Things Of Note 15

Moving Fast and Slow

Aug 16, 2020

Hi Everyone,

Last week, on a whim, I decided to start learning the Guitar. Asked some friends, who have been playing for years, about how to select a beginner Guitar, how to get started, etc. Now I am following lessons from JustinGuitar and this week I have been learning the D major and A major chords. As expected, my fingers are cursing me. And progress is… slow.

One conundrum I am facing is how fast or slow I should try to go. For instance, how much do I perfect the D major chord before moving on? If I go too fast through the lessons (e.g. moving on to switching chords before having a “decent” handle on one chord) I might not make actual progress or worse, develop poor habits. If I go needlessly slow, I might start running out of motivation. Of course, a lot of it is in the particulars of Justin’s course program.

But zooming out, in a more general sense, when should we move fast and when should we go slow?

// Readings

Speed Matters

James Somers | 6 mins

Moving Fast—in doing things, creating stuff, learning—can have a lot of benefits. The most obvious one is that you get more things done. But there are others too:

You shorten the feedback loop and get more reps in. If you are doing deliberate practice, that should mean you learn faster.
Increased availability. If you move quicker, you can take on more—likely newer— things. So you can be exposed to a more diverse domains and ideas.
Encouragement to do the task more. (This one was new and surprising to me). If you say, write an article every week instead of every 3 months, the task “write an article” doesn’t sound as intimidating and you are more likely to get to it. The task doesn’t become a mystical thing you have to be perfect on. So you are not just producing 12x more work but are also reducing friction and mental barriers for yourself.

Speed is also a competitive advantage. For instance, one factor in the favor of Startups against incumbent giants in a new market is the ability to move fast. They are more nimble, can course-correct more easily, and adapt quicker.

This is true at the personal level too.

Of course, some work requires a long time. Will Schoder’s amazing (ongoing) series on Happiness is a culmination of more than a year and a half’s work. Btw, absolutely go check it out! It has the potential to be life-changing stuff.

But still, especially when starting out, quantity always trumps quality.

The prescription must be that if there’s something you want to do a lot of and get good at—like write, or fix bugs—you should try to do it faster.
That doesn’t mean be sloppy. But it does mean, push yourself to go faster than you think is healthy.

But, is it always advisable to go fast?

The Paradox of Personal Progress

Anmol Paudel | 5 mins

In some areas, trying to move fast is actually detrimental. Slow gains are a better target to aim for. For instance, in weightlifting, it’s better to steadily increase your weights—make slow gains—than trying to move fast and possibly risk injury or just burn out.

This is the paradox of personal progress: sometimes, we can actually go faster by going slower. Why? Because “Slow is Smooth, and smooth is fast”.

But what are those times? When is it advisable to go slow?

In this article, Anmol argues for looking at uncertainty of the thing you are doing. Because that means, it can have a higher risk of causing “negative gains”.

I think the second part is the key. If there is a potential for a big downside in what you are doing, go slow. The “Slow is smooth…” phrasing above has roots in the Military. There the potential downside is truly big—i.e getting killed.

Another (less extreme) example is working out. You could ruin your form if you try to move fast, which is very detrimental.

But in things like writing a blog, even when attempting to go fast, you are unlikely to do something that’s going to disastrously impact you in a negative way.

Anyway, that brings us to our decision method:

(Of course, determining the potential downside of anything is a challenge in and of itself. But perhaps, we can: either have some intuitive sense of it, or get expert opinion, or assume it is large when the uncertainty is high.)

Related (though here James ties it to irreversibility which I think is a big part of the downside):

James Clear @JamesClear

If a decision is reversible, the biggest risk is moving too slow. If a decision is irreversible, the biggest risk is moving too fast.

// Other Readings

Adulting Fast and Slow

David Perell | 8 mins

In this fascinating essay, David posits that we now live in era of “adult-like children and childish adults”.

He argues that this is because of medium like the Television and now the internet that have made previously inaccessible “adult” topics—violence, sex, etc—available to a younger audience.

Furthermore, a lot of the previous hallmarks of maturing into adulthood have disappeared or have been reduced in significance. So people become adult-like faster but also stay in their adolescence indefinitely e.g. through an aversion to commitment, taking responsibility, and so on. (Related: You are an adult when you take responsibility for your own life).

What resonated with/stirred me the most was David’s note about the “Adulting” (is hard) meme (as in the more general sense).

The childish adult phenomenon is well captured by the “adulting” meme. On the surface, the meme is a response to the overwhelming number of things you need to do as an adult: go to the gym, get your work done, answer emails, make the bed, clean the kitchen, sweep the floors, file taxes, buy groceries, put the kids to bed.

On a deeper level, though, I think this meme stems from a perception of adulthood as a hopeless enterprise. It represents a mentality that encourages people to retreat into a nihilistic, bubble-wrapped cocoon of deferred responsibility.

I feel attacked! Haha.

Indeed, there is a fine line between acknowledging that being an adult is hard (the discussion of whether it has become harder or easier is for some other day) and using humor to connect with each other about it vs perpetuating the “I have no idea what I am doing, haha” meme in an attempt to defer responsibility. The latter can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I am definitely guilty of it.

// Videos

history of the entire world, i guess

Bill Wurtz | 20 mins

Of course, compressing all of history into 20 mins is not possible. But this seems like a very good attempt. And what’s more, it’s hilarious!

I definitely got introduced to some points, eras in history I hadn’t known of. Plus, seeing it play out as a connected sequence is somewhat more pleasing than studying about it as disparate, disconnected events and eras.

// Might-be-useful

You Suck at Excel

Joel Spolsky | 54 mins

I am a complete Excel newbie. I don’t really use it except for looking at data… that’s in Excel Spreadsheets. Ahem. Even then, I just quickly reach for pandas. But it is a skill that’s worth getting some familiarity of. I mean Spreadsheets are pretty versatile… Like seriously. [E.g: Controlling Kubernetes with Excel]

Ryan Law @thinking_slow

*spreadsheets* are the main competitor for 90% of software startups

Anyway, this was an informative watch. Learned things like the R1C1 mode (which makes it easier to see what Excel is actually doing), Data Tables, that we can name things (cells, columns, etc).

May not be worth it if you are already an intermediate user but definitely a good watch if you are a beginner and want to make more use of Excel.