Deliberate Practice

Page 115 to 116 of "Talent is Overrated" has a succinct description of deliberate practice:

Drills succeed to the extent that they

• focus on improving a (very) specific aspect of your performance, and
  
• give opportunity for high repetition with 
  
• immediate feedback.

One hour app

The one hour app is an art form with a specific nature.

1. It uses only a single page.

2. It performs a single function.

3. It takes a single hour to create.

My purpose is to master this art form and then use it to serve Man (and so God) by making useful applications around

1. Guitar, song, and music in general,

2. French language, culture and history,

3. Study of the eukaryotic nucleus and all the complexity therein.

4. Feedback and progress

5. Writing, reading, and communication.

In the beginning I do not expect to be capable of bringing about an app in one hour.  Thus, I seek to make investments as I make my apps with the goal of becoming able to bring them about at a later date.  That means actually taking more time up front to get the details right and to make the things that I learn the first time around the track useful the second time around.

Wealth of Nations: focus and trade?

From the beginning of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argues that prosperity follows from specialization and trade.

So many people giving advice for those who seek to build companies have used a simple word: focus.

Is this related to the idea Adam Smith was trying to get across?

In his examples, focus led to many efficiencies:

• No time is wasted changing tool sets
• Focused attention can lead to invention of faster methods
• No time is lost learning the task
• Capital is used efficiently rather than accumulated and allowed to sit

Outside of his examples, there are other benefits:

• Focus involving many people can allow benefits to accrue from focused communication
• Focus leads to branding or efficiency of communication

I do have a question: the most focused or specialized tasks in his examples are all automated now.  With automation becoming simpler and less expensive, does Adam Smith's view on the value of extreme specialization need to be adapted?

Potential teaching topic

Consider getting to the position where, if you have an idea for a simple web app, you can bring that app to fruition within one hour.  I want to get into that position.  And I want to teach others how to get to it.

The time cost should be one hour.  The financial cost should be $0.

Teaching

I've just been reading about the power of teaching on Hacker News.  Here are some of the insights collected:

1. At the minimum, teaching means double processing: once to take it in, and once to bring it back out.
2. However, the act of bringing it back out generally requires some internal ordering or structuring which also helps with the learning process.

While the above points may apply to self-teaching, other benefits accrue when you commit to a real group of learners.

3. Promising to teach a group a particular topic at a later date can add urgency to your decision to learn about it.
4. If you record your teaching efforts in a discoverable way (on Stack Overflow, on a blog, in a book, on Youtube, in a lecture series) you can become a known expert on your topic.
5. By engaging learners of a particular topic, you learn what the common problems are.  This can make your teaching materials more valuable.  It also works well as market research if you want to create a product.
6. By teaching consistently over time, you can build an audience who appreciates you and takes time to hear what you write.  
7. Teaching a concept to many different people will encourage you to learn to explain the concept in many different ways, which will allow you to understand that concept more deeply.
8. Teaching other people, like helping other people in any way, can be extremely rewarding.

I'd like to look for an opportunity to do this in practice.

Setting up

This blog is meant to help me climb the mountain before me.  That mountain is a big one, loaded with constraints.  In brief, my task is to climb toward economic independence while holding down a job and being a great father to our growing family. 

Along the way, I've vowed to figure out a way to do good by directing effort toward the study of guitar, French, and the eukaryotic nucleus.  Don't laugh.  That's my bundle of commitments and with a little help I'm going to meet them.

Two years later

Two years ago:
6 children,
large savings,
no home.
income from Android apps.

Now:
7 children,
smaller savings,
permanent home, over 90k in debt (for home),
more income from Android apps.  Also, income through a series of children's books.

Progress on the hard road: minimal.

But . . . I found an old vow recently.  The vow was made almost 12 years ago and then forgotten.  The vow was specific enough and far enough away from my current life that it's elements seemed very difficult to bring about.  The vow was to

serve Heavenly Father through love and effort directed to 3 things:

• Guitar, song, and music in general

• French language , heritage, literature, and culture

• Study of the eukaryotic nucleus and all the complexity therein.

I should give a little context by noting that in LDS doctrine serving God is a broad concept and whenever the phrase is used there is an implicit reference to Mosiah 2:17 in the Book of Mormon.  In that verse an old and wise king teaches his people about service, saying

 17 And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn ^awisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the ^bservice of your ^cfellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.

So 12 years ago I made a vow to serve God through love and effort directed to guitar, French, and the study of the eukaryotic nucleus.  It's taking some thinking to figure out how to honor that vow.  But I'm going to give it a shot.

The guitar is starting to come out at family gatherings.
French is becoming my companion as I jog or mow the lawn or commute and suddenly my children have started to ask to learn the language.
But how to work in the bit about the eukaryotic nucleus . . . I don't know.  I can write.  I'm good at physics and can learn enough of a given computer language  or system to do mostly what I want to do.  But . . . I spend my days working for a defense contractor.  It's been much too long since I've lived in a world where anyone thinks about the detailed workings of a cell.

Guitar and French can be a part of daily life without being the center of it.  But my feeling right now is that to truly serve by directing effort toward the study of the eukaryotic cell I may need to figure out how to make that my day job.  That may take a little time and creativity.

Goodnight.