The New Road

Ira Glass On Persistence

The first part of this video sounds a little elitist, talking about taste and what not. But the point that Ira gets to about half way through is excellent:

The central point is about persistence. That you really have to struggle through doing something poorly for a long time before you get to the point where you are good enough at it to transcend it and do something really well. It's a problem that a lot of people run into, they want to be immediately excellent at something, only to find that they suck at it. Which is absolutely natural, you can't expect to be Tiger Woods on your first round of golf. But Tiger wasn't Tiger right away, it took him years of practicing every day to get to his level of skill.

I do find Ira's point about where he has gotten to a little sad. Perhaps he didn't mean it, but he seems to imply that he has reached a state of perfection with his show. Perfection is a myth. There is only the constant struggle to be better. I know I am a really good programmer, I can code rings around most people, but every day I try to get a little better, to learn something new, or, in the best world, to learn something that completely rips my understanding of programming apart so that I have to look at it all fresh again.

I know it sounds insane to yearn for something that would turn my world inside out, but it's because to me programming isn't about the keystrokes, or the files, or the projects, or whatever. It's about solving problems. The technology is merely a tool. So when I find something out there that enhances my ability to solve problems, I grasp onto it immediately, as I have with lots of new technologies. Unfortunately most of them wind back to the same ideas eventually. So I am constantly looking for that one new revolutionary idea that will change everything.

As for my writing, I think I am in the mastery phase. There are three phases to learning any skill; learning the forms, mastering the forms, and finally transcending the forms. When I started it was tough enough trying to put together a single article and have it hold together reasonably well. Now that I understand more about the audience and how to effectively communicate to them, I look at whole books and understand how they ebb and flow naturally to convey a complete set of ideas. I think the next step for me will be to transcend the written form and just get into any type of teaching that will most effectively impart a set of skills.

To me the reason I write is to educate my fellow engineers. To open their eyes to new technologies and skills that will change how they solve problems. So the writing itself is only a means to an end. And the next step will be whatever it takes for me to impart what I have in my head, to anyone who is interested and willing to learn something new.