[seaucre]

The thing that doesn't click in articles like this is the advice section afterwards. Do you think the people described thought about how to increase their practice surface area? No, they were simply /interested/. And part of the reason they were interested was because of natural talent! Do you want to know how to increase your practice surface area? Find things you're interested in.

But the reality is that many people just aren't as interested in anything as some people are interested in something. And that's okay. The real advice is to learn to accept yourself as you are, whether you're an obsessive or not.

[thorum]

The article’s advice section is actually quite practical, and directly addresses your point:

> It should go without saying that the best way to increase your practice surface area in a given field is to be obsessed with that field. Obsession makes quick work of formal and bounded training sessions, and it doesn't need "tips" on how to do so.

> So the question then becomes, "How do I increase my practice surface area if I'm not already obsessed?"

[ChanningAllen]

> Do you think the people described thought about how to increase their practice surface area? No, they were simply /interested/.

In fact, many of them did think about it. Many of them designed, tested, experimented, and tweaked their approaches to their crafts endlessly throughout their lives.

It can be comforting (because it lets us off the hook) to think that masters of their craft all follow the "just do it" ethos while simply "accepting themselves as they are," but usually the opposite is true. At least at the margin.

[autumnstwilight]

Being interested in something is a skill that can be cultivated in itself. Of course, you probably won't be able to convince yourself that something you find unbearably dull is interesting, but you can deepen a vague interest into curiosity towards and appreciation of the details and nuances.

It's not about joyless grinding or forcing yourself, more like putting yourself in a space where you engage with the thing and deciding to go just one step further than the point where your attention initially starts to drift. Or just putting yourself back in the space of thinking about it when you have a free moment, like waiting in a queue. You can use that time to, for example, make up a few sentences in the language that you're learning (perhaps about how annoying the queue is), or playing music in your head.

It is slightly more difficult in the moment, but in the long term it makes your life experience richer and more fulfilling than if you pulled out your phone and started scrolling (which you can still do afterward). You don't have to be mercilessly beating yourself about productivity, but if you develop these kinds of habits you tend to naturally start doing it more often.

[simianparrot]

Came here to write this. To add to that, the book "The Art of Learning" is a great example of this; Joshua Waitzkin tells how his approach to learning saw him reach the pinnacle of both Chess and Tai Chi. From the outside it might just seem like a "genius" who just so happened to have innate talents for both of these highly disparate forms of competition, but his story paints a different picture.

My own approach to learning is very similar, and that's before I read this book. But it was not an approach that came naturally to me. I was never good at school. I was never good at paying attention to things I didn't see a _reason_ to pay attention to. But I realized early on that my propensity for "hyperactive behavior" (as they called it at school in the early 90's) meant I couldn't rely on the "standard" way of learning to work for me, and that if I wanted to learn the things I did care about, I needed to find my own way.

This is in no way me trying to brag, but to give some context to why I challenge this kind of mindset whenever I'm faced with it, including (and without much success) in my own mother who keeps bringing up "I wonder who you inherited this skill from" whenever I learn something new, let me list some of the activities other people tell me I'm talented in:

* Software architecture and design

* Indie game development, including 2D and 3D engines from scratch in multiple languages as well as game design

* Graphic design

* Playing the piano

* Multilingualism (Norwegian, English, German, Dutch, Japanese)

* Videogames -- I'm particularly good at Smash Bros. Melee

* Hiking

* Body control - I can do push-ups while hand standing

* Conversation and hanging out - I make people laugh and have a good time because I have a lot of topics of interest to keep conversation flowing, and I set aside my ego to make sure the group has fun as a whole

Again, I'm not bragging, because I'm not a master in any of these disparate activities, and I also firmly believe this is something almost everyone can do. There is no "genetic" or inherited talent here. I was terrible at all these things and had to apply myself and experiment with constantly adaptive reinforcement techniques to get good at every single one of them. I grew up with asthma, but started practicing martial arts in spite of it. If I have a talent, it's simply curiosity. Everything else was an uphill struggle where I spent longer getting _OK_ at every single activity than most, but because I kept at it, I eventually got better than the average.

And one of the major factors of that is increasing my practice surface area in everything, which often ends up overlapping existing knowledge in surprisingly deep and fascinating ways, which in turn keeps me interested and curious. It's a feedback loop of learning.

[philipallstar]

> The real advice is to learn to accept yourself as you are, whether you're an obsessive or not.

Accepting yourself as you are is the opposite of practicing to get better at something.

[luckyandroid]

I see what you're getting at, but I'd disagree. I think accepting who you are also comes with commitment to pursue the things you're interested in, because non-acceptance would be "ignoring this part of me I wanted to pursue but didn't think I should".

[begueradj]

Accepting yourself as you are is the worst poison to tell to your child or someone you care about. Life is about in inventing yourself through craft, doing, trying, discovering, challenging, achieving goals and self improvement.

[bloomca]

The article brings a lot of examples of people who lived and breathed something, so it was essentially their life.

Telling people to dive into something even if they don't feel it is dangerous advice (especially for kids) -- people will just get burnt out.

Of course, there is nuance here -- you don't necessarily want to achieve world-class in something, and sometimes pushing is indeed worth it.

[schwartzworld]

Interested is the wrong word. Motivated is a better one, with interest being a subcategory of motivation.

The kind of intrinsic practice is even easier today than it was back then because we carry powerful computers in our pocket. If, like Orwell, you want to be a writer, you can literally work on it anywhere at any time. If you want to learn a language, you can spend time practicing it. If you want to learn music or art, the tools for explicitly practicing those things are in your actual pocket.

“Talent” is a myth. We all have our aptitudes, but in most subjects that only gets you a small advantage. Maybe you can remember Spanish vocab better than me, but if I practice every day and you don’t, you’ll reach the limits of “talent” quickly. Putting in the reps is the most important part of learning anything. The irony is that when you DO get good at something people forget that you were ever bad at it, and they will quickly dismiss your hard work as talent.

In high school, I had an ongoing argument with my dad about this. I got really into music and practiced daily for hours, wanting to be good enough to play in a band. By the time I graduated, I wasn’t bad. My dad would pontificate about which relative I had inherited this talent from, and I would get annoyed because it undermined the 100s of hours I spent locked in a music room. It did NOT come easy; I wanted to be able to do something and worked my ass off to get there.

[beacon294]

I've been reading about expertise and deliberate/purposeful practice, starting with "Peak" by Ericcson.

Experts, as a rule, augment their practice with a coach, and they never stop doing that. The quintessential example is the olympian.

So, that is how they increase their practice surface area.

I think interest is also generally relevant, but it's not the core in established fields: coaching is.

I am interested in unestablished fields too, which may be fundamentally interest driven. Although IMO that interest may be more about establishing frontiers than the specific topic.

[_se]

Man, talk about out the opposite of a growth mindset. What's that called? Stagnation mindset? Mediocrity mindset? How depressing.

People can change and get better at things. They do it all the time. Plenty of people _do_ actively think about things like how to increase their surface area to improve, because _they want to get better_.