
There's no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.) - icey
http://sivers.org/kimo
======
saturdayplace
I learned a similar lesson in college. My university had a little-known
program called the Bachelor of University Studies. Given that you could get a
faculty advisor and independent committee to sign off on it, you could patch
together your own degree from the courses offered in any of the colleges. The
idea was to encourage students to create an inter-disciplinary course. They
took care not let anyone who'd just changed majors 10 times to graduate with a
BUS.

By combining courses from the Architecture, Film, and CS departments, I
created a 'Digital Media' degree which doubled my salary in the graphic design
department I was working in at the time. (My responsibilities stayed exactly
the same). Since then no potential employer has asked about it, but it set the
precedent for paying me more money.

Lessons learned: 1) You don't have to follow the same path as everyone else.
2) For plenty of places, the fact that you have the paper means more that
what's printed on it.

------
wglb
This is inspiring, and it reminds me of an incident in my life. I went to
Union Station with a friend to catch trains home for Christmas during my
freshman year in college. He was going to Iowa, I was going out west. His
train was six hours before mine, so I went along, as the school was pretty
much closed down by that point anyway. I took a book along that was the text
for the second quarter--Introduction to FORTRAN (yes, all caps those days). I
think it was by McCracken. By the time the train had left, I had consumed the
entire book and was ready to program. My career has never looked back from
that time.

That is what I like about this community as well. There are no artificial
barriers to learning or to getting anything done. You don't need credentials
or permission. It is in your hands.

~~~
codexon
_That is what I like about this community as well. There are no artificial
barriers to learning or to getting anything done._

Actually I think the barriers are still high. People are still hung up on
credentials, and a team of startup founders from Harvard or Stanford always
gets free publicity from the media and probably more investors as well.

~~~
sachinag
Matt Mullenwegg is a University of Houston dropout. Steve Jobs went to Reed
College.

Traction solves all other problems. Make something people _use_.

~~~
codexon
But can you honestly say that something like Facebook would have gained the
critical mass it had without essentially starting out as an Ivy league
"Myspace" in an era dominated by Myspace and Friendster?

~~~
SapphireSun
I don't see how that is relevant. You need to identify a target seed market at
first. In Facebook's case, academia at Harvard was a good choice. I don't see
a good reason why any of them had to go to Harvard to do that.

~~~
codexon
_I don't see a good reason why any of them had to go to Harvard to do that._

I truly doubt Zuckerberg would have been able to convince people from Harvard
to use Facebook back in it's inception without being from Harvard himself.
Harvard is a seed market because it's Harvard. Podunk state college is not a
seed market because people back then would rather have used one of the better
existing solutions such as Friendster back then.

The _only reason_ that I and many others joined back then was because of it's
exclusivity. We would have used Friendster, Livejournal, or maybe even joined
Myspace for the sake of a superior product.I am quite confident that Facebook
would have died in it's infancy had it been created in some state college.

The whole exclusivity in the beginning was the sole reason that it was able to
make it this far.

~~~
SapphireSun
Well what if they launched somewhere else that was exclusive? Nothing pops to
the top of my head I'll admit, but I haven't thought about it very long. There
seem to be three key ingredients for the initial launch: exclusive,
young/technically savy, and prestigious. LinkedIn is doing fine working with
business professionals, although they have the benefit of people already
understanding what a social networking site is.

------
coffeemug
Isn't that how people get through college? Three all nighters per semester +
three months of doing nothing. Just remove the part where you're doing
nothing, and suddenly you can get so much more done in life :)

~~~
potatolicious
Sometimes the "doing nothing" part is required for your incredibly productive
three all-nighters.

So may be 3months/3days is a little off balance, but you _do_ need downtime.

Not to mention, those 3 months aren't necessarily wasted doing _nothing_ \-
just different things. I did this through my mechanical engineering degree in
college, and spent the rest of the time hacking on code... guess that paid off
:P

~~~
karanbhangui
Hey I see you go to UW. Are you familiar with Velocity?

~~~
potatolicious
Yes, I was one of its inaugural residents... it was an interesting experience,
but ultimately somewhat wasted. I sincerely hope they've improved some of the
basic problems since then.

~~~
karanbhangui
Ya, I was a resident in the 2nd term of its existence, and will be again this
spring. My first term's stay wasn't very impressive: the way it was run, the
scope of the projects (except ours of course :P). They are taking major steps
to improve it now though, with a new management.

~~~
potatolicious
My major beef was the lack of talent - a similar situation to back when I did
game mods: some "alphas" shopping around for cofounders/sidekicks, and not too
many sidekicks to go around.

The vast majority of the people I met while I was there were simply were not
seasoned enough to tackle anything of considerable scope. Yeah, they were
technically coders, but most had little experience outside of their CS courses
and maybe a little bit of extra hackery on the side. Someone who was fluent in
HTML, CSS, JS, and, say, PHP, was practically non-existent... and the ones who
were there were the aforementioned "alphas", who were more interested in
shopping for cofounders on _their_ project than joining someone else's. In
short, Velocity was 10% seasoned coders looking for partners (and not finding
any), and 90% dreamers with no significant talent or experience to contribute
to anyone's project. I'm making this sound very harsh, but I was very
disappointed in the calibre of people they were able to recruit.

In a startup environment, especially one that's operating purely as a small
team of founders, you cannot have "the Java guy", everyone has to wear a large
number of hats - and this talent pool simply did not exist in Velocity.

I can't help but think the whole concept a dormitory-as-incubator is somewhat
misguided. IMHO it would be much better served for everyone to simply have a
streamlined collaboration system where entrepreneurially-minded people can
find each other, and to provide basic resources (how 'bout some servers
instead of flashy phones?) to help them get there. Think JobMine, but for
student projects.

Oh, and one more thing: Waterloo is a town filled with tech startups, yet
Velocity's only backers seem to be large corporations. This is unproductive -
you don't need talks by big-company VPs about how they admire our spirit and
independence... we need talks by startup guys who are in the thick of it
themselves.

~~~
karanbhangui
Totally agree on your first point. Not only is technical talent lacking, it's
filled with a lot of dreamers. In the end, very few people have what it takes
to put in the hours ontop of their workload. I understand this is tough, esp.
for engineers (being in compeng myself), but in the end, if you want it
enough, you'll do it.

As far as the big corps vs local startups go, new Velocity management seems to
be taking big steps towards fixing it.

Honestly, Velocity as it is right now, is just a convenient place for my
existing team to collaborate. I don't really have any expectations of picking
up new people since they're 1 in 1000 at Waterloo.

Net net tho, things are improving and I look forward to people playing
rockband less and actually doing something useful :P

------
maxklein
When I was younger, I used to look down on musicians. I saw what they were
doing as not being on the same level as being an engineer, because engineers
were more clever than them. I figured they were born with some talent, and all
they had to do is play their instrument.

Now, I realise that they practise more than I do. It's even tougher for them,
because there is no easy way to judge how much better they have become. And
they have to do all that they do with people constantly judging them.

Engineers, scientists, mathematicians - we have it real easy. Our talent is an
easy one to develop, it's an easy to make money from, and it's easy to get
good. Artists & Musicians who manage to be successful have achieved a lot more
than engineers who manage to become successful.

~~~
philwelch
My favorite band--Dream Theater--was formed at Berklee College between three
ambitious instrumentalists. Two of them, John Petrucci and John Myung, spent
their high school days fanatically devoted to practice (before applying to
Berklee together). During that time they had an agreement with each other to
practice their respective instruments six hours a day, and if they hung out in
the evening it was with the understanding that they'd finished their six hours
practice.

Like Derek, John and John finished their Berklee education early, but in their
case it was by recruiting the rest of their band and dropping out to get
started. That was in 1985. Their first major commercial success (in the sense
that applies to progressive metal bands with cult followings) was 1992's
Images and Words.

~~~
sundeep
> Two of them, John Petrucci and John Myung, spent their high school days
> fanatically devoted to practice (before applying to Berklee together).
> During that time they had an agreement with each other to practice their
> respective instruments six hours a day, and if they hung out in the evening
> it was with the understanding that they'd finished their six hours practice.

Source? (Not that I doubt what you're saying. I want to read more from where
that came from)

~~~
philwelch
It's on Wikipedia, but they also mention in it a lot of their documentaries
and stuff, like on their live DVD's where there's usually a disc 2 about it.

~~~
sundeep
thanks.

------
PieSquared
YES!

That's really all I can say. I agree with this _so much_. (Wow, I'm
articulate!) I just wish it were easier to do.

Personal story: I'm in high school right now. Many of the courses I'm taking
are very... high-school-y. Low on content and high on busy-work and hand-
waving. Some, though, I find are actually well taught; namely, my Statistics
course and my Multivariable Calculus/DiffEq course. The teacher for the Stat
course posted all the homework he plans to assign (all out of the book)
online; while the teacher for Multivariable hasn't done that, he assigns the
same homework every year, so I managed to get his homework from previous
students. Currently, I'm done with my statistics course and 3/4 through the
multivariable course, where both of them should be full-year courses. It just
feels amazing to be learning at my own pace - the class speed in high school
(and, I guess, college, and perhaps life) is catering to the lowest
denominator. I know that I, and many of my classmates, could easily double or
in some cases triple that speed.

~~~
tlb
The danger you face, and I speak from experience here, is that because you get
such good results from studying math, you neglect other things like learning
about history and developing social skills. You probably can't make progress
2-3x as fast as normal people there. So concentrate on your strengths, but
don't neglect the other stuff. And please consider applying to Y Combinator
and starting a startup when the time is right.

------
lmkg
My reaction seems to be less enthusiastic than most people's. I think that if
you can graduate in two years, you should have gone to a school that was more
challenging to you.

This is probably a result of my own college experiences. I coasted through
high school pretty easily (eg, doing tomorrow's calculus homework in class
while it was still being explained). Then I went to a pretty good college,
with a bunch of other people who were skilled enough to coast through college.

I got my ass handed to me. We all got our collective ass handed to us. It was
humbling. It was also glorious. A year-long back-of-the-room calculus class
was turned into a very engaging first 2/3 of a half-semester calculus class.
Then, a year's worth of math at that pace was compressed again into six weeks
of summer school thick enough to kill a man. I didn't put in extra effort
learning beyond my classes, because the classes themselves kept me up til four
in the morning.[1]

So, in short, I agree with the title of the post, you should be
learning/acting at your level, not below it. However, I disagree with the main
corollary of the post, which is that school is insufficient to reach that
level, and you should buck the system because it's not good enough. There are
schools good enough. I think it's better to find the appropriate system than
to buck a normal one, because you have a much more support.[2] Slamming
through four math courses in a month is a lot easier when you have four
professors and a dozen peers who are all on the same page as you. You also
happen to learn a lot about teamwork and collaboration that you might not by
going solo.

[1] Which is not to say that every waking second was spent working; I covered
6 seasons of Deep Space Nine and 4 seasons of Babylon 5 in a year. Rest is
more important than sleep.

[2] The better support is also self-reinforcing of the quality of the peers.
If there are students performing below the bar, a school that can raise those
students up doesn't have as great a need to lower the bar for them.

~~~
btilly
FYI he went to the Berklee school of music. There isn't a better music school
in the country. (Other subjects it is mediocre to non-existent in. Musically
it is top notch.)

~~~
codexon
What about Juilliard?

~~~
nvoorhies
As I understand it Julliard's got more of a classical emphasis, whereas
Berklee's likely a better choice for someone aiming to be involved with rock,
jazz, etc.

------
cowmoo
Maybe someone as a musician can enlighten me, but I always have so much
trouble doing rote scale at every guitar fret position, arpeggio, memorize-
these-chords exercises.

I always hear two sides of the argument that a) a la Mr.Sivers, oh you need to
learn how to play fast, memorize all of these scale/chord patterns, and every
single guitar-player style from Blues to Jazz to Folk to Pop, or b) you
shouldn't worry too much about playing or learning too fast, but concentrate
on the music; enjoy yourself, find your own style and get in the zone and
slowly you'll understand how to improvise, compose and tab by immersion rather
than memorizing patterns. (Because if you try to learn or play too fast, you
get frustrated quickly that you aren't doing well and concentrate too much on
the mechanics of note perfection that it affects your performance). Some books
I read recommend daily practice sessions of only 20 minutes per day, but
consistent daily practice.

I'm sure I'm painting a totally false dilemma but curious as to how some of
the pro musicians out there takes are.

EDIT: Since we are on a programming forum and I assume that the advice is
geared towards developing for startups, IMO, the best way to learn how to
program is to learn by working on your own project and ruthlessly plagiarizing
off of other people's open-source code base. Because you are motivated to
finish the project because it's something that motivates you and you are
forced to look deep down into the stacks because you almost always have to
customize/hack 3rd party code to do something your way.

~~~
keyist
Not a pro (have moderate technical chops, but not the temperament), but here's
my 2c:

Scales and chords aren't patterns per se -- they're the fundamental building
blocks. They're the equivalent of syntax in a language. Not knowing them well
is like having to think about where the semicolons and/or braces go when
you're writing a for loop. Being familiar with chords/scales allows you to
think about music at a higher abstraction level.

You can make exercises less boring (and more effective) by varying the way you
play them. Vary the rhythm you play (triplets, etc), switch between
legato/staccato, and so on.

The Deep Practice section of The Talent Code ([http://www.amazon.com/Talent-
Code-Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/05...](http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-
Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/055380684X)) may provide more inspiration for how to
practice effectively.

~~~
cowmoo
Thanks for your advice and the link to the book.

------
btilly
Heh. This reminds me of my real analysis course.

The first day of class he handed out our coursework for the semester. I asked
if it was OK to hand in homework early. He said it was. The next class I
handed in the first 3 days of homework. The following I handed in 3 more. The
third class I said there didn't seem to be much point in my being there, did
he mind if I just handed in the homework?

A few weeks later when I walked into another course I was taking with a lot of
the same people a lot of them started congratulating me. I was puzzled. They
explained that one had asked whether I was dropping the class since I hadn't
been going and so they heard that I was actually taking the final exam that
day.

I did the follow-up course the following month. :-)

Another time I taught my brother the basics of differential calculus in about
half an hour or so. Well enough that he was able to go into a course that had
that as a prerequisite and he managed to ace that course.

So yes, the difference between what we are asked to do and what we can do is
pretty large.

------
prakash
Reminds me of Mike Cassidy's: Speed as THE primary business strategy
<http://venturehacks.com/articles/speed>

~~~
DenisM
Wow, neck-breaking pace there. Alas reading about it doesn't help become like
this. Ideas?

~~~
thaumaturgy
Stop reading about it, start doing it. You already know how.

I try to remind myself constantly that the icons of business and technology
that I use as examples of extreme success probably don't spend much time on
social networks.

HN is the last one that I frequent, and I've been cutting back my activity
here too.

------
chrischen
I think it's not just pace that is important. Sure we have brilliant people
who could do good by going faster, but with the advent of the internet and
libraries, there's not much stopping them. Let's not forget about the majority
of regular people who aren't getting a good value from the school system.

I would argue that most high school students find their studies meaningless,
but not because they are bored by the triviality. They think it's meaningless
because they don't comprehend the practicality of it all. They get stuff just
to get it done, to avoid getting spanked for bad grades, or to satisfy their
ego. So our school system shoves these topics down the students, with the hope
that shoving hard enough and enough times will do the trick. But from personal
experience, I've found that when I revisit something that I once learned, I
usually look it up in reference either from the internet or from a book. The
interesting difference is that this time, when I truly _comprehend_ the
importance or relevance of it all, I learn it in much less time.

Teaching kids what they aren't ready to learn yet is inefficient. Standardized
pace, rigid curriculum impede students from learning what they want, and at
their own pace (which will probably always be faster than the standard pace if
the student is interested).

This problem extends into university education. I think all students should
learn like that, at their own pace, and take some evaluation, not necessarily
a test (I have ADHD, so I'm biased against tests), at the end. Then we can
have quantifiable knowledge without forcing students to go through a rigid
curriculum at a set pace. This hopefully would also mean no more banking on
getting into good universities, rejections, and entrance exams determining
education worthiness. Education would truly be open and accessible to all.

------
kyenneti
Derek Sivers has single handedly changed my opinion about musicians. Not that
I know many musicians. As an engineer, I was under the impression that
musicians are lazy bunch leading not so responsible life styles. But reading
couple of blog posts of Derek changed it all.My respect to Derek.

------
njharman
I have zero interest in being an (over)achiever, driven, etc. And I think
that's fine / there's nothing wrong with me. I also don't think there's
anything wrong with people who are (over)achievers __unless __they feel
achieving is "better" and view themselves (and others) as failures unless they
have (over)achieved.

Spending 2.5 years finishing college and 1.5 years doing something else is no
better/worse then spending 4 years finishing college. It only matters that you
lived a good life during those four years. I believe "There's no speed limit"
is bad general advice. It's good for the driven overachiever types, which I
believe are a niche. But for most people it focuses them excessively on future
payoffs and makes them miserable when the don't/can't overachieve.

It's the difference between working all the time so one day you can own your
very own rosegarden(and likely never do) and taking the time to stop and smell
the roses today.

------
jason_tko
Agree with this 100%. People will often rise to the level of expectations of
people around them.

This is very useful when it comes to management, and a great way to encourage
someone to grow and develop : expect a lot from someone, and find a way to
communicate that you're completely confident they can achieve those
expectations.

~~~
iworkforthem
@jason_tko ... ya.. it is CRITICAL that we stick and learn with the Best...
and compete.

------
richardburton
I think you could take the lessons outlined in this post even further. For
some people, college itself is an unnecessary step. Nearly everyone I know has
been groomed to pass high-school then pass college then get-a-job. I think
that skipping any step that isn't necessary to your own goals will help you
get where you want to be a lot quicker. The fewer distractions the better.

------
aswanson
I learned and somehow forgot this lesson in my journey through the public
school system. And that is not an indictment of the system per se, but the
effect I allowed it to have on my development.

Any one seeking to master any field should go through the litmus test that
experience provided him as early and often as possible. No parallel to
learning at the hand of an accomplished practitioner.

------
stilist
What about those of us incapable of the speed?

~~~
sofal
You are so totally screwed.

But seriously. Maybe the message would then be: there is no curfew.

------
jrmurad
I also got through college in 2 years and graduated from Georgia Tech when I
was 20. Sometimes, however, I wonder whether I would have retained more of
what I learned had I kept a slower pace.

------
sown
Sort of sounds like New School of Florida, as described to me by an alumni.
People design their own coursework for the semester and regularly meet with an
adviser.

------
flooha
Great story. It's also interesting that most popular music is made by people
who don't know squat about music theory.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Performed maybe. The people _making_ it really know their craft.

Pop is hard.

(I still don't like it.)

------
yxhuvud
What a perfect thing to read while on a break from work!

------
eleitl
> Kimo's high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me “the standard
> pace is for chumps” - that the system is designed so anyone can keep up.

If your IQ is off the charts, maybe. Try studying chemistry sometime. There
the standard pace is to weed as many as you out in the first few semesters as
they can. The women are the first to go.

