Thread by @ravi_mohan

A repeated pattern I see:

Mastery of X (where X is an area of study- say CS or Philosophy or whatever, or a skill, say a musical instrument, or calligraphy or sport, will *massively* enhance the quality your life BUT (

- for that quantum enhancement to kick in, you *first* have to put in a certain amount of work (say 3-5 years of 3-4 hours a day), till the positive effects kick in (again think of learning a musical instrument to an expert level)

- BUT most people don't want to/or "want to but can't bring themselves to " put in the work to climb the initial slope, so continue where they are, *and* get frustrated at lack of achievement.

Of course, this is nothing new, I'm just surprised at the frequency of manifestation.

I wonder if it might be better to *first* answer , "What am I willing to put 2-4 hours a day, for five years, into, without much immediate reward?"

This would cut out much mental agony from repeated "trying and failing".

Another source of agony avoided with this approach is another common situation I encounter - where someone has only "shallow knowledge" of many things, and has no serious *depth* in anything.

Tendency to show off/be 'thought leader' inversely proportional to depth of knowledge

From this perspective, I think programming is tricky as a focus area - you can be a pretty mediocre programmer,and still be massively rewarded because of the current huge demand for devs, so you end up *thinking* you are a hotshot, when your skill levels are actually pretty low