
Dance in a Year - jejune06
http://danceinayear.com/
======
bmmayer1
"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.

~~~
pjmorris
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."

------
rfugger
The key part of the article for me is this:

 _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...

~~~
karenxcheng
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.

~~~
stephengillie
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.

------
sreyaNotfilc
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!

~~~
paulkoer
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?

~~~
sreyaNotfilc
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.

(sorry for the long post)

------
liquidcool
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:

[http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870)

~~~
rkalla
Was a fascinating journey, if you are like me and want to see a quick before-
after without combing through 70 pages of forum posts, here is how good the
gentleman got:
[http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870&p=3460...](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870&p=3460424#post3460424)

------
johnchristopher
> 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.

Nice story though :)

------
utopkara
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.

~~~
mtrimpe
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.

------
JonnieCache
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.

~~~
johnchristopher
Those "we" that tell others they should be ashamed are still a PITA. They are
the one preventing others to dance however they want.

~~~
solistice
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.

------
keiferski
One of my favorite books is _The Last Samurai_ by Helen DeWitt, and one of my
favorite quotes from it is:

    
    
      The secret of success is to complete a single simple task on a daily basis.
    

It really is about making slow, meaningful progress. No one wakes up a
prodigy.

~~~
tieTYT
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.

~~~
keiferski
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.

~~~
tieTYT
I'll try that. Wish me luck :)

~~~
keiferski
Good luck!

------
davidjohnstone
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...

------
mathattack
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...

~~~
rfnslyr
Same thing with lifting, I dropped over 100 lb and got crazy strong in just
under a year. 315lb squat, 450 deadlift, 225 bench and I shed all the fat.

Anything you dedicate around a year on, you'll get good at.

~~~
js2
At what age?

~~~
utopkara
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.

------
andrewingram
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.

~~~
igvadaimon
I also suggest trying Kizomba. Whole new interesting experience.

~~~
andrewingram
I've done a couple of taster classes at clubs, but haven't done any proper
lessons yet. I do like the sensuality of it though.

------
js2
Dan has been working for 3 years now toward completing 10,000 hours of
practice with the goal of getting into the PGA -
[http://thedanplan.com/about/](http://thedanplan.com/about/)

~~~
xiaoma
It looks like he's been stalled in the 5.5 - 6.0 handicap range for the past
year.
[http://thedanplan.com/statistics-2/](http://thedanplan.com/statistics-2/)

Michael Jordan, on the other hand, reached a 3 handicap in far fewer hours
while still playing basketball professionally. Talent matters.

------
sammyo
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.

~~~
solistice
5 hours a day for a year does still boil down to 2k of those hours, 8 hours
would bring you close to 3k.

------
arpineh
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?

------
KenoFischer
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.

------
alex_doom
This is so San Francisco.

------
xradionut
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.

------
Roelven
Is this a Lift.do viral?

~~~
karenxcheng
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.

~~~
anujabro
Hell yeah, I'm a lift user as well. Love it!

------
NirDremer
Looking backwards the motivation to capture the process makes sense. I wonder
what was the motivation in the early days?

~~~
karenxcheng
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.

~~~
jentulman
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.

------
jason_slack
The take home concept here is great: Work hard at something and practice,
practice, practice.

I took a break from C++ for years.

I wanted to write a video game.

So I started everyday doing something in C++ on the game and I am now a few
months into it and I NEED to work on it everyday.

Karen. Thanks for sharing this. Valuable.

PS. Where did you get that weekly planner you use as a journal. I like the
layout!!

------
hoffsam
This page and video are really really good.

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.

------
bobowzki
That was awesome all the way down...

------
snake_plissken
Can she do the Melbourne shuffle?

~~~
solistice
The Melbourne shuffle isn't that hard, you can learn it in a week or so.

------
changdizzle
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

~~~
solistice
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.

------
Tomino
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.

~~~
vehementi
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!

