Comment by 8490109481 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 8490109481 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know, having spent a third of of my life on a single project almost daily, not all that time deliberate and most of it ADD-driven problem avoidance, I ended up inflicting upon myself a personal hell I have only begun to comprehend the depths of. When the interest finally waned I didn't feel I had enough to show for it and every other aspect of my life suffered in ways that will take years to make up for.

At this point all I learned was to fear the next thing, obliterating most of my hyperspecific interests if I'm just going to lead myself down the path of a hermit again another N years. I get out instead but it doesn't make me feel much better anymore. It took too much out of me.

My daughter went from being a walk-on novice in a sport to being selected to a US national U23 team. 1) the amount of time and effort she devoted to training was simply astonishing to me as a veteran of Div III and club sports. 2) but along the way she had the benefit of very, very good coaching.

The effort it turns out is only part of the equation. Directing the effort into the most productive avenues is seemingly nearly as important.

Imagine if the magic trick was:

1. They pour a large bowl of rice onto a table

2. They reveal the exact number of grains

Would this feel exciting as a card buried under the ground? No

Does this still require a lot of effort to count every grain? Yes

Applying a huge amount of effort doesn’t equal achieving the desired result (in this case the suspense, surprise and magical element)

The direction one is going is often even more important than the effort applied

The problem is that it requires the same effort to verify that the magician isn't just lying, and if there's some way to effortlessly verify the number, then that same method could have been used by the magician ahead of time. To capture the sense of something magical, the reveal has to be immediately obvious, but in a way that (seems like it) can't have been used by the magician to set things up.

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