak
4\. Choose a venue with clear metrics, and work to master the venue. Use the
metrics to guide your skill development.

~~~
RK
Also: Short feedback cycles are good.

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johnm
True Passionate Curiousity
<http://cobaltsaffron.com/newsletter/CobaltSaffron-01-us.pdf>

~~~
kragen
Appears totally unrelated.

~~~
johnm
Wow! That's frightening.

Without that you'll never become great.

~~~
kragen
Oh, true passionate curiosity might have something to do with becoming great.
But neither it, nor this article on it, seems to have anything to do with this
article about this guy's rap career. So basically it's comment-spam.

