The tens of thousands of hours that I put into developing intellectually didn’t feel like a slog – it was fascinating.
That’s the whole point… You can keep saying that “Scott is not bad at math, he just didn’t put in the required 10k hours” but if the difference between those good at something and the rest of us is that to them putting 10k hours into learning that something doesn’t “feel like a slog”.
The way that I was learning math was radically different from how my classmates were—the two things aren’t really in the same reference class. If he had been surrounded by people of similar intellectual curiosity, some of whom were interested in calculus, his subjective feelings around learning calculus may have been totally different.
Yes, it was the same for me, I saw others memorize, say, the trig identities without understanding them, even though we were in the same class, with the same teacher. In other classes I was the one resorting to memorization, because the overall picture didn’t make sense to me (art history, literature). I attribute this to my not having the aptitude to internalize these subjects, just like those artsy types had trouble internalizing math and physics.
The way that I was learning math was radically different from how my classmates were—the two things aren’t really in the same reference class.
Same here. I loved math, people around me hated math… but if I had to learn math the same way they did, I would probably hate it too. (I am speaking about elementary- and high-school math here.)
The sad part is, the way they learned math is the standard way of our educational system; my way was the exception. I learned some basic things from older relatives before elementary school, then learned other things from books. I played with math in my free time, I explored, under no pressure.
Their way of learning was probably more like: “Remember this, remember that, and if you fail to remember all these hundred unconnected facts at the exam next week you will be punished.”
And, like eli wrote, it is also a question of time. I started playing with math before I started elementary school, which is why I had enough time to play. Later, at university, when we learned some things that I didn’t play with before, I started hating those parts of math. Because I was forced to keep running, despite not understanding things thoroughly, and I hate doing that.
Later, it is similar at my job (programming). When I am allowed to work at my own pace, I first explore the problem, then write the program; I am productive and I feel good. Unfortunately, more often than not, the management has a completely different idea about how to run things: they focus on keeping the programmers running so they don’t waste time “obsessing over philosophical details that provide no value to the customer”, but of course later these details make the whole stuff fall apart, and then we waste time and energy fixing bugs that should not have appeared in the first place, and we usually even don’t have enough time to fix those bugs properly, so they keep returning, and that makes the customer angry. So at the end, everyone is unhappy, because we were not allowed to take time to do things properly. (Although I suspect that the managers make a conclusion that this all happened because we were not running fast enough.)
Off-topic...
That’s the whole point… You can keep saying that “Scott is not bad at math, he just didn’t put in the required 10k hours” but if the difference between those good at something and the rest of us is that to them putting 10k hours into learning that something doesn’t “feel like a slog”.
The way that I was learning math was radically different from how my classmates were—the two things aren’t really in the same reference class. If he had been surrounded by people of similar intellectual curiosity, some of whom were interested in calculus, his subjective feelings around learning calculus may have been totally different.
Yes, it was the same for me, I saw others memorize, say, the trig identities without understanding them, even though we were in the same class, with the same teacher. In other classes I was the one resorting to memorization, because the overall picture didn’t make sense to me (art history, literature). I attribute this to my not having the aptitude to internalize these subjects, just like those artsy types had trouble internalizing math and physics.
Same here. I loved math, people around me hated math… but if I had to learn math the same way they did, I would probably hate it too. (I am speaking about elementary- and high-school math here.)
The sad part is, the way they learned math is the standard way of our educational system; my way was the exception. I learned some basic things from older relatives before elementary school, then learned other things from books. I played with math in my free time, I explored, under no pressure.
Their way of learning was probably more like: “Remember this, remember that, and if you fail to remember all these hundred unconnected facts at the exam next week you will be punished.”
And, like eli wrote, it is also a question of time. I started playing with math before I started elementary school, which is why I had enough time to play. Later, at university, when we learned some things that I didn’t play with before, I started hating those parts of math. Because I was forced to keep running, despite not understanding things thoroughly, and I hate doing that.
Later, it is similar at my job (programming). When I am allowed to work at my own pace, I first explore the problem, then write the program; I am productive and I feel good. Unfortunately, more often than not, the management has a completely different idea about how to run things: they focus on keeping the programmers running so they don’t waste time “obsessing over philosophical details that provide no value to the customer”, but of course later these details make the whole stuff fall apart, and then we waste time and energy fixing bugs that should not have appeared in the first place, and we usually even don’t have enough time to fix those bugs properly, so they keep returning, and that makes the customer angry. So at the end, everyone is unhappy, because we were not allowed to take time to do things properly. (Although I suspect that the managers make a conclusion that this all happened because we were not running fast enough.)