how to make progress: persistence
the way to make progress is to keep going with something *until reaching success*. then do another thing. over time, you’ll have many successes, which can themselves be built on (doing a project that uses some prior success and goes further).
the way ppl get stuck on FI is by doing things a little, not succeeding, then stopping, then repeat that with a different thing, then a third thing, then a fourth. and they try lots of things a little, but don’t persist with them to the point of success. each time they switch, they are *starting over* so they never *build up progress*.
quitting a learning project can be OK but needs to be intentional and clear, have a written out reason, and have a plan for what you’ll be doing next/instead that is better than continuing. and quitting should happen the minority of the time, success should happen the majority of the time. if your success rate is lower than 80%, that’s an indication of choosing learning projects which are too hard for you, which gets in the way of building up successes.
the point of success is not primarily to feel good. that’s a bonus. the main point is success means *you actually learned something and made progress*. success means getting to the point it can help your life, give you some intellectual tool, mean you know an idea that you can build on, that kinda thing. amassing stuff like that – stuff you actually learned that’s useful – is how to make progress. that requires trying to do something – figure something out, research something, understand the answer to a question, etc – and then doing it well enough to succeed. which requires mostly doing stuff that’s easy enough for you to succeed. and it requires persisting with the same thing instead of stopping halfway. keep posting about the thing from different angles, and trying different activities that you think could help, until some do help. brainstorm stuff and try a variety of things (or do an easier project that your first or second try works better).
keep track of what you do. write it down. like when we talked about having a project queue a while ago (so just add on keeping a written record of what things went in and out). but then people just stopped doing that after a bit, without success, and without any statement about why they were stopping, which is typical and is the problem i’m talking about.
Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com
the way ppl get stuck on FI is by doing things a little, not succeeding, then stopping, then repeat that with a different thing, then a third thing, then a fourth. and they try lots of things a little, but don’t persist with them to the point of success. each time they switch, they are *starting over* so they never *build up progress*.
quitting a learning project can be OK but needs to be intentional and clear, have a written out reason, and have a plan for what you’ll be doing next/instead that is better than continuing. and quitting should happen the minority of the time, success should happen the majority of the time. if your success rate is lower than 80%, that’s an indication of choosing learning projects which are too hard for you, which gets in the way of building up successes.
the point of success is not primarily to feel good. that’s a bonus. the main point is success means *you actually learned something and made progress*. success means getting to the point it can help your life, give you some intellectual tool, mean you know an idea that you can build on, that kinda thing. amassing stuff like that – stuff you actually learned that’s useful – is how to make progress. that requires trying to do something – figure something out, research something, understand the answer to a question, etc – and then doing it well enough to succeed. which requires mostly doing stuff that’s easy enough for you to succeed. and it requires persisting with the same thing instead of stopping halfway. keep posting about the thing from different angles, and trying different activities that you think could help, until some do help. brainstorm stuff and try a variety of things (or do an easier project that your first or second try works better).
keep track of what you do. write it down. like when we talked about having a project queue a while ago (so just add on keeping a written record of what things went in and out). but then people just stopped doing that after a bit, without success, and without any statement about why they were stopping, which is typical and is the problem i’m talking about.
Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com
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Elliot
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