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The Calculus of Grit

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35 pointsStwerner12 comments

I thought he summarized it accurately in the last paragraph.

"So rework, reference, release. Flow through the landscape of your own strengths and weaknesses. Count to 10,000 rework hours as you walk. If you aren’t seeing accelerating external results by hour 3300, stop and introspect. That is the calculus of grit. It’s the exponential human psychology you need for exponential times. Ignore everything else."

It took a lot of wording to get there though. :-)

He seems to be very good at summarizing many pop-theorists (Gladwell & Friedman) and synthesizing an interesting core idea. My interpretation is, "It takes time to get to the limit of well defined fields, but if it doesn't get easier over time, you're on the wrong path." This rings true. Not everyone that takes an introductory CS course finds it easy, but if the third or fourth one is still awful instead of exciting, perhaps it's time to find a new major. Same with music. Or Literature. The great ones put in the time, but it gets easier. (& Perhaps that's why they can succeed!)

I like Rao's writing. A lot of his new stuff is very interesting, but is he ever going to finish The Gervas Principle?

Could someone summarize this concept? I found it a little hard to follow. Is he saying that mapping what "intellectual spaces" (or something) you travel through while developing some skill may help you figure out what you could be good at or something?

I believe he is saying that traditional metrics of mastery such as the "10,000 hours" of work metric are incomplete because they are extrinsically defined metrics. Venkatesh makes the point that except for a few well defined fields such as mathematics or violin (fields with predictable boundedness), such extrinsically defined metrics do not provide much useful information.

Therefore, using the analogy of relativity, Rao proposes a new metric of mastery based on intrinsic metrics. Metrics that he believes may provide insight as to whether you are truly improving if your work spans that of multiple fields. These metrics function as axes for your journey through "endeavor space". These axes are rework, referencing, and releasing. If you are wondering whether you working with grit or wasting your time, a self evaluation via these axes can help to tell you whether you are working towards mastery or not.

That's the gist of it, with one correction. The 10,000 hours bit is fine, the missing detail is how you count to 10,000 when there are no convenient external reference points. The true extrinsic variables are things like a named discipline or degrees as indicators of experience.

I feel like he was saying (at the end) that people shouldn't work on things they find hard.

Was he saying that? Because that seems silly.

I do think that part was not fully thought out. Some things are just hard, even when they're within your strengths. I think what he really means is that you shouldn't work on things that are hard in a certain way, and didn't realize that only certain kinds of difficulty, those that result from wasting energy on things you're not good at, are bad.

Has anyone read his book Tempo who can comment on it?

I'm about half way through it, though I'm the one who submitted this post. I've been reading since his first Gervais Principle post and really enjoy the way he writes.

That being said Tempo is a lot lower level writing than most of the blog posts, not that that's a bad thing. The book is very interesting, though I need to make sure I am actually paying good attention to what I'm reading. If you've read through the Gervais Principle and A Brief History of the Corporation, and find yourself wanting a lot more, the book will give you a lot.

I was a little disappointed by the abstract nature of some of the later chapters. I bought the book the same week that I stumbled on his blog, but after having read the book, I had to go and deep dive into his blog archives and only then I could connect the dots. I would also recommend reading "Impro" in parallel.

I bought the very first edition, just to be disappointed. There's nothing in the book as good as the Gervais principle. The blog is superior. The book is a coffee-table theory of of everything, (or everything about the mind). A bit like what Wolffram did, but poorer. He's well read, but still manages to cite things wrong, partially, or not at all. It feels like Gladwell, with more ambition, and less respect for the audience.

is there a grithub site ?

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