Day 9
Writing is a skill. In here I send notes of my writing from the 50 days of writing course by David Perell, to reflect, develop and build my writing style.
In the 9th email from the 50 days of Writing by David Perell, he talks about how Knowledge workers should train(learn) like artists, athletes and many people who bring unexceptional habit regime to train.
In the email, David goes on to say
The more you learn, the easier it is to learn. Pick the right projects, and you’ll develop a personal network effect, where each new skill increases the value of skills you already have.
David explains what Lebron James did to build his strength, agility, injury avoidance ad 54% field percentage goals. Lebron used to have a full fledged off-season training regimen that notes down his every run down of the workout and on-court practice routine.
His training regimen imitated in Knowledge learners regimen looks something that Nick Maggiulli does. Nick is a writer who talks about personal finance on Of Dollars and Data which teaches us how to live smarter and richer.
David explains the case study of how Nick learnt the programming language 'R' in two years to go ahead and be a data science expert. His learnings were not wasted and benefited him as he was writing out weekly newsletter/personal blog. He has been writing blogs every week for the past three years which is how he remains learning the ways of being a data scientist. That's 154 weeks of writing consistently.
David's Suggestions:
David suggests that we must train in sprints and the end goal should be clear. He even says
Start by writing down a positive vision for your future. Focus on the end goal, not the skill itself. For example, rather than saying “I want to learn how to draw,” I focused on the end goal: “moving forward, all the charts, graphs, and images on my website will be hand-drawn.”
My thoughts:
Training like athletes is a succinct way of saying bring a routine to your life on the things you want to do, be it writing, photography, art among others.
The best person who explains this much better than me is James Clear. His book "Atomic Habits" explains how habits can be formed by following a series of responses i.e. cue, craving, reward and response. Four combined together forms 'The Habit loop'. Which is a piece of information from the learnings of the Charles Duhigg's "The Power Of Habit"
The part about learning in sprints can be better explained by Naval Ravikant on Joe Rogan's Podcast
In this episode, Naval says
As a modern knowledge worker, you want to train hard, You learn and you rest. After the period, we have to receive feedback and re-assess. The process is Train -> Learn-> Rest and then receive feedback.
This process is simple and so efficient but also so hard to be as we are always changing. In this ever changing world having one constant routine is really hard. Achieving that is the biggest battle we will have while transitioning in training.
Once you do you will be unstoppable. So my takeaways from the lesson "Train like athlete" is to build a rigorous schedules and training regimen with precise segments of tasks of ultimate dream.
Finally, having the systems to be training the more you focus on the work. Knowledge workers are hard as they need to be always learning and having this sprint type system reduces fatigue in the process. This is why the whole Building in public thing is exploding as it is involving the people through the process and tasks and the only way I see to build in public be successful is by writing in public.
For more of perell's work, visit David Perell and find his incredible essays to read. You can signup for the 50 Day Writing Course by clicking and signing up to receive one mail every day with amazing take on writing.
Thank you. You can read out all my notes on the 50 days of writing and also some of my articles on the Lockdown and my trip that I captured to relive on this page.
