Patterns of Success for the Working World Archives - Page 10 of 16

Steve Jobs’s Complicated Views on Passion

January 26, 2023September 14, 2012

Jobs Parses Passion At a recent media panel, Walter Isaacson remembered the following conversation with the late Steve Jobs: I remember talking exactly a year … Read more

Solutions Beyond the Screen: The Adventure Work Method for Producing Creative Insights

January 26, 2023September 5, 2012

berkeley-fog-500px — *Fog marching down the Berkeley hills (photo by Ianan).*

Battling the Beast

A couple weeks ago, I made a brief visit to Berkeley, California, for a wedding. My wife, Julie, had to take a conference call the first morning after we arrived, so I decided to get some work done myself. I didn’t bring a computer, so “work” couldn’t mean e-mail replying (the standard instinct in this situation).

Instead, I decided to log some hard focus hours on what I like to call The Beast: a particularly vexing theory problem that my collaborators and I have been battling for many months.

I got some coffee and headed toward the Berkeley campus on foot. It was early, and the fog was just starting its march down the Berkeley hills (as shown above).

I eventually wandered into a eucalyptus grove:

Once there, I sipped my coffee and thought.

Our existing strategy for The Beast included a complicated algorithm which none of us looked forward to analyzing. Deploying a trick I learned while a grad student, I avoided needing to understand why the complicated algorithm worked by instead turning my attention to understanding why simpler strategies failed (I’m surprised by how often the study of things that break lead to simple things that don’t).

After only an hour, which included a strategic fill-up at the Free Speech Cafe, I had an idea for a more concise (and easier to analyze) algorithm that seemed to work.

Henri Poincaré’s Four-Hour Work Day

January 26, 2023August 31, 2012

John Cook, an applied mathematician and blogger, recently highlighted the following quote from a new biography of Henri Poincaré: Poincaré … worked regularly from 10 … Read more

Following Passion is Different than Cultivating Passion

January 26, 2023August 29, 2012

Concerning Comments Earlier today, CNN.com published an article I wrote. It summarizes the main idea from my new book: “follow your passion” is bad advice. … Read more

You Probably (Really) Work Way Less Than You Assume

January 26, 2023August 23, 2012

The 6-Hour Work Week Last weekend, I decided it would be an interesting experiment to start tracking the hours I spent in a state of … Read more

Experiments with the Textbook Method

January 26, 2023August 16, 2012

Tailoring the Textbook Method I spent this past week experimenting with the textbook method. I began by creating a template — a blank LaTex document … Read more

You Know What You Write: The Textbook Method for Ultra-Learning

January 26, 2023August 10, 2012

Less Than Ultra Learning

RiemannZetaRidges — *The surprisingly useful Riemann Zeta function in action. (Image from MathWorld.)*

As part of my craftsman in the cubicle project, I spent this past week monitoring how I learn new information.

I wasn’t impressed.

At one point, for example, I needed to dive into a topic I didn’t know much about: how information disseminates in random power law graphs. I went to Google Scholar and begin downloading papers with promising abstracts. I printed three and skimmed another half-dozen or so online. In retrospect, I think I was hoping to find a theorem somewhere that described exactly what I was looking for in notation I already understood.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t find this magic theorem. The two hours I spent felt wasted. (Well, not completely wasted, I did learn about the Riemann Zeta function, which turns up way more often than you might expect.)

This experience recommitted me to cracking the code of ultra-learning. Mastering hard knowledge fast, I now accept, requires more than blocking aside time on a schedule; it also demands technique.

The Chair

With this in mind, here was my first stab at cracking ultra-learning:

I bought a traditional leather chair (a longtime dream of mine). My wife and I still need to add some bookcases, a rich rug, and an old brass lamp — but my general theory here is that this library nook will be make it impossible to avoid mastering new bodies of knowledge, and perhaps also pipe smoking.

Under the assumption that I might need more than the power of The Chair to become an accomplished ultra-learner, I do have one more strategy to deploy — which is what I want to talk about in this post. It’s actually a strategy I’ve known for years (my PhD adviser taught me soon after my arrival at MIT), but have seemed to forgotten recently.

The Recorded Life

January 26, 2023August 7, 2012

Personal Hacks A reader recently noted the following: It strikes me that you haven’t said much at all on your blog — or for that … Read more