Are You a Guitar Player or a Club Owner?

I think you're getting close to the point but somewhat fail to nail it. The thing is that most people can't actually do anything if not forced to do it. They can't make anything on their own. They have barely enough will to put themselves in a situation where they know they'll have to move their ass.

I'm actually like that when it comes to sport. I don't have the will to go to a gym for instance, and I used to always find a last minute excuse not to go. Then I joined a futsal club, because I have enough will to commit myself to play next week. Then it's my culture to actually show up if I said I will... Problem solved : I managed to protect myself from my own laziness.

Basically students loads themselves with classes, or employees with work, because they have the will to commit themselves now to work like crazy for the next 3 months. But don't have the will everyday to work a little bit on their own.

From the title, I thought the article would go the other way, admonishing the lackadaisical one-a-week which becomes once-a-month practicing that simply peters off.

The article compares the dedicated amateur to the club owner, not the starving musician. The dedicated amateur, with an hour a day of self-motivated practice, is able to succeed in a low-stress non-demanding environment, whereas the club owner is a high-stress, high-demand environment.

I don't view either environments as being inherently better than the other. Different people thrive in different environments. I have a researcher friend, whom, given a task and some time, will come back with results and he'll do an excellent job. Put him in a frazzling high-demand situation? He quickly falls apart.

Someone else I know, given a task, will waste the day reading blogs and watching TV and only start working on it after midnight, but put into a high-stress situation does much better work than the researcher is able to output in the same situation.

I see this akin to individually being a producer vs. a consumer. Neither is inherently better, but, like consumers outnumber producers by a large margin, so too, do the club owners vs the guitar players.

While the analogy can fall apart if you stare at it too hard, I think he has a valid point. Hard concentration is one of the most productive useful things you can do. It is also absurdly hard to get into the zone. If I'm a little tired, or I think that I might want to do some other stuff, I might avoid it the way I might avoid doing pushups (I'll do it later).

I don't know why this is either. If you master focus it will really pay off.

nice thought.

wrench: the median club owner has more money than the median guitar player.

This is a bad analogy because if you are the club owner you already own a freaking club. Of course I'd want to be the club owner, making big bucks as a guitar player is a crap-shoot. You'll most likely fail as a musician and end up a computer programmer. If i sell the club that's money in my pocket.

This analogy isn't a paradox. It has nothing to do with deep concentration. It is a choice between a sure thing and most likely nothing.