What Is It You Do to Train That Is Comparable to a Pianist Practising Scales?
This question was posed in Marginal Revolution, one of my favourites blogs. This question was inspired by the article from David Perell. The crux could be summed up by this argument:
Athletes train. Musicians train. Performers train. But knowledge workers don’t.
Knowledge workers should train like LeBron and implement strict “learning plans.” To be sure, intellectual life is different from basketball. Success is harder to measure, and the metrics for improvement aren’t quite as clear. Even then, there’s a lot to learn from the way top athletes train. They are clear in their objectives and deliberate in their pursuit of improvement.
Knowledge workers should imitate them.
This triggered a lot of discussion on Twitter. A Twitter friend Daniel posted his answer in this thread and Tyler Cowen answered in his blog post.
This post is my attempt at answering the same question. Here are my routines for being a better version of myself.
#1. Writing
I love to write. I use writing as a way to clarify my thinking and learn better. For the past 30 days, I have started my day by writing “morning pages” in 750words.com. My mood really feels better, and I feel private journaling is a great vent into the pressured self.
I also publish here at 200 Words a Day. It is a snowballing effort, which will have high dividends in the future. I am getting better at this craft of writing. I need to 10x my writing ambitions. I am a firm believer that in the age of abundance, inspiration is easily perishable. Everybody has a unique voice in themselves because of their diverse life experiences. So even if the thought or content may be cliched, it is worth jotting it out. I firmly believe writing is the new resume. You can peek into your brain and thinking process by consistently writing and publishing online.
I also write a lot of content for work. They are strategy documents, project overviews, product specification, customer interview summary and so on. I have slowly converted the people around me to this mode of working. I spend time researching and thinking. After that, I will jot down my thoughts and elaborate on it. Then, I ruthlessly prune it to make it as a 1-pager or a short document.
#2. Note-Taking and Highlighting
I maniacally take notes and highlight things whenever I read. I spend a lot of time in a day reading and mull over things. I mostly read online or on a Kindle. I make note-taking and highlighting to do this. To be present and read actively. Highlighting always keeps me on alert mode in reading. I highlight things that stand out for me. Inspiration is perishable simultaneously; we all have multitudes in ourselves. When I am inspired by a topic and read, my quality of attention is very high. The things that stand out to me will never stand out for the lazy me in the future. Highlighting and note-taking are my means to enable retention and recall.
I get an email from ReadWise daily with 15 highlights of my reading materials. It is randomly generated. I ensure I read it in the first half of the day when I am fully active. I truly believe in the concept of spaced repetition. ReadWise is one way to resurface the learnings I have done in the past. My past self has invested quality time and attention to a text. My future self needs to recollect and move on. That content might be helpful for me in the future. But just reading my old notes and highlights is important to me.