

Fields medalist: Continually aim just beyond your current range - hhm
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/continually-aim-just-beyond-your-current-range/

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DaniFong
I was really pleased when Terry started blogging

...rarely does reading a blog push me past my current range. _smile_

There's a promising trend of putting, on blogs or wikis (Terry has done an
incredible job on the dispersive wiki, and Scott Aaronson built the complexity
zoo), thoughts not quite ready for 'primetime' (nor any specific journal).
It's quite an exciting development. It certainly changes the social dynamic: I
can imagine that in the near future, the most important research institutions
will not be individual research departments but online communities
crystallizing around prominent scientists who happen to be terrific bloggers.

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mynameishere
For many years, weight lifters thought that by increasing the number of
repetitions, they could increase their strength. Eventually, they found out
this wasn't true. What's needed is a very few reps and a great amount of
weight. The same is likely true with intellectual pursuits. Better to struggle
with Bach's inventions 30 minutes a day than to play "Smoke on the water" for
10 years.

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nanijoe
The original author is actually wrong..especially using his chess analogy.
Incremental improvements will get you nowhere. The best way to raise your
chess game is to play against people who are faaar better than you. Do this
for one week, and you will find yourself crushing your [former] peers.

Using the same analogy, Mark Zuckerberg should have beeen aiming to build
facebook into a 10 million dollar company (or something)

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michael_nielsen
The original author is arguably the world's best mathematician. He certainly
hasn't gone nowhere. It may be worth considering that he knows what he's
talking about.

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nanijoe
It may be worth considering that I am talking about chess.

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michael_nielsen
You made an analogy to Facebook, so you weren't just talking about chess.

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brl
I think the way to translate this principle for hackers is: "Continually aim
to be the stupidest person in the room".

If you want to improve quickly you must work on projects with people who have
a lot more skill and experience than you do.

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aswanson
As long as you have sufficient ego to not take the experience of being
repeatedly outperformed to mean that you suck.

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brl
Most programmers are not nearly as good as they think they are. Learning how
much you suck at programming is the very first step to getting any good at it.

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hhm
Oh, please, can anybody correct the title? It's "Fields medalist", not
"Field's medalist".

