It's hard to change a little. It's much easier to change a lot. | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to change a little. It's much easier to change a lot.

plpatterns.com

47 pointsjonnytran6 comments

This reminds me of something my brother said about living in a foreign country with a very different culture. (At the time he was a Canadian living in Taiwan.) He said that you really need to immerse yourself in that culture because then your reactions will be right. When you get into trouble is after hanging out with people from your old culture - then you slip back into being a Westerner and things would start going wrong.

He had several examples of this from his personal experience.

Interesting. My guess is that it's the same with learning a foreign language. i.e. if you really want to learn the language, it's probably orders of magnitude faster and cheaper with better result if you move to where it is natively spoken, as opposed to taking a class. Never tried it though.

Immersion is the best way to learn, and, in the US, you pay a very high premium for immersion classes. For example, Spanish immersion (20 hrs/wk) through Berlitz is over $4K/month and in Guatemala, around $800.

The title is a bit misleading, I think. Change always happens incrementally (evolution doesn't leap, it refines); immersion ensures that the incremental changes are locked into a specific pattern and focus.

The image used in the post was a bit misleading too. The change in direction of that bicycle would only be forward along the path, not sideways up the groove of the path (unless the bike was jumped or the rider dismounted and carried it).

The essence of the article has a positive message though, change is a given, immersion is the key concept I think the author was attempting to convey that other responders have already made mention of.

I seem to keep returning to this idea.

1 year ago: http://akkartik.name/blog/resolutions

3 years ago: http://www.reddit.com/comments/4e1f/the_barriers_to_starting...

The comment about mindsets is especially poignant.

I didn't think this submission was that great though. Waking up earlier when you have a reason to do so will often work better than if you have no real reason to do so. And the other two examples were about software rather than habits, which I see as two different beasts.

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