Ask Lemmy

Relentlessnes: I may not have the IQ-eyness I had before my 3rd wave of braindamage, but by being relentless, I keep improving, however sluggishly, while the entitlement-coasting people don't.

Excellence-of-studies: don't waste time studying mediochre means: study the best-of-the-best, from Simon Sinek, to Kegan & Lahey, to the best books in whatever your domain is.

It's 99% perspiration, & only 1% inspiration, except for a very few.

( there are 2 categories of "genius":

• the ones who .. no matter how they explain what they're doing, .. whatever they're doing isn't in your reality, vs
• the ones who do what you do, MUCH quicker, with more tricks & optimizations than you have

Relentlessly earning greater competence improves your standing against the quicker ones, through the years,

but it does nothing in relation to the "wizards" who just are using some dimension that you don't have, to get where they do.

In Gleick's book "Genius" about Richard Feynman, there was a situation where a normal physicist worked for 1/2y, aka 365/2 days, roughly, to earn a theory .. & he presented it.

Feynman wasn't at that lecture .. & only heard about it, but that night, he blasted through the calculus until he got it, then .. the next morning, he hunted-down & accosted the physicist who'd given that lecture, & presented him with his rendition of the work, saying "is that what you got?" .. horrified, the guy discovered that Feynman had taken the theory farther in 1/2-day than he had in 365/2 days .. you can't compete with wizards.

Mlodinow also encountered this, as is in his book about being mentored by Feynman: he & his work-partner earned, in months of work, some .. quantum-optics meaning, iirc.

He got Feynman to consider it, for 1/2h.

In that 1/2h, Feynman got enough understanding that he told them: "publish. you're not making any mistakes, & the established contradicting-your-work theory therefore is likely wrong"..

How he got THAT far, in that-little time, .. normals can't compete against that.

So, simply don't bother!!

Compete against the normal ones!

Leave the "supernatural" skill stuff to the people who've got the synaesthesia, or whatever, to do it, to them.

They're rare, & not the ones who do most of the work, in any domain, right?

All the people working on important stuff, who are grinding-through obstacles, that's important!

The best framing I ever encountered was this:

Airbus's working on a new powerplant-system.

2,000 engineers assigned to that work!!

Can you imagine anything being so hellishly-complicated that it takes THAT much engineering-force to get it to reliably, & certifiably, work??

THEY'RE ALL CONTRIBUTING!!

See?

The woman who solves how to make the turbulences in the 1st-layer of turbine-blades NOT erode the 1st-layer of stator-vanes, if that's all she accomplishes, it was important!

I once spoke with a woman who managed engineers who built an instrument that ended-up on a Viking lander, on Mars, last-century..

The engineers were prone to heading out to the bar, after tough days, to relax, with the work-gang..

.. & then they'd get talking about the problem, again, & when they'd found a new angle to be working on it, again, then they'd head back to work, instead of going home to their families!

There, too, is another "competitive-advantage", but one with high human-cost: being autistic.

You don't need to be either a "wizard" or autistic, to compete: you only need to make your-part of the work important enough for it to make good-enough difference, see? )

Don't bother being what you aren't, & recognize that sociopathy has gained ownership of much of the workplace, so "it ISN'T you" that is the problem, in many cases.

Trust that good work counts, trust that airliners exist, & trust that THE advantage that the Wright Brothers had, was simply in being systematic, methodically eradicating bugs, until they got the photographs of controlled-turning that they needed to prove their system worked.

In STEM, be systematic.

Be methodical.

Eradicate bugs.

https://www.amazon.com/Debugging-Indispensable-Software-Hardware-Problems-ebook/dp/B00PDDKQV2/ is a book which can give you the principles of being more effective in getting results in STEM.

Do well,

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