Are You a Guitar Player or a Club Owner?

http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/12/08/are-you-a-guitar-player-or-club-owner/

by ahlatimer • 17 years ago

30 15 17 years ago

calnewport.com

jpwagner4• 17 years ago

nice thought.

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

blackguardx• 17 years ago

I think this blog is trying to get people to transcend the thought that money = happiness. If you read his other posts, you can see that he often talks in terms of fulfillment, not money.

christofd• 17 years ago

I actually value the notion to try to attach a metric to a fuzzy term like 'happiness', even though it doesn't work. At least it displays the will to measure everything.

Edit: happiness = serotonin level in spinal fluid. Suicide cases show low levels after autopsy.

jpwagner4• 17 years ago

i didn't imply anything of the sort...

actually that's specifically why i chose the word "money" and not a word like "wealth", it's the skeptic in you that assumes people mean money=happiness ;)

ahlatimer2• 17 years ago

Many clubs open and fail, which could potentially leave you worse off than the average guitar player. At that point, you could be in the red a great deal if you took out more loans than what could be recuperated by liquidating everything.

jpwagner4• 17 years ago

that doesn't contradict anything i've said...

what i'm saying is that your model doesn't account for the above additional fact.

anonjon2• 17 years ago

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.

dasil0032• 17 years ago

All analogies break down eventually, but in this case I think you're jumping the gun. Do you have any idea how many clubs open and fail? Anyone can get a loan and open a club. Making it successful is a whole nother ball of wax.

anonjon2• 17 years ago

Well I'm sure a lot of clubs open and fail. But one has to assume that if you are opening a club, you have already been successful somewhere else. There is a much greater portrayal of starving musicians than there are starving club owners.

It clearly follows that if you were not elsewise successful, and able to buy a club, your cousin Vinny has gifted this club to you in an offer that you simply could not pass up.

Failing as a club owner almost directly implies that you failed in a secondary, non-career pursuit. The only way you can really starve in that situation is if you are a complete moron and actually invested your own money.

Millions of guitarists, however, go hungry in the streets every day.

Besides if you've taken out a loan to get the club, are you really a club owner? It seems like you are a proprietor most.

Besides, the point of analogies is that they be based on easily falsifiable things that /seem to be/ true. An analogy is a metaphor. You know, literature fluff.

This comparison doesn't /seem/ to be true, whether it is or not.

Xixi• 17 years ago

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.

SapphireSun• 17 years ago

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.

fragmede• 17 years ago

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.

Are You a Guitar Player or a Club Owner?

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