Ask HN: What are you practicing?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360125

by hooande • 18 years ago

2 5 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

There have been a few articles recently saying that 10 years or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is the key to becoming exceptional at anything. People always use sports and music as examples because they lend themselves naturally to deliberate practice.

Most of us on hackernews aren't trying to be athletes or musicians. So what are you practicing?

I'm trying to identify the skills that will make me more successful as a startup founder. Technical skills are obvious, but I don't spend a lot of time doing deliberate practice with those because programming and admin are only a small part of a successful startup. Are there any other startup founder skills that can be improved with hours of daily practice?

alaskamiller• 18 years ago

Never stop closing.

noodle• 18 years ago

well, i'll be the contrary one and just throw out there that i've been doing some form of martial arts for about 15 years now and don't consider myself particularly exceptional.

i'm quite good, but having seen exceptional, i know i'm not there.

redorb• 18 years ago

I make it a point to pick up an incoming sales call and make sure I know the product as well as I think I do, of course I'm usually developing ways and methods of selling that product.

jaytee_clone• 18 years ago

1. Go out and talk to a stranger. Write down your interaction later. Take notes of your body language. You goal is to have them ask for your number or email before the conversation ends.

2. Learn something you have never learned before and device a way to practice it every day. (You don't have to do it of course.) This is practicing your meta-practice skills.

3. Teach/explain something you know very well to someone who doesn't know anything about it.

4. Pick something randomly (daily utilities or routines), and make it better, or at least think about how you would do it. (You want to focus on a specific quality for at least a week. e.g. this week is user-friendly week, next week is durability.)

5. Find something (or concept, habit) you don't need and get rid of it.

6. Grab a friend/stranger, ask about something he want to change about his life. Analyze it and find the root cause. (of course, solution will be even better)

7. Grab a friend, tell them about something your want to change. Analyze it and find the root cause.

8. Meditation (the sitting kind, but also try to be aware of your thoughts at all time of the day.)

9. Make 10 people laugh.

10. Pick a newspaper/blog article and rewrite it.

11. Smile at everyone you see, and find something about them that you like.

I can keep going with the list.

The principle here is what you already know, which is putting in 10,000 hours.

However, I think it's far important to focus on the specific and push yourself just a little bit every day.

You don't get better at playing chess by playing in the same rank for 10,000 hours. You get better by playing with someone who's better than you until you can beat him consistently, then play with someone who's even better until you can beat him.

This works because your brain is design to adapt to harder and harder tasks. Hence the old saying, "if it's not hard, you're not learning."

unalone• 18 years ago

"Startup founder skills?" Are there such things? If you look at it one way, pretty much any skill can be a "founder skill" if you use it right.

I've been working out, if that counts as practicing. I like being able to look at my body and feel a measure of pride in it. And absolutely, if you look good, it influences how other people think of you. I've also been trying to write music: mostly classical-inspired pop. I'm not very good at it, but it gives me something to fiddle with.

If I could say some things that aren't current, though, my two big ones are acting and Dungeon Mastering.

Acting, because it teaches you to become comfortable with your body, your voice, and with other people: you learn much more about your relationship with other things. It teaches you both about how you interact with yourself and about how you can change yourself to get a reaction in other people. Also, because the cliché is true: there's no people like show people. They've vivid and fast and alive, and there's no sort of person I'd rather be with on a boring do-nothing day.

Dungeon Mastering, because it forces you to think. You're dealing with an extremely complex system, you're dealing with four-ish other people who each often know all the rules pertaining to them, and you're dealing with a world that you have to create yourself. Being a good DM means you learn how to handle complex systems and how to innovate within said systems. You need to balance four people at once and keep them all constantly entertained. It requires years of reading and - most likely - years of practice afterwards, but it's profoundly satisfying once you can do it. And D&D players are unique in that any group of players is playing because they love the game. You don't do it as a social move, or as a career move. You very rarely do it to pick up girls. It means you're with people who genuinely love what they do.

(I'd also recommend working out, if you haven't tried it before, because it's an excellent way of calming your mind, and because you really have to focus to get it to work.)

Ask HN: What are you practicing?

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