Things I wish I knew the day I started Berklee
sivers.org
sivers.org
"When you are not practicing, someone else is. When you meet him, he will win".
I remember years ago when I was on the swim team I had missed two practices. My coach said I had missed 4 practices, and I tried to correct him but he said, "You missed 2 practices, but your competition did not. So now you are 4 practices behind your competition."
I always remembered that.
What am I missing here?
Each time you miss your training, you lose twice. One for being behind your schedule, and another for being behind your opponent.
In other words, not only are you behind on your schedule, but your opponent is ahead of you.
This changes your perspective.
This is a very interesting and motivating point. But I do not think it goes into the causal matrix.
It may be behind your schedule, behind your opponent, and behind the refrigerator. But you don't simply add everything that your training is behind.
Your training schedule prepares you for your opponent. Being behind your schedule is already equivalent to being behind your opponent.
That said, changing one's perspective can be very beneficial.
But the reason why being behind schedule is bad is because you are behind your opponent. They don't count twice.
The only way this makes sense is if you actually regress during your missed practices. That way, not only do you miss 2 practices, but it takes you 2 more practices just to get back to where you were before. Then it's like 4 missed practices total.
Your missing practice is merely failing to score a touchdown. It does not result in any extra touchdowns or practices for the competition. You really are only 2 practices behind.
“When you are not enjoying your life, someone else is. When you meet him, you will probably regret.”
Sounds like a nice way to live too.
Bruce Lee changed his "be as ready to fight as possible every day" attitude which didn't allowed him to be the best - he had to train less intensely than possible. So he introduced two one day rests and one two days rest into his training regimen.
Sayings like that (quoted by article author and one from your trainer) are manipulative and provoke sense of guilt without any good reason.
The point of education is not to get a "certificate" that proves to your future employers that you went through the motions of education.
The point is to make yourself valuable.
I'm surprised how many people are oblivious to this.
So many people view education as nothing more than "something boring you have to do so that you get a decent job". Where a decent job is "something boring that you to do to make a decent living".
There's a contradiction there somewhere: if everything you do is boring, how "decent" is your living? really.
What's their idea of a decent living? "Getting paid enough to pay the bills and send the kids to school and make them not have to worry about doing any work". In other words, a decent living is the ability to make your children's life just as boring as yours is.
None of this brings any happiness.
There is little in one's formal educational experience to prepare one for the concept that one can do work that has real value. So much of what you work on is an exercise, a problem that has already been solved that you must solve again for a grade or a prize, after which your work will be thrown away.
Thank god for open source and the corresponding increase in code sharing.
Actually if you're good enough, plenty of money. It's not a matter of how many people do it, it's a matter of how much better you are than the many people that do it are. Amateur programmers shouldn't be making software for Bank of America, the same way an amateur musician shouldn't be playing for Dream Theater. The interesting thing is that one generally doesn't notice when you cross the line that makes you a professional, which is generally delimited by profitability.
If you can make money with your abilities it's because there are a bunch of people that can't, but never make the mistake of thinking that because a lot of people do something it means you can't make money off it. Oh and of course, the person with such abilities that doesn't take advantage of them to make money doesn't deserve them (with the exception of the multitalented who leverages a 'better' skill or the person leveraging those skills in a risk filled endeavor for larger profits).
Oh and of course, the person with such abilities
that doesn't take advantage of them to make money
doesn't deserve them (with the exception of the
multitalented who leverages a 'better' skill or
the person leveraging those skills in a risk
filled endeavor for larger profits).
Is he a complete waste because he declined to take the prize money for his proofs?
If your life's work is math, carpentry, or the
trombone, so be it. But coasting through life
doing odd jobs to get by when you have a skill
in which you're proficient is an insult to the
rest of the people that don't share it.
I think sp4rki's point is that it's a waste if not taking/making the money means that you have less time to do whatever it is you're good at. E.g. the artist who could make money from it but chooses not to, and as a result has to work at the convenience store, and as a result produces less art. Though that last bit is a bit contentious - maybe working at the convenience store is a good source of inspiration for that artist.
But, according to various accounts he's probably not. He quit doing mathematics and just lives with his mother and goes to the movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman#Withdrawal_fro...
Also, having another degree I think I had a different perspective than many of the high school graduates that where there with the idea of becoming a rock star or whatever. Most of the instructors, etc, made their livings by teaching, playing random gigs, doing essentially anonymous studio work, and odd jobs. Music is a very hard business. This reality seemed mostly lost on the majority of the students. I decided that I was probably happier to have a "real" job and play music on the side.
I bookmarked this and stopped reading after that. Nice reminder to get back to coding for me.
That lead me to think that the author didn't in fact start Berklee, he started at it. That is not communicated in the title, and also the post itself contains sentences like this:
Luckily, when I was 17, a few months before starting Berklee, I met a man named Kimo Williams who used to teach at Berklee and convinced me that the standard pace is for chumps.
So; can we please have an "at" in the HN title, at least? :)
But also, success in the field of music requires a level of social assertiveness and competence that is way beyond what it is in technology. Nobody cares about your cool grooves or whatever, you have to fight to stay on board. But oh you can build my ecommerce site for me ?
I got out of Berklee in '92 and basically dicked around trying to get non-shitty gigs for a few years, not going to enough jams and auditions, until an ocean of interest and money came at me to do anything related to computers, after I had sworn them off to be a musician. I was interested in eating and not living in a box. The market decided for me on that one - scratch and claw your way to get some real music gigs, or step into this plush world of "wow you can program ?". Wish I could play again.
I wonder, though, if perhaps you are nit-picking on a pithy title? "Be valuable" doesn't have to mean "learn business at the expense of creating value in your music", does it?
Maybe it's like this: getting paid implies your work has value, but your work may value even if you are not getting paid?
The girls selected by the pretty sorority will likely be dumber than average but that's not because they are pretty, it's because of the selection criteria.
An attribute used in a selection requirement is easily misidentified as a causal factor. Pretty does not have to cause dumb. Popularity in and of itself does not have to cause bad music. Neither does starvation cause great art.
I must temper this conclusion with a joke: "I used to like the Chilean Miners when they were underground. Now they're too mainstream."
Sounds exactly like a library, except (I presume) extremely expensive. I only went to college because I assumed (correctly) that at least a few great minds would be there. What's the upside to Berklee?
A ton of great lines in there, as Derek Sivers is an amazing writer jam-packed w/ wisdom much like PG, but this is my most fav one out of the pack:
"But the casual ones end up having casual talent and merely casual lives."
>The rest was noise you'll be proud you avoided.
Yes -- almost, but you will properly feel that there are one or two things that you didn't experience that you will miss not being a part of.
Especially the quote "The casual ones end up having casual talent and merely casual lives."
I think I agree with the point, but would refine it. Both talented and talentless people have the option of living boring lives. The more talent you have, and the more willing you are to focus and direct it, the more leverage you have to launch yourself into a fascinating and entertaining lifestyle.
Its dumb to spend your whole creative life simply reproducing ideas that seemed obvious decades ago. You can get a lot better if you know what other people did, and then consciously build on it.
> In one intensive lesson, he taught me the whole semester of Arranging 1
I don't know if that actually says something about Berklee or about Music...
I am all about teaching yourself and internal thirst for knowledge, but this is a bit depressing.