Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

How to find the best way to practice

Josh Kaufman in “The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast!”:

“Rapid skill acquisition is not rocket science. You simply decide what to practice, figure out the best way to practice, make time to practice, then practice until you reach your target level of performance.”

Pat Flynn and generalism yesterday. With generalism, you specialize in many things, but never at the same time.

You’ll aim somewhere lower than world-class and specialize as long as it makes sense. That means practice.

Josh Kaufman suggests 20 hours of (proper) practice to get to a useful level. This does not mean you can get a job doing it.

If a programming expert (let’s say they’ve taught before, too) sat down with you for an hour and taught you the basics, you’d be able to do basic math and some string manipulation.

It might not stick. But if you continued for 19 sessions you’d be able to build a small project. More importantly, you’d be at the point where you could teach yourself. You’ll be far ahead of someone who is 20 hours in without an expert to guide them.

That expert will help you avoid the rabbit holes.

Many early programming bugs will just be typos. Fixing that can take anywhere from a minute to hours (really) if you’re inexperienced and it might be somewhere in many files.

You learn from fixing these. Up to a point. Then it’s just time where you’re frustrated. An expert can help you skip through that frustration time so it can be used for learning more valuable concepts.

There are tons of good resources online for learning on your own. There are also bad ones. Even if you only have 1 hour with an expert instead of 20, they’ll be able to point you to the best resources to get going.

They’re there for step 2 in the above excerpt, helping you figure out the best way to practice.

30: Resolutions, Subtle Art, Arcade Games

We’re back! New year, new you! Trying out this format, building on some of the things from late last year (podcast recommendations and the magic window) and the bulk of our first 20 episodes (book of the week).

I’m really enjoying this format. Here are some things we talked about.

Podcast recommendations

Book of the Week: Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-

  • Stop caring about unimportant things so that you can focus on the important things
  • Maybe being a digital nomad isn’t the answer
  • Creating things because it’s fun for you

The Magic Window: Arcade games

Talking about a couple games we played growing up

  • The Simpsons: Is this game overrated?
  • Time Crisis 2: How it ties into the 4-minute mile

Learning about generalism

I’ve been binging pretty hard on the Pat Flynn podcast. Not that Pat Flynn. The other Pat Flynn. The one that writes about kettlebells.

(Check out his episode with Dan John, inventor of the goblet squat.)

At least that’s how I learned about him. I thought the podcast would be about that but now I’m learning it’s actually more about his approach to a lot of things. (Fitness is just one of them.)

He calls it generalism. It’s really resonating with me and a lot of the stuff me and Wally talked about on our podcast last year.

In particular, we talked about the book “The First Twenty Hours”, which explains that it’s important to start off on the right foot. If you start practicing something, you want to practice it right. That way you can get proficient as quickly as possible.

With generalism, Pat Flynn isn’t saying to avoid specializing in things. It’s the opposite. You should specialize deeply but aiming to get to 80%. Then move on to something else.

You don’t have to be the best writer in the world for writing to be valuable. Or the top 95%. You can get proficient to where you can mix it with some of your domain knowledge and write something interesting.

It’s not just for professional skills either.

You don’t have to be the best in the world at riding a bike to have fun riding a bike.

Once you’re proficient, that skill goes in maintenance then you shift your focus and specialize in something else.

Then you’ll be good at many things and great at some. Getting from 80% to 99.999% is much harder than getting from 0-80. It’s why we admire those outliers. It’s also why some of them have done terribly in other dimensions of their life.

Ric Flair is one of the most influential wrestlers but he was never around when his kids were growing up. In 500 years, the Nike swoosh may very well still be around. But one thing Phil Knight writes about in “Shoe Dog” is how he also wasn’t around enough for his kids.

(So never have kids! Just kidding but just be aware of how your energy is spread out.)

Last year I was interested in writing, podcasting, and making videos. I went deep on them for a few weeks at a time. I could have benefited from staying deep for a few weeks longer on some.

This year I want to go deep on videos. But then I just wrote all of this. I’ve got some work to do. In the meantime, I’ll be listening to more Pat Flynn episodes.

Some kettlebell notes

I took a kettlebell class today. I thought it’d be good to just start sharing some notes. Actually I mostly want to write these down so I remember them. If they add up over time, great.

Here was the rough program as far as I can remember:

  • Deadlifts 3×10
  • Rack hold walk, 3 push presses per side, 3 rounds
  • Swings, 1 minute
  • Push-ups
  • Farmers walk with uneven bells
  • Squats 5, 3 reverse lunges per side
  • Heavy bell hold 1 min, 3 rounds

With various planks in between some exercises. I definitely didn’t remember it all exactly but I hope I captured some of it.

Here are a few things the coach corrected me on.

  • Swings: exhale at the bottom—I was exhaling at the top of the swing but you should exhale when starting the movement.
  • Rack hold walk: hold kettlebell below collar bone—I was holding the kettlebell too low.
  • Heavy bell hold: don’t focus on grip and forearms—pay attention to tightening the rest of your body. Flex your glutes, keep your shoulders back, engage your traps.

That’s that! I also joined and will be trying to focus more on kettlebell training this year. Along with something else that starts with “ket-“. You guessed it. (And if you didn’t, it involves lots of fat.)

Review your beliefs (your future self will thank you!)

I’ve been reading Michael Hyatt’s Your Best Year Ever. I made a video about some of about the first third of it. I’m planning to finish it this week.

Here are some of the things I go over in the video:

  • Look at your past year: It’s important to reflect on the past. You can reflect on what went wrong, see what lessons you learned, and apply that to the future. You can also be grateful for all the things that went well. It’s easy to overlook.
  • Beliefs are powerful: You might have some negative beliefs that are holding you down. Take a look at the beliefs you have in your life. They come from many places. Maybe you grew up with that belief. Maybe you think the world is falling apart because you check the news 10 times a day. Maybe you think you’re the only person without a perfect life because you check social media 100 times a day.
  • 4 Rs: Use these four steps to process those beliefs: recognize, record, review, reframe (or REJECT).

It’s a new year and I’m planning my own year out.

I read a lot of books last year and was thinking of how to combine this and that with that and this to come up with an annual planning method.

Instead, I’m going to work through the steps in this book and trust the process. (Okay I might try to do some 12-Week Year scoring, too.)

One of my goals this year is to focus on videos. (The old pivot-to-video!)

I wrote about this in the last newsletter: Making videos helps me get out of my head more than writing does. A short video is more engaging and energizing to make than a short post is. And writing long posts makes me really less present in the days that I’m in the midst of it.

I’ll write short posts to go along with the videos. I also want to start putting some posts together as I learn to draw.

Last year I tried to move away from writing about writing, blogging about blogging, all that meta stuff. I enjoy that though, so I’m going to go ahead and do it but make sure it isn’t just about writing. It’ll at least be writing about drawing or writing about making videos or writing about podcasting. 

Writing about things that are fun to me. (One step toward my best year ever!)

Kicking Things Off (Newsletter issue 1)

I’m starting the year with a newsletter. I set the timer for 25-minutes. Last year I learned I don’t really have a handle writing anything long. (Mostly from trying to write about Bill Simmons’s writing from college.)

Instead, I’ll write a bunch of short things. Here are the podcast recommendations from me and Wally from our latest episode.

Joe DeFranco 142 (Mickey Gall): Turning Setbacks into Comebacks —
You might know Mickey Gall as the person who destroyed CM Punk in his UFC debut. I was rooting for CM Punk. I’ve been a casual MMA fan for a few years. Watching this fight and hearing Overeem commenting on CM Punk’s BJJ experience pre-fight (something like “What is he a purple belt?… Oh he’s blue? Oh boy.”) really opened my eyes to the gap created by experience in MMA.

Oh yeah, this episode. It’s about failure. Mickey Gall lost his most recent fight. It’s his first UFC loss. They talk about going through a loss and Gall talks about the steps he took to get over it and the steps he’s taking to start bouncing back.

Art of Manliness #363: Budgeting Doesn’t Have to Suck —
Wally recommended this as a good discussion on budgeting and personal finance. I recommended the app Clarity Money. Last year I wanted to save more so I installed Prosper Daily to keep an eye out. That app was discontinued and users were recommended to transfer to Clarity Money. It works really well also.

Tribe of Mentors: Jocko Willink – Discipline Equals Freedom —
Jocko in Tim Ferriss’s book, Tribe of Mentors: “Look at the situation and assess the multitude of problems, tasks, or issues. Choose the one that is going to have the biggest impact and execute on that. If you try to solve every problem or complete every task simultaneously, you will fail at all of them. Pick the biggest problem or the issue that will provide the most positive impact. Then focus your resources on that and attack it.”

The Tribe of Mentors podcast has guests giving answers to the questions in the book with some commentary and they also answer a few extra questions. It reminded me that you can learn a lot through podcasts. (Which will lead to me and Wally probably shifting our focus from books to podcasts.)

Knowledge Project: Is Sugar Slowly Killing Us? (Gary Taubes) —
Wally recommended this. It’s a good one for your New Year’s health goals. Stop eating sugar. Or at least so much of it. Speaking of, here’s another thing I wanted to mention: Martin is back at Leangains and the site is refreshed. If you want to learn about intermittent fasting, go there.

For a good sample of his writing, check out his classic F-arounditis: “It might sound tedious to keep doing the same movements every week and the appeal of ‘mixing it up’ can seem strong. However, the tediousness will soon be replaced by the much stronger joy you get from seeing your lifts go up on a weekly basis.”

I should probably read that every single week.

Active Recall: Tribe of Mentors (ep. 28) —
I’ll be sending out a newsletter whenever Wally and I release a new episode. It will have links to our latest episode and some podcast recommendations. I mentioned that I don’t have a handle on writing long things.

I’m also learning that it might not be the best thing for me right now. I get super distracted in the midst of it. I’ve noticed I’m not present when I’m writing long posts. With practice I bet you can learn to turn it off and on. But it’s probably lots of practice. Right now, I’d rather make short things and finish them. Videos are better for that so I’ll be working on videos. (Check out the channel!)

Here’s a photo for the week. If you’ve got some resolutions, go do them!

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