Comment by dottjt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dottjt | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for that.

I agree with what you say and I've definitely considered and thought about what you've said in the past, but it never quite works like that in practice. But that's also to say that I'm being unreasonable.

In the case of music for example, I had the realisation that part of the reason why I struggled is because I simply had no idea what I was listening to. This lead me to spend around 4 months familiarising myself with every single EDM genre and the kinds of sounds they use, and although I now find this knowledge invaluable, I'm not sure how I would have done this whilst also maintaining practice. In my mind, it was a necessary evil that I just had to knock out of the way, to the detriment of actual practice.

I guess my issue is my all or nothing attitude, which I really struggle to avoid and somehow even if I do start balanced and focused on practice, it somehow ends up becoming "all in" on a single way of learning.

But a question if you're available:

- How do you maintain that interest/curiosity without going "all in"? You say the feeling is irrelevant, but what is the drive? How do you maintain consistent curiosity?

I often think that the mania is a coping mechanism for a lack of curiosity/interest, and perhaps as well to mask the anxiety/boredom that art can bring.

1. How do I maintain interest/curiosity? I do not. I lose momentum and interest. I get depressed. So I pull out a blank sheet of paper and draw a progress meter. I commit to 20 hours of practice - dedicated either to a new skill or to generally overcoming my stagnation. I have done this dozens of times, and it has never failed, I always regain my passion.

2. How do I avoid going all in? Going all in is my default. I treat the 20 hour mark not only as a goal, but as a stopping point. I must make the conscious decision to draw another meter in order to continue, after considering how my time is being spent - otherwise I can become obsessed and lose balance in my life.

Note that your phrasing is self-defeating. You are telling yourself a story which appears maladaptive. Just listen to yourself: 4 months of valuable experience was an "evil" that you had to "knock out" to the "detriment" of "actual" practice.

You identified a weakness: You knew that you needed to develop your ear, and make sense of the territory. You might have collected a hundred brief sound clips and challenged yourself to identify the sub-genre. You might have randomly selected a genre and challenged yourself to produce a very brief (even minimal) piece that expresses its essence. You might have taken a short composition and, for any given genre, challenged yourself to reinterpret your own song in that style.

Here's an idea. Take 5 different genres, and challenge yourself to making a short piece that gradually and naturally transitions between them. Optionally ignore all other constraints, like global structure, general appeal, consistent aesthetics, etc.

You did 4 months of practice which was in all likelihood less than ideal, somewhat inefficient. So what? That's a positive, not a negative. Next time, try to incorporate "doing the thing" into your regimen and you won't feel like you've lost momentum.

Interesting, do you have any examples/literature on this idea of a progress meter? I think I might try that. Especially the whole 20 hour idea, I think will be really useful for me.

Here's an old album of the style meter I use [1]. I recommend a soothing blue & green for hobbies, I use red for client work. 20 Hours is the allocation for all skill learning. The tokens are part of a much larger whole as I've unified fun, skills, work, mental health and financial planning into a single system. I have programs that do most of it, but keeping it as a marker/paper UI is critical if you struggle with mental health or motivation, so that you can easily bootstrap yourself.

I extended the 20 hour practice idea from Josh Kaufman [2]

I highly recommend Sam Harris (Waking Up), Alan Watts, Laozi for mindfulness / meditation, as well as Iain McGilchrist (The Master & His Emissary), Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Flow) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) for metaphorical inspiration. Learning to play at life in any moment helps to eliminate tedium & boredom from your vocabulary.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/pMudls5 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

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