
Do the Real Thing - reedwolf
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/05/04/do-the-real-thing/
======
zomglings
Definitely agree with the article, and would like to offer a useful supplement
to "doing the real thing": "watch someone very skilled do the real thing".

Watching a pro can really accelerate skill acquisition because it will expose
you to high quality ideas that would have been difficult to develop on your
own.

Want to get better at Backgammon/Chess/Go? Play a lot of games (at various
time controls). Yes. But also watch professional players and read their
analyses of games.

Want to get better at programming? Write a lot of programs. Yes. But also read
a lot of high quality code written by others.

Want to become a better mathematician? Spend your time mastering mathematical
knowledge and techniques. Yes. But also spend some time trying to get in the
heads of the masters - learning their patterns of thought at the mathematical
and meta-mathematical levels.

The increased accessibility of this kind of content is one of the greatest
achievements of the internet.

~~~
kalonis
Just watching someone doing the real thing is one of the most prominent
strategies to avoid doing the real thing.

It is not enough to watch someone very skilled do the real thing. You have to
imitate them: Reading a lot of great novels will not make you a better writer.
Instead write a story in the style of any writer you admire and you will learn
a lot while still doing the real thing. The same is true for almost any art
you want learn.

~~~
jchook
Our brains have mirror neurons[1] that allow us to learn by watching.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron)

~~~
throw10382
Mirror neuron mythos is ridiculous. They're just normal neurons, they just
happen to fire in response to externally observed behaviour as well as
personal behaviour.

They aren't magic, they can't actually mirror what's going on in another
person's head or give you a high-resolution idea of how their brain works.
They aren't even that good at mimicry unless you already have a pretty high-
resolution understanding of what you're trying to improve. You can't learn to
juggle by watching people juggle. You can't learn to play piano by watching
people play piano. You might be able to improve those skills if you already
have them and watch someone who's better, but it's limited and whether that's
even osmotic mirror neuron activity is controversial.

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hymnsfm
Possibly an over-simplification. Take this example: I want to sight-sing
hymns. I know a bit of music theory but it's been cobbled together over the
past year in an haphazard fashion. I pick up a hymnal to sing the first hymn
and immediately need to look up the key signature (I never memorized them).
Then I see the hymn is 12/8 time and realize I only superficially covered
rhythm and time signatures. I go on YouTube to refresh my memory. This is
before being able to sing a single note.

When I do attempt to sing, my mind's ear says I'm way off (even when I've
never heard the hymn before). I'm not hitting the notes. So now I need to
learn solfège and music intervals.

Doing the "real thing" requires having the tools and basic skillset first. I
suggest the opposite of this article: break the goal down into manageable
parts and work the periphery. Get some small wins. Then you can realistically
take on the "real thing". There may be no other way.

~~~
gridlockd
Have you considered that sight-singing anything is not the real thing? Singing
is the real thing.

~~~
analog31
Among the musical skills that can be acquired, "sight reading" is somewhat
specialized, but definitely real. I'm a part time musician, and a fair amount
of my performance work over the past decades has involved sight-reading. In
addition to its usefulness for performance, it's an efficient way to digest a
lengthy or complex work.

------
abraae
As with all good advice, this reads well and makes sense but the devil is in
the details.

> Eric Barone, who went on to sell millions of copies of his game, overcame
> his struggles at creating art by making and remaking the art assets for his
> game dozens of times.

To someone else, frigging around with their art assets and remaking then over
and over again could be the very definition of not doing "the real thing".

~~~
eebynight
I think you missed the entire point of the article. The "real" thing is
subjective and varies from person to person depending on their experience with
the subject.

If someone else had no trouble creating art then this situation simply doesn't
apply to them. That person might have a different part of the process that
gives them trouble that they SHOULD be practicing.

For Eric, practicing the thing he had trouble with over and over was the best
way for him to get over his struggles. Now he can move onto the next thing he
needs to work on and continue to make progress.

------
gfodor
You gotta do both. Research, analyze, digest, and then execute. With time, you
can reduce the duration of the cycle. Taking the first step often requires a
lot of research and thinking, and then a lot of execution to go from zero to
one. Then, iterate, with shorter cycles. Failing to think is as much a problem
as failing to execute, you have to balance it.

~~~
travisjungroth
> Taking the first step often requires a lot of research and thinking

I generally agree with your comment, but strongly disagree with this part. You
will have much more success if you take this first step as soon as possible.
No research, no thinking. And a “real thing” first step. You want to start
running? Put on some shoes and go for a run. Don’t sign up for a race, don’t
look up running tips, don’t buy nice shoes. Just go run for a bit.

Coding? Pop open repl.it. Scuba? Get your head under water. Even for things
that might be out of reach like flying an airplane, read up on something
specific like how to land.

With your very first step out of the way, you can then start thinking a bit
more.

~~~
gfodor
Disagree, strongly.

Gonna learn to lift? Read starting strength. Set yourself up for success by
structuring an environment for habit formation. Take the steps to ensure you
are getting good nutrition before you start. Don’t just run to the local gym
and staring trying to mess around in the squat rack.

Going to build a new app? Get up to date on tech stack choices so you don’t
make a dumb decision. Look at prior art and understand the work that has come
before you can learn from.

Trying to learn a new skill? Do some research to find out what the best, most
high quality resources there are first. Determine what level of mastery you’ll
be happy with before diving in unprepared to know how to assess opportunity
costs, which can

This doesn’t mean get stuck in analysis paralysis. I feel pretty strongly
those who give advice like the advice you mention do not think it’s possible
to avoid this obvious trap. It is if you are disciplined and have enough self
awareness to know when you have hit the point of diminishing returns.
Literally one day of focused thinking can outflank a week or more of pointless
execution, even at the beginning. Thinking is underrated, execution without
preparation is overrated. The most effective people know how to prepare the
mind for execution and not get bogged down doing so. Taking an immediate first
step can lead to a bad first impression: a bad lift, a mess of a prototype, or
a garbage online course. That can be hard to unwind, since it forms busted
initial mental models - and can undermine long term success. There is no hard
rule, but aversion to pre-emptive research and analysis is an anti pattern
unless you know yourself to be unable to do so.

~~~
travisjungroth
I agree with every activity you recommend, even down to suggesting Starting
Strength.

> Literally one day of focused thinking can outflank a week or more of
> pointless execution, even at the beginning.

This (and the many other replies) make me think I did a poor job of expressing
myself. I absolutely, 100%, do not think people should screw around for a week
before figuring out the right way to do things.

I am a huge fan of thinking. I write out long, detailed syllabuses for my
students and myself. I am constantly trying to improve both my skills and my
process. And I think most people would be well served to do more of that.

I only see one real difference between your comment and what I suggested. I
think when someone wants to start weightlifting, they shouldn’t reach for a
book first. Do a tiny workout first. Maybe what you remember from PE, maybe
life that heavy box in the garage 5 times. Then, with one shitty workout under
your belt, open the book and do better next time.

~~~
gfodor
It sounds like we are in more agreement than it seemed - for a full throated
defense of thinking over execution, I like Rich Hickey’s talk “Hammock Driven
Development”
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc)

------
imheretolearn
Recently, (or maybe it's just me) I have seen a surge of articles providing
advice on $Thing. Most of these articles seem to me an expansion of aphorisms
which people have been saying since time immemorial. This reminds of the
saying,

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

Such articles can be compressed into a common adage that most people are aware
of.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Yes.

I'll take it a step further and ask, do adages actually contain any signal at
all? If you have a saying "try try again" and another saying "don't bust your
head against a brick wall" which one wins? When?

Getting fluent in French is probably best done without a plan, but just
practicing a bunch. But I'm sure you can think of several activities where
"just try it" is godawful advice. Who says writing is in the former camp?
Prove it.

~~~
jkhdigital
There is no such thing as universal advice. All advice is useful in some
context, but no advice is useful in all contexts. Coaches and mentors can be
so effective because they consistently deliver the right advice in the right
context. Advice from the internet, on the other hand, is almost always
mismatched to the context of the reader.

~~~
jchook
The advice "there is no such thing as universal advice" is, by its own rule,
not universal advice, and therefore serves as its own counter-example.

~~~
jkhdigital
True, if you interpret “advice” as we do in cryptography to mean “any
arbitrary string that could provide an advantage in solving the problem at
hand”.

------
aazaa
> People trying to get in shape who buy fancy workout gear instead of
> exercising.

Translating this idea to learning a programming language, the best way to
learn a language is to apply it to something real, almost immediately.
Following tutorials has a use, but you'll get a lot more out of it after
having flailed around trying to make the most ridiculously minimal version of
something you really want to build.

This is one of the main problems with science education. In most cases,
there's nothing like the "flail around" stage while you try to do something
applied but which you are desperately underqualified to do.

------
zexodus
This article reminds me that I don't really know what I want to do in the
first place.

~~~
jkhdigital
Yeah I think that’s something Mr. Young glosses over in his book—it’s hard to
muster the courage to suffer through this kind of direct approach when you’re
anything less than absolutely committed. I think it takes a certain
personality to be able to just pick some random skill and convince yourself
that it’s do or die.

------
Kye
After tens of thousands of photos, hundreds of songs, and millions of words, I
can confirm that doing the thing is more effective than aimless research and
analysis. The doing guides the learning.

------
m463
I'm glad there's this internet website that can make me _feel_ like I know
what the best way to do something (without the inconvenience of actually like
DOING it).

(which is the problem described)

------
jkhdigital
I’m in the middle of listening to Scott Young’s book _Ultralearning_ , and
honestly this article captures the most important idea. 90% of becoming an
“ultra learner” is having the courage to tackle the real thing immediately;
the rest is just tactics.

------
closeparen
C25K does not start with a marathon. Skiing lessons do not start on a black
diamond. Intro CS does not start by writing an OS. Skill development is an
incrementalist game for patient people. I've made much more progress by
finding a sustainable pace and chipping away over time, than by trying to
conquer something in a weekend.

Natural language acquisition is kind of a special case here, in that you are
_actually_ wired to do this one from scratch.

~~~
imgabe
"The real thing" does not mean the absolute hardest iteration of whatever
you're trying to do.

C25K doesn't start with a marathon, but it does involve actually getting your
ass out the door and running. It does not involve shoe shopping, reading about
stretching techniques or tinkering with your training schedule in Excel.
Running is the real thing.

------
Animats
For a contrary view, see "This is It".[1] (The one from the US Navy, not the
one from the dead singer.) It's the story of four pilots who didn't take their
training seriously enough.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=fNBwBHTWec4](https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=fNBwBHTWec4)

~~~
teddyh
Reel 2:
[https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=a7pH6CQcGMU](https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=a7pH6CQcGMU)

------
SamBorick
My takeaway from this is to always try for the thing that is just out of
reach.

Doing what's comfortable isn't going to lead to growth. At the same time, as
others in this thread say, doing things that are radically out of reach is too
likely to fail without a good foundation.

Learning is in the struggle, so find something that is a little harder than
you think you can handle.

------
ookdatnog
This is the kind of advice that, for one person, might be exactly what they
need, and for another it might be the exact opposite of what they need. For
example, Christopher McCandless dove head-first into the real thing (that is,
surviving without help in the Alaskan wilderness), without proper preparation
and training, and died. He didn't have to, he could have built up to it
gradually by training various survival skills (aka "faking" it).

Also, the author claims that the difference between "doing the real thing" and
faking it is what success largely boils down to. That is a completely wild
claim, with of course not a shred of evidence to back it up. Does the author
really believe that this is a necessary and largely sufficient condition for
success?

~~~
war1025
> For example, Christopher McCandless dove head-first into the real thing
> (that is, surviving without help in the Alaskan wilderness), without proper
> preparation and training, and died.

He didn't go straight from normal life to Alaskan wilderness though. He spent
a good bit of time traveling and being homeless. If anything, he was in the
uncanny valley of being skilled at most aspects of living in the wildnerness,
but unaware of the specifics of being in Alaska and how the environment would
change between seasons.

------
ajani
Also by the same guy [https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/sales-pages/learn-more-
stud...](https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/sales-pages/learn-more-study-less/)

Quite spammy.

------
booleandilemma
Want to learn heart surgery? Start by doing the real thing.

------
oklol123
No shit that doing something makes you better at something. Hacker news turns
more into an advertisement orgy every day

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blickentwapft
This really hit the mark.

------
emsal
This kind of writing makes me upset.

* It's really self-important. Not only is it selling you on a particular strategy for attaining success, it also tries to sell success in things like public speaking and doing architectural work as an absolutely important part of one's life, and that implicitly a person's existence is invalidated if they aren't constantly trying to achieve this kind of success. It doesn't do it explicitly but the very notion of "real" and "fake" and other words like "wasted" complete with the trite diagrams showing that "hey, all your efforts are going into this small circle" give a very strong implicit value-judgement of the reader.

* There's no proof. I don't know if I'm on the mark with this one, but I think that the act of omitting any sort of data about measuring the outcome of success when taking different approaches seems to imply to the reader that the argument should just "make sense" i.e. it's a truth that the reader already knows, they should just find it within their own observations in order to understand it. Here, have a handful of anecdotes to top it all off in case you weren't convinced. Overall this just feels like it's made to make the reader feel a certain way (motivated) rather than actually teach them any solid information.

* What even is real and fake? The readers are given a bunch of examples and then we're left on our own to figure out what falls into which category. Someone commented on the article saying that if someone wanted to watch and understand anime in Japanese, they could just do that and that'd be the real thing, with the fake thing being taking the time to learn Japanese. This is obviously not going to be successful, so at this point the author's prescription has failed as a framework for achieving success.

\---

This kind of fiery motivational content could be harmful as much as it is
useful. It'd be fine if an article, devoid of substance as it may be, was only
meant to make readers feel motivated, but the problem is that this kind of
fiery motivational content does different things for different readers. A
person in a bad, self-loathing emotional state could be rendered feeling even
worse, thinking that everything that they're doing at present is fake while
everything that their peers are doing are more real, even when that's
blatantly untrue. The devil's in the details and personally, I'm not going to
let myself get affected by this personal philosophy if the case for it is this
weak.

~~~
eebynight
I think for your first point, you're definitely reading into it too much...

As for you second point, what kind of proof do you need? Do you want
scientific studies that dive way too deep into specifics and are not
applicable to real life? This article is targeted towards learning, which
varies heavily from person to person and can be very subjective. Think about
it from your perspective and see if the ideas apply to what you do. Simple as
that.

For your third point, yeah sure real and fake are pretty subjective. In the
end it's obviously up to you to decide or come to a decision about what is and
what isn't. Our gut instinct usually fails here thought...

However, to address the point about learning Japanese, I would argue that
taking the time to learn before doing so is the "fake" way. How do children
learn a language if they can't use a computer or phone to get on Duolingo or
go to a community college to take a course? They literally just are exposed to
it and pick it up over time.

People may not know his background but he is a prominent figure when it comes
to language learning and his strategies are to replicate natural learning
methods and ignore the canned courses like Duolingo that don't do you any
good...

------
trwhite
One variant of this is "Do the Hard Thing" and not just that but do the hard
thing _first_.

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bobthechef
Anyone else notice how the first diagram contains the word "SEX"?

------
trevyn
Also— do what makes you happy, not what you think will make you happy. ;)

~~~
elcomet
How to know though?

~~~
kd5bjo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice)

------
hejja
to me, it feels overly optimistic in 2 ways.

1\. it makes the assumption that failure is always positive

self improvement dogma: "fail faster, you learn from each failure"

peter thiel: "each failure is a tragedy, it is multivariate and therefore
often too complex to truly learn from"

2\. dunning kruger syndrome and learning something "the wrong way" is possible
in more than one field.

Overall it was a nice read though

------
zeckalpha
Praxis.

