Tangentially, I've been applying something similar, but actually thinking of it as the privilege of high status.
As a very senior member of my team, which has a lot of new college grads, I've been asking the "dumb" questions, the "irritating" questions, intentionally speaking up what I believe others may be thingking, specifically because I figure I can afford the social (career) hit.
Yes - I'm a senior member of my team too (to the extent that I've previously been the team lead of similar teams) and it's so freeing to be able to:
1. Give plenty of credit to the juniors when they do good work, even if they were reliant on support, with no need to take credit myself
2. Give up some time working on my own objectives to coach the juniors, even though there's no cost code to book the time to and nobody asks me to do it
3. Easily say, with zero guilt: "no sorry that can't be done in 2 weeks, that's a 6 week job" or "sure I can do my part of this job but I'm going to need you to commit XYZ other resources if you want it to be a success"
4. Interpret the rules in the way I think is best for the organisation, not trying to please the person with the most pedantic interpretation
5. I can produce convincing explanations of how my work performance is delivering value to the organisation (whereas juniors can sometimes work their arse off and get no recognition for it)
I'm also a middle aged white man which seems to confer a lot of unearned trust, but combined with my professional experience I seriously think I have it easier than the juniors in so many ways, and it's my responsibility to give back a bit.
> Give plenty of credit to the juniors when they do good work, even if they were reliant on support, with no need to take credit myself
This is one of the most effective ways to lead because it builds goodwill and trust on the team. It also takes almost nothing away from you because as the senior/leader you will get default credit for most everything. It's always odd to me more people don't realize this.
Never be afraid to ask stupid questions. As someone who spent years doing penetration testing, I can assure you that when stupid questions don’t have an obvious answer, someone isn’t thinking properly.
Also never be afraid to question people who answer quickly. We spend way too much effort training smart people to answer quickly rather than deeply, and there’s almost always a tradeoff between the two.
Unfortunately that's the kind of black-and-white advice that seldom applies in the real world. Would you want to see your surgeon asking stupid questions? The pilot of the flight you're on?
You wouldn't, because part of your psychological comfort depends on your perception that people like this -- people whose decisions really matter -- actually know what they're doing.
ETA: By "stupid questions", I don't mean "basic but obviously important questions". I mean questions that reveal that you don't know something that other people expect you to know, that signal to them (rightly or wrongly) that they may have overestimated you.
> I can assure you that when stupid questions don’t have an obvious answer, someone isn’t thinking properly.
Once you start asking stupid questions on the regular it's quite an interesting experience how often you can ask "stupid" questions to rooms full of senior engineers and sort of get back confused silence. In my experience there's a lot of really important but "stupid" questions that often just gets half-ignored because imagination and prioritization is hard.
I love and struggle with the second point. It's taken me half my career to realize that people would very much prefer the complete and right answer slowly or later than the '90% sure' answer right now. Being quick doesn't make you look smart
I disagree. Asking stupid questions, even if in good faith, can be mean being banned from communities or losing participation privileges. Such as mathoverflow or stackexhcange.
In my experience this usually doesn’t turn into a career hit, but a career boon. I’ve been doing this since I was a junior, now I’m a staff engineer, and admittedly I am biased toward myself, but my career growth has been robust and among both my current t team and my professional network I feel I command a fair amount of respect and approachability because of this practice, which always pays off in the long run
I've had a similar experience with doing this overall in terms of career impact. It hasn't consistently worked for me, though. It really depends on the team.
The main issue I've run into happens when a person's reply to my stupid question doesn't make sense to me. If I continue asking follow up questions in order to understand better they sometimes get angry. But if I stop asking questions when I start to detect anger then I am left feeling confused about how the system works. Either way I'm left with a negative emotional impression of the person's caliber. Which isn't great for me cohering with the team.
I imagine that you've also run into this problem. How do you think about it?
I would go even further and call it the responsibility of high status to ask such questions.
As a high status person, you have an outsized influence on culture whether you like it or not, and an environment in which this kind of question can be asked ultimately leads to better outcomes.
I used to be the one that in big meetings would ask the 'dumb' questions a lot of people undoubtedly had in their mind, but wouldn't dare to pose. I didn't care that some people would find the question stupid, since it would make other people happy for not having to speak up themselves while still getting the info they needed. It would as well make some people happy for establishing a slightly higher place in the pecking order. At least i would gain some karma and maybe even some admiration.
Over the years I did this less and nowadays I mostly only speak when asked so in rather big meetings.
How did this come to be? I found that people who feel that they belong in the higher ranks of the social pecking order sometimes don't like this behavior and actively try to make you look bad. As I'm quite sensitive and am generally a people pleaser who thrives on getting external validation (I'm working on it...), it did not feel good and I feel it wasn't worth the trouble...
Yes this is probably the best thing about feeling senior enough and maybe the best measure of seniority. If you dare ask stupid questions you aren't stupid.
But then there are likely also situations when you feel that you ask a bunch of stupid questions but are faced with blank stares because people doesn't understand the context enough for those questions either or they are struggling enough with other problems to even entertain that kind of question.
It can kind of lead to a similar situation to when the math professor at uni jokingly asks a "trivial" math question in front of his students. It's trivial only once you have worked that kind of problem a 1000 times.
Absolutely. As I get more and more senior, I found myself prefacing a lot of questions with "let me ask some stupid questions" to ask some broad questions or context of the meeting. It can be something seemingly obvious, what's important is it somehow breaks the barrier for others to ask questions. I used to say "I'm going to play my 'new guy' card one more time" when I'm new at a company, but this seems to work more generically, and tends to work in the team's benefit.
I have an account on reddit that leans into extremes, specifically to collect the ad hominem attacks, while wading into benign topics people won’t talk about but would like consensus on
because they are afraid the benign topic will cause them to get ad hominem attacked or generally vilified
most people’s reddit profiles are their whole identity and they try to stay in moderate “polite company” at the expense of remaining ignorant
Indeed. As a senior, I found out that at the last 'retrospective' I was one the only ones who had anything on 'needs improvement' 'saying what I believe others might be thinking' - and during anonymous voting my items did get most of the votes.
I wish more people were like you. I can't speak to the past but it seems all anyone in high status positions wants to do is be "guilded" and left alone.
I have understood that the vast majority of people are simply not interested in having conversations, their goal is to perform social dance that scores them social points.
Sufficient status entirely changes how the act of asking dumb questions is perceived by others. A person with a small title is seen as asking dumb questions because they are dumb. A person with a big title asks dumb questions because they are smart. Of course it's not just title but also age, gender, race, appearance, etc.
Over the past few years, I've managed to convince (and occasionally demonstrate) to my kids that "you'll be bad at anything new" and that they only way to get better is practice.
As a result, when other kids have made fun of them for failing, they rebut with "I've never done this before! I'll get better!" which is awesome.. being able to handle failure, acknowledge it as failure, and then figure out how to get better.
If you can get and hold onto that mindset, it's kinda awesome.
I disagree. Innate talent / affinity and transferable experience exist. I agree with "10% inspiration and 90% perspiration"; however, given equal effort, people with innate talent are going to win over people with no or less talent by a wide margin. This applies to everything. Gym / sports performance, muscle growth, work that needs IQ, work that needs EQ, life events that need resilience, general happiness, everything. Genetics is hugely definitive.
And I'm convinced some people bounce back more easily after a failure because failure is genuinely less hurtful for them. They don't need to "hold onto that mindset"; they just have it.
> I disagree. Innate talent / affinity and transferable experience exist. I agree with "10% inspiration and 90% perspiration"; however, given equal effort, people with innate talent are going to win over people with no or less talent by a wide margin.
I think you are misreading the person you're replying to.
They aren't saying "everybody can be equally good at everything with practice."
They're saying "don't quit just because you aren't great on day 1."
First time playing basketball even if you've played soccer a ton and have good general athletic ability? Don't expect to hold your own if joining a game being played by people who play every week.
First time doing woodworking even if you have an electrical engineering background and the methodicalness is not foreign to you? Don't expect your first table to be stunning. Still gonna be bad at it compared to people with more practice!
Honestly, if you think you're great at something the first time you try it, you probably just don't know what being great at it actually looks like. (It could even be "similar result, but better in some hidden ways, and done in 1/10th the time.")
But if you believe that you'll get better at it with practice, you'll keep doing it.
If you believe "guess I just don't have innate ability here" you'll give up and never get good.
"Cate Hall is Astera's CEO. She's a former Supreme Court attorney and the ex-No. 1 female poker player in the world."
This article is countersignaling. It also happens to be directionally correct.
There is absolutely nothing low status about being present-day Cate Hall. But present-day Cate Hall probably tried and pushed through a lot of really tough stuff in part because yesteryear Cate Hall had this mindset. It so happened that she also had the talent to actually end up in impressive places.
The real lesson one should probably take from a person like this is that learning to eyeball your own strengths and weaknesses before you start down the long path of honing them is really important. If you are low status now but you have reason to believe you will become much higher status in the future by persevering, then persevere. If not...
She’s a VC-backed founder who went to Yale, and her very first job was at Goldman. What she’s describing in the article is not “low status” because she hadn’t experienced that. But the feeling she describes reveals what she thinks “low status” is - embarrassment.
Getting into Yale is indeed pretty good prima facie evidence that you have what it takes to be high status in the future, in quite a few domains. Persevering is great advice for most people along most trajectories who get into Yale.
These thing aren't talked about much. But think the proper way to discuss is that "social status" exists among groups of rough peers and "social position" better describes someone's privileges of wealth, education and employment relative to society as a whole.
Just as an example, a whole lot of dysfunctional dynamics happening lately seem to involve billionaires jockeying for status with other billionaires.
Edit: I'd recommend Paul Fussel's book Class since it involves discussion of these two dynamics.
From my research the whole Alvea thing was an Effective Alturism cooked up project that only lasted 3 years and made no money, and then now they are at Astera which seems to be some rich persons plaground where they throw money at researchers to do “stuff”. What that stuff is, I don’t know.
The real moral of this story is you should get rich eccentric friends from the Ivy League elite who throw money at you to do AGI. Like you really think this company of like 40 people is going to crack AGI?
Man I should cross the moat and get some rich friends.
Talented people don't have to go through as much embarrassment as others because they learn faster than normal & will impress through that, even if they're worse at what they're doing. Also, once you are truly good at something, it's easier to be bad at something else. But not disagreeing with her.
This article is countersignaling. It also happens to be directionally correct.
As far as I can tell, you jargony phrase means that this is something like the humble part of "humble bragging". I'd disagree, I think the article gives honest good advice, an honest "meta-analysis" of social status and jumping into new things. It's "actionable", something you can do.
I would add that its advice for the sort of person who is normally always thinking about and fairly competent with social status and is held back from new skills by this. I personally was never too worried about social status and have learned massive new things by just being willing to try them but wound-up bitten by my ignoring of status. My advice for my younger me is to be strategic about publicly ignoring status but keep going into private.
Also statements like "she succeeded 'cause she was tough" are meaningless as advice or actionable/verifiable statements. Maybe she succeeded 'cause she had a bunch of strategies like the one she outlines, maybe she succeeded 'cause of good luck, maybe she succeed by family positions, maybe "luck", "toughness" or "mojo" did it.
>statements like "she succeeded 'cause she was tough" are meaningless as advice or actionable/verifiable statements
The action you are supposed to take from this is to figure out whether you're tough, and if you find out you're not, to give up and go to something else you're better suited for. This seems like exceptionally actionable advice - just not advice that strokes anyone's ego.
I will give you an example. When I was 17 I spent exactly one day as a door to door canvasser for an environmental charity. I got dropped off into a neighborhood I had never seen before, told to walk up to people's doors and beg them for money for something I was pretty sure wasn't particularly effective at solving anything important, and then do this about a hundred times.
Door #1 gave me one dollar. Door #2 let me call my parents in tears to come pick me up. Whatever
Unusual characteristic that particular job needed, I did not have it. I do not have it to this day.
Thanks for pointing out that it is counter signalling, but I would also say that it is good advice regardless. It's like an efficient highway - the road is straight and unadorned because looking "scientific" and sensible is how you convince government and the public it is a good idea. The fact that being efficient is also a net good is almost a side effect but still not to be ignored!
Related: During solo travelling whenever a thought crosses my mind to do something and my instinctual internal response is discomfort, I try to make myself do it - even if I feel awkward inserting myself or going back.
I've had so many awesome conversations with random interesting people every day during my trips thanks to this. I've gone places I'd otherwise not experience, all for the sake of exciting adventure and pushing my own bounds. The confidence that comes from this is significant.
Also, as a former remote software engineer of 3 years, it has been so energizing to socialize with people again. Best upper that there is.
There's a LOT here. I feel this applies to a lot of decisions.
For instance, if you want to make a product that requires a database and you like building database stuff, do the database stuff last. Do what is difficult first - fail fast.
The easy or default route will always be well known to someone.
Solo travelling was how I formed one of my most salient memories of the "moat of low status", to wit: going to Japan in 2011. Japan is an advanced G7 country, but unlike most of the rest, very few people there speak or understand English. So I was put in the position of having to get by with my shitty Japanese, or attempt to communicate even more futilely with the locals in English and seem like an even bigger, more clueless asshole. I think I gained more levels of Japanese in those two weeks than I did in two years of university education.
My lifetime best command of Italian was when I lost the keys to my apartment and had to ask around if anyone has seen them.
At that point I was already living part time in Italy for over two years, but since I was working remotely for a company in my country, I hardly had an opportunity to learn the language.
Fortunately Italians appreciate people attempting to speak their language.
Overall I like this framing. But I wanted to comment on this
> In poker, it’s possible to improve via theoretical learning.... But you really can’t become a successful player without playing a lot of hands with and in front of other players, many of whom will be better than you.
This is an interesting example because poker is a game that has existed for many years, and for most of those years everyone learned by doing and was terrible at it.
People who excel at things have typically done more theoretical learning than the average person. Doing is necessary, but it's rarely the main way you learn something.
Either you have a mentor who has already absorbed theory and transmits it to you in digested form, or you have to learn the theory yourself.
But most people get the balance between theory and doing wrong, and most people err on the side of doing because theory is harder and less instantly rewarding.
I think one aspect of this is that learning from doing often involves more than just doing. It involves paying attention to what you're doing, and what other people are doing, and then reviewing that. This doesn't necessarily have to be "theoretical" learning, but it's deliberate or explicit study as opposed to just hoping to get better by osmosis. It's easy to do something a lot and not learn from it.
I grew up in Scotland in the 90s, the high school I went to was ill equipped to deal with someone as wide as I am on the spectrums. I was put into the "retarded children" programs. I think this resulted in me always "knowing" I was the dumbest person in the room, and eventually as a survival mechanism I learned to, well... not care. All through college, my 20s and 30s, I always felt like the dumbest person in the room, but I didn't really care I just felt super happy to be in the rooms, and so I said whatever I wanted and asked whatever I wanted. Now that I'm older, I realize what a blessing this ended up being because I've always ended up in rooms full of incredibly brilliant people having decent amounts of money thrown my way to be in them.
Very similar to the concept of the dip, explained in the book The Dip by Seth Godin
I asked Google to briefly summarize the concept:
> The Dip: It's a term Godin uses to describe the unavoidable and challenging period that occurs after the initial excitement of starting a new project, skill, or career, and before achieving success or mastery. This is the time when things get difficult, frustrating, and many people are tempted to quit
> Embracing the Dip: Instead of being discouraged by The Dip, Godin suggests that dips can be opportunities. They serve as a natural filter, separating those with the determination to persevere from those who are not truly committed. By pushing through the Dip, you can emerge stronger and potentially achieve greater rewards
Well, no. Depends on the person. For some people and for some new undertakings, especially if those people know themselves well already, they can hit the ground running. I've seen it.
I genuinely needed this piece today, specifically. Thanks for sharing it.
I've been trying to live more authentically in general these past few years, making tiny little inroads one step at a time towards being someone I've consciously chosen, rather than merely exist in a safe form that doesn't risk alienating others (or rather, in a form I don't perceive to alienate others - obviously I am not a mindreader). Think classic tech neutral outfits (jeans and neutral shirts, neutral shoes, neutral socks, the sole piece of color being the Pride band of my Apple Watch). OCD hurts the process of trying to live authentically, because it's doing its damndest to ensure I never encounter harm.
So last night, after coming down from some flower and watching the evening roll in, I decided to put on an outfit I'd put together. All sorts of bright colors: neon green and black sneakers, bright pink shirt, sapphire blue denim jean shorts, bleached white socks - and went for a walk. OCD was INCREDIBLY self-conscious that I would stand out (duh), court the wrong sort of attention, or somehow find myself in trouble...for wearing things I see everyone else wear without any issue whatsoever.
The moat is real, and the mind wants to build barriers to minimize perceived harms; for neurodivergent folks, it can be downright crippling. Wallflowering at parties, never gambling on colors or bold styles, never taking on new challenges for risk of failure. It results in a life so boring, sterile, and uninteresting - to yourself, and to others.
So...yeah. I got nothing to add other than my personal nuggets of experience. Really glad this piece came past on HN today, I think a lot of folks are going to enjoy its message.
Readit News
As a very senior member of my team, which has a lot of new college grads, I've been asking the "dumb" questions, the "irritating" questions, intentionally speaking up what I believe others may be thingking, specifically because I figure I can afford the social (career) hit.
1. Give plenty of credit to the juniors when they do good work, even if they were reliant on support, with no need to take credit myself
2. Give up some time working on my own objectives to coach the juniors, even though there's no cost code to book the time to and nobody asks me to do it
3. Easily say, with zero guilt: "no sorry that can't be done in 2 weeks, that's a 6 week job" or "sure I can do my part of this job but I'm going to need you to commit XYZ other resources if you want it to be a success"
4. Interpret the rules in the way I think is best for the organisation, not trying to please the person with the most pedantic interpretation
5. I can produce convincing explanations of how my work performance is delivering value to the organisation (whereas juniors can sometimes work their arse off and get no recognition for it)
I'm also a middle aged white man which seems to confer a lot of unearned trust, but combined with my professional experience I seriously think I have it easier than the juniors in so many ways, and it's my responsibility to give back a bit.
This is one of the most effective ways to lead because it builds goodwill and trust on the team. It also takes almost nothing away from you because as the senior/leader you will get default credit for most everything. It's always odd to me more people don't realize this.
Also never be afraid to question people who answer quickly. We spend way too much effort training smart people to answer quickly rather than deeply, and there’s almost always a tradeoff between the two.
Unfortunately that's the kind of black-and-white advice that seldom applies in the real world. Would you want to see your surgeon asking stupid questions? The pilot of the flight you're on?
You wouldn't, because part of your psychological comfort depends on your perception that people like this -- people whose decisions really matter -- actually know what they're doing.
ETA: By "stupid questions", I don't mean "basic but obviously important questions". I mean questions that reveal that you don't know something that other people expect you to know, that signal to them (rightly or wrongly) that they may have overestimated you.
Once you start asking stupid questions on the regular it's quite an interesting experience how often you can ask "stupid" questions to rooms full of senior engineers and sort of get back confused silence. In my experience there's a lot of really important but "stupid" questions that often just gets half-ignored because imagination and prioritization is hard.
The main issue I've run into happens when a person's reply to my stupid question doesn't make sense to me. If I continue asking follow up questions in order to understand better they sometimes get angry. But if I stop asking questions when I start to detect anger then I am left feeling confused about how the system works. Either way I'm left with a negative emotional impression of the person's caliber. Which isn't great for me cohering with the team.
I imagine that you've also run into this problem. How do you think about it?
As a high status person, you have an outsized influence on culture whether you like it or not, and an environment in which this kind of question can be asked ultimately leads to better outcomes.
Over the years I did this less and nowadays I mostly only speak when asked so in rather big meetings.
How did this come to be? I found that people who feel that they belong in the higher ranks of the social pecking order sometimes don't like this behavior and actively try to make you look bad. As I'm quite sensitive and am generally a people pleaser who thrives on getting external validation (I'm working on it...), it did not feel good and I feel it wasn't worth the trouble...
But then there are likely also situations when you feel that you ask a bunch of stupid questions but are faced with blank stares because people doesn't understand the context enough for those questions either or they are struggling enough with other problems to even entertain that kind of question.
It can kind of lead to a similar situation to when the math professor at uni jokingly asks a "trivial" math question in front of his students. It's trivial only once you have worked that kind of problem a 1000 times.
I'm the exception to the rule, I always do this and I'm not senior. I make it clear too that I do this.
Ah, I just read the article. Yea, I'm not afraid of the moat of low status. I know what reward it brings, it's easy +EV.
because they are afraid the benign topic will cause them to get ad hominem attacked or generally vilified
most people’s reddit profiles are their whole identity and they try to stay in moderate “polite company” at the expense of remaining ignorant
https://grugbrain.dev/#grug-on-fold
Over the past few years, I've managed to convince (and occasionally demonstrate) to my kids that "you'll be bad at anything new" and that they only way to get better is practice.
As a result, when other kids have made fun of them for failing, they rebut with "I've never done this before! I'll get better!" which is awesome.. being able to handle failure, acknowledge it as failure, and then figure out how to get better.
If you can get and hold onto that mindset, it's kinda awesome.
I disagree. Innate talent / affinity and transferable experience exist. I agree with "10% inspiration and 90% perspiration"; however, given equal effort, people with innate talent are going to win over people with no or less talent by a wide margin. This applies to everything. Gym / sports performance, muscle growth, work that needs IQ, work that needs EQ, life events that need resilience, general happiness, everything. Genetics is hugely definitive.
And I'm convinced some people bounce back more easily after a failure because failure is genuinely less hurtful for them. They don't need to "hold onto that mindset"; they just have it.
I think you are misreading the person you're replying to.
They aren't saying "everybody can be equally good at everything with practice."
They're saying "don't quit just because you aren't great on day 1."
First time playing basketball even if you've played soccer a ton and have good general athletic ability? Don't expect to hold your own if joining a game being played by people who play every week.
First time doing woodworking even if you have an electrical engineering background and the methodicalness is not foreign to you? Don't expect your first table to be stunning. Still gonna be bad at it compared to people with more practice!
Honestly, if you think you're great at something the first time you try it, you probably just don't know what being great at it actually looks like. (It could even be "similar result, but better in some hidden ways, and done in 1/10th the time.")
But if you believe that you'll get better at it with practice, you'll keep doing it.
If you believe "guess I just don't have innate ability here" you'll give up and never get good.
This article is countersignaling. It also happens to be directionally correct.
There is absolutely nothing low status about being present-day Cate Hall. But present-day Cate Hall probably tried and pushed through a lot of really tough stuff in part because yesteryear Cate Hall had this mindset. It so happened that she also had the talent to actually end up in impressive places.
The real lesson one should probably take from a person like this is that learning to eyeball your own strengths and weaknesses before you start down the long path of honing them is really important. If you are low status now but you have reason to believe you will become much higher status in the future by persevering, then persevere. If not...
Sounds like from the online bullying she suffered from at Yale, she was low status there.
Just as an example, a whole lot of dysfunctional dynamics happening lately seem to involve billionaires jockeying for status with other billionaires.
Edit: I'd recommend Paul Fussel's book Class since it involves discussion of these two dynamics.
The real moral of this story is you should get rich eccentric friends from the Ivy League elite who throw money at you to do AGI. Like you really think this company of like 40 people is going to crack AGI?
Man I should cross the moat and get some rich friends.
Deleted Comment
https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-perils-of-imitating-high...
B: It must feel good to say so when you have the money.
A: It does.
(Quoting from memory, can't remember the movie.)
As far as I can tell, you jargony phrase means that this is something like the humble part of "humble bragging". I'd disagree, I think the article gives honest good advice, an honest "meta-analysis" of social status and jumping into new things. It's "actionable", something you can do.
I would add that its advice for the sort of person who is normally always thinking about and fairly competent with social status and is held back from new skills by this. I personally was never too worried about social status and have learned massive new things by just being willing to try them but wound-up bitten by my ignoring of status. My advice for my younger me is to be strategic about publicly ignoring status but keep going into private.
Also statements like "she succeeded 'cause she was tough" are meaningless as advice or actionable/verifiable statements. Maybe she succeeded 'cause she had a bunch of strategies like the one she outlines, maybe she succeeded 'cause of good luck, maybe she succeed by family positions, maybe "luck", "toughness" or "mojo" did it.
The action you are supposed to take from this is to figure out whether you're tough, and if you find out you're not, to give up and go to something else you're better suited for. This seems like exceptionally actionable advice - just not advice that strokes anyone's ego.
I will give you an example. When I was 17 I spent exactly one day as a door to door canvasser for an environmental charity. I got dropped off into a neighborhood I had never seen before, told to walk up to people's doors and beg them for money for something I was pretty sure wasn't particularly effective at solving anything important, and then do this about a hundred times.
Door #1 gave me one dollar. Door #2 let me call my parents in tears to come pick me up. Whatever Unusual characteristic that particular job needed, I did not have it. I do not have it to this day.
I've had so many awesome conversations with random interesting people every day during my trips thanks to this. I've gone places I'd otherwise not experience, all for the sake of exciting adventure and pushing my own bounds. The confidence that comes from this is significant.
Also, as a former remote software engineer of 3 years, it has been so energizing to socialize with people again. Best upper that there is.
For instance, if you want to make a product that requires a database and you like building database stuff, do the database stuff last. Do what is difficult first - fail fast.
The easy or default route will always be well known to someone.
At that point I was already living part time in Italy for over two years, but since I was working remotely for a company in my country, I hardly had an opportunity to learn the language.
Fortunately Italians appreciate people attempting to speak their language.
> In poker, it’s possible to improve via theoretical learning.... But you really can’t become a successful player without playing a lot of hands with and in front of other players, many of whom will be better than you.
This is an interesting example because poker is a game that has existed for many years, and for most of those years everyone learned by doing and was terrible at it.
People who excel at things have typically done more theoretical learning than the average person. Doing is necessary, but it's rarely the main way you learn something.
Either you have a mentor who has already absorbed theory and transmits it to you in digested form, or you have to learn the theory yourself.
But most people get the balance between theory and doing wrong, and most people err on the side of doing because theory is harder and less instantly rewarding.
Low status isn't so bad.
I asked Google to briefly summarize the concept:
> The Dip: It's a term Godin uses to describe the unavoidable and challenging period that occurs after the initial excitement of starting a new project, skill, or career, and before achieving success or mastery. This is the time when things get difficult, frustrating, and many people are tempted to quit
> Embracing the Dip: Instead of being discouraged by The Dip, Godin suggests that dips can be opportunities. They serve as a natural filter, separating those with the determination to persevere from those who are not truly committed. By pushing through the Dip, you can emerge stronger and potentially achieve greater rewards
Well, no. Depends on the person. For some people and for some new undertakings, especially if those people know themselves well already, they can hit the ground running. I've seen it.
I've been trying to live more authentically in general these past few years, making tiny little inroads one step at a time towards being someone I've consciously chosen, rather than merely exist in a safe form that doesn't risk alienating others (or rather, in a form I don't perceive to alienate others - obviously I am not a mindreader). Think classic tech neutral outfits (jeans and neutral shirts, neutral shoes, neutral socks, the sole piece of color being the Pride band of my Apple Watch). OCD hurts the process of trying to live authentically, because it's doing its damndest to ensure I never encounter harm.
So last night, after coming down from some flower and watching the evening roll in, I decided to put on an outfit I'd put together. All sorts of bright colors: neon green and black sneakers, bright pink shirt, sapphire blue denim jean shorts, bleached white socks - and went for a walk. OCD was INCREDIBLY self-conscious that I would stand out (duh), court the wrong sort of attention, or somehow find myself in trouble...for wearing things I see everyone else wear without any issue whatsoever.
The moat is real, and the mind wants to build barriers to minimize perceived harms; for neurodivergent folks, it can be downright crippling. Wallflowering at parties, never gambling on colors or bold styles, never taking on new challenges for risk of failure. It results in a life so boring, sterile, and uninteresting - to yourself, and to others.
So...yeah. I got nothing to add other than my personal nuggets of experience. Really glad this piece came past on HN today, I think a lot of folks are going to enjoy its message.
I do wish we could stop saying “moat”.
Most of us aren’t living in ancient forts we need to protect.
Speak for yourself!
raises draw bridge
Moat.