I was recently reading the book of Exodus, in particular where G-d tells Moses and the Jewish people about the construction of the tabernacle and the altar. The striking thing about the altar is the description of daily sacrifices that are required.
As a metaphor, this resonates to what we're talking about there. The nature of the universe is such that change happens much more through compounding than through one-time miracles (eg, if you want an extra 100K in the bank, the easiest way to do that is to have saved $27 every day over the last 10 years than somehow to wish for the 100K to land in your account in one shot, the way to lose 10 lbs is to cut out 100 calories a day for a year, etc.)
Back to Exodus - you can think of "$27/day" or "100 calories/day" as a form of sacrifice. You can always spend that money on something, you an always eat an extra treat - to not do that requires consistent, daily, sacrifice, albeit small.
That's why when someone does something consistently, we say he does it "religiously" - religion teaches you daily consistency in many ways. We don't sacrifice on the altar nowadays, but think about daily morning prayer for example - if you can be consistent with that you can be consistent with a lot of other things.
+1, fantastic comment. This really resonates. I was recently looking at the app I use to manage my workouts and realized I've done over 150,000 pushups using the app. I'm pretty strong for a middle-aged tech worker, and it's because of the consistency. Same deal w/ guitar - I try hard to play for at least 10m nearly every day (which sometimes expands to a much longer session) and it really pays dividends.
No, this is not really a fantastic comment because the comment initially supports the thesis of the article, which is "change is slow progress, not a burst of activity" and it does this quite well with a biblical comparison, but then it veers off to "daily praying, helps with success in other areas", which is a totally different thesis. That's proselytizing instead of commenting on the article.
And your "+1, fantastic comment" smells, too; because you do not address the content of the comment, but only the original thesis of the posted article. So it should have been "+1, fantastic article". You don't even say what's so good in the comment that you praise.
Is this an attack by missionaries with day jobs in marketing? :-)
(And it is not really a fantastic article either, because it has a nice start with the Rocky comparison and a nice ending (sans post script) that fits the start but the middle is a muddle just like this run-on sentence.)
This is going to maybe sound dumb, but hear me out: I've found a good hack to get around the montage fallacy, which is: the montage playlist.
For whatever thing you're trying to improve, which would be a montage in your personal movie, make a playlist. Stick with it: it's fine to swap songs in or out, but don't overdo it, maintain the continuity.
Memory is episodic, and for my brain type at least, sound, specifically musical sound, really ties it together. Listening to music from bygone decades is the best tool I have to really put myself in my memories of those times.
The montage playlist works the same way: it compresses all the slow, repetitive, boring work that goes into improving yourself into a montage. It feels less like dozens to hundreds of hours, and more like the same hour but getting a bit better each time.
I think this is great! It may not work if you're trying to build a five-minute-a-day daily habit, it may not work for everyone, but there's def something to it! There's also a pattern of some pretty productive people making playlists of a few upbeat but simple songs they'd never listen to otherwise, and putting that on repeat when they go heads-down on something, see e.g. one of my favorite examples: https://ryanholiday.net/the-guilty-crazy-secret-that-helps-m...
It does not sound dumb. Ideas like this crossed my mind and I had even put a playlist together too.
However, mindfulness and being present is a huge part of the practice. You get a lot more out of something if you are able to be more present during the boring parts than your consciousness leaving.
Whether or not music takes you out of the present or not varies a lot by person. If you're the sort that finds it distracting then this isn't for you, and that's fine.
While I do agree, I think there's another effect that runs in reverse of this:
I had a goal to get to a certain weight. I passed that goal, but I don't know when. I was putting forth real effort, I was doing all the things you need to do. It wasn't a montage, I wasn't skipping anything.
Here's what I think happened: Small effects are huge in the long term. Every day I was losing a few grams of fat, to the point that it was never a dramatic swing that I could say "I made it!". From day to day, the number on the scale went up and down, and at some point, it never went above my goal number again.
NOTE: I actually don't encourage losing weight to a certain number - this is just for simplicity. The number is a small part of the goal. I actually have goal pants and shirt next to the scale and lately the scale hasn't moved, but the clothes fit better.
If health is your goal, please track more than one thing.
Interesting, for me that sounds like exactly the montage thing, just without the set endpoint necessarily. But if you focus on your goal number too much, you may get disheartened by the slow progress there, or the brief setbacks along the way, whereas if you learn to enjoy the underlying process, you're just doing your thing and then before you know it your weight is sort of where you want it.
I recently noticed the narrative power of montages and just how "movie magic" they are, as opposed to being based in reality, when I watched the BlackBerry movie. There's a really great montage near the beginning of the film where they're cobbling together a prototype device in one night for an important meeting the next day. Watching it, I couldn't help but get hyped up and excited.
As a dev, I love watching other technical people do the impossible and create something great. At the same time, the logical part of my brain kept thinking, "This is really cool, but obviously this is total fiction. No way anybody, no matter how smart they are, can put together a device like that in one night." But I went along with it because it was fun and got the narrative going. So even with my critical brain, I couldn't help but "believe" the fantasy a little bit.
On the whole, it made me reflect on how movies really do present a fictional view of reality and that's kind of the power they have. And what about all those times where I watched a movie and didn't have a background in what they were presenting and just ate it up wholesale?
It was recently chosen as the greatest film of all time by the legendary Sight and Sound magazine, who conduct this poll among critics and other professionals since 1952. (“Citizen Kane” is still hanging on to third place after all these years.)
But cinematic fiction without its familiar causal trappings is a hard watch for most people, especially as attention spans get shorter and shorter in the age of TikTok. I don’t suppose “Jeanne Dielman” will suddenly be discovered by regular viewers.
The counterpoint to this is Greg LeMond's (possibly apocryphal) quote about cycling training: "it never gets easier, you just go faster." LeMond is the only American to win the Tour de France.
In regards to flossing, I used to never do it, until a new dentist told I oughta or my teeth would fall out in my 20s.
I was 16 when that happened, and I have flossed every single day since. Now I can't brush my teeth without flossing. The process just feels incomplete without it.
I get the why of movies using montages, but I agree with the author in that it can stylize/"sexify" the experience away so that susceptible viewers can think they can just dreamily get from one end to the other, when reality is much more sharp-edged/clunky than smooth most of the time. To me, progress is about consistency above all else- It's all about getting your ass to the gym on those days you REALLY don't want to, it's raining out, and all the music on your playlist is just not hitting for you that day.
I have worked out every day this year (after two years of effectively no exercise). I put it all in a spreadsheet, and glancing over the 58 exercise sessions, I see progress.
Had I not thought to memorialize it, I believe I would be sitting here thinking that working out is doing nothing. My montage memory finds no higlights.
I'm tired of this particular brand of Think Piece that seems to be en vogue right now, which attempts to attribute all manner of ills to external forces.
I doubt most people fail at personal transformation because movie montages and "marketers" led them to believe it would be easy, I think most people fail because it is really really hard to achieve. Getting permission to blame it on Rocky et al is more appealing than blaming yourself, but I would bet that in an alternate universe where training montages didn't exist very little would be different..
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As a metaphor, this resonates to what we're talking about there. The nature of the universe is such that change happens much more through compounding than through one-time miracles (eg, if you want an extra 100K in the bank, the easiest way to do that is to have saved $27 every day over the last 10 years than somehow to wish for the 100K to land in your account in one shot, the way to lose 10 lbs is to cut out 100 calories a day for a year, etc.)
Back to Exodus - you can think of "$27/day" or "100 calories/day" as a form of sacrifice. You can always spend that money on something, you an always eat an extra treat - to not do that requires consistent, daily, sacrifice, albeit small.
That's why when someone does something consistently, we say he does it "religiously" - religion teaches you daily consistency in many ways. We don't sacrifice on the altar nowadays, but think about daily morning prayer for example - if you can be consistent with that you can be consistent with a lot of other things.
And your "+1, fantastic comment" smells, too; because you do not address the content of the comment, but only the original thesis of the posted article. So it should have been "+1, fantastic article". You don't even say what's so good in the comment that you praise.
Is this an attack by missionaries with day jobs in marketing? :-)
(And it is not really a fantastic article either, because it has a nice start with the Rocky comparison and a nice ending (sans post script) that fits the start but the middle is a muddle just like this run-on sentence.)
For whatever thing you're trying to improve, which would be a montage in your personal movie, make a playlist. Stick with it: it's fine to swap songs in or out, but don't overdo it, maintain the continuity.
Memory is episodic, and for my brain type at least, sound, specifically musical sound, really ties it together. Listening to music from bygone decades is the best tool I have to really put myself in my memories of those times.
The montage playlist works the same way: it compresses all the slow, repetitive, boring work that goes into improving yourself into a montage. It feels less like dozens to hundreds of hours, and more like the same hour but getting a bit better each time.
However, mindfulness and being present is a huge part of the practice. You get a lot more out of something if you are able to be more present during the boring parts than your consciousness leaving.
I had a goal to get to a certain weight. I passed that goal, but I don't know when. I was putting forth real effort, I was doing all the things you need to do. It wasn't a montage, I wasn't skipping anything.
Here's what I think happened: Small effects are huge in the long term. Every day I was losing a few grams of fat, to the point that it was never a dramatic swing that I could say "I made it!". From day to day, the number on the scale went up and down, and at some point, it never went above my goal number again.
NOTE: I actually don't encourage losing weight to a certain number - this is just for simplicity. The number is a small part of the goal. I actually have goal pants and shirt next to the scale and lately the scale hasn't moved, but the clothes fit better.
If health is your goal, please track more than one thing.
As a dev, I love watching other technical people do the impossible and create something great. At the same time, the logical part of my brain kept thinking, "This is really cool, but obviously this is total fiction. No way anybody, no matter how smart they are, can put together a device like that in one night." But I went along with it because it was fun and got the narrative going. So even with my critical brain, I couldn't help but "believe" the fantasy a little bit.
On the whole, it made me reflect on how movies really do present a fictional view of reality and that's kind of the power they have. And what about all those times where I watched a movie and didn't have a background in what they were presenting and just ate it up wholesale?
A famous example is “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” by Chantal Akerman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Dielman,_23_quai_du_Com...
It was recently chosen as the greatest film of all time by the legendary Sight and Sound magazine, who conduct this poll among critics and other professionals since 1952. (“Citizen Kane” is still hanging on to third place after all these years.)
But cinematic fiction without its familiar causal trappings is a hard watch for most people, especially as attention spans get shorter and shorter in the age of TikTok. I don’t suppose “Jeanne Dielman” will suddenly be discovered by regular viewers.
"It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier".
The gym, self-care, flossing.The list goes on, but that scene really clicked for me.
Closest I can get to a citation. https://books.google.com/books?id=PCtBBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...
Had I not thought to memorialize it, I believe I would be sitting here thinking that working out is doing nothing. My montage memory finds no higlights.