While I was writing this, I rewatched a video by jazz pianist Kenny Werner, and I was really struck by his ability to be so gentle and ruthless at the same time, in a way that's loving and no-bullshit, and also economical. I'm trying to strike my version of that balance, but I think I still need more practice. I think I'll always think that. And I think that's probably for the best.
EDIT: I was going through old notes and found this: "i spent so much of my life frustrated at not being taken seriously, that for a long time i tried to take everyone else as maximally seriously as possible, and funnily this too led to a bunch of crappy outcomes".
Have been recently moved by reading Piet Mondrian : life and work by Michel Seuphor (who knew him personally in his later years)
Now there is an example of someone who was incredibly serious about his art and moved at a slow pace most people would and did find maddening. And yet everyone knows the grid compositions he produced in his 60s. I always thought of him as a consummate artist and the biography confirmed it in many ways, and it resonates with this essay a great deal.
Not really. I insert myself into scenes I think are relevant but I don't really know how to deep dive or collaborate. And my lack of confidence is mostly the result of a disability which is always present but variable in consequences
Feel free to ignore this (and any other unprompted advice actually lmao -- took me some time to learn that): a cool mental trick I learned recently was to try to really solve the problem in 5 minutes. Might sound dumb ("ofc I've tried that before"), but taking 5 minutes to jot down ideas and then actually trying what you just wrote was a surprisingly insightful way to reveal previously uncovered solutions.
Of course, that's just one of many things. I've had a problem with not pursuing my goals for some time, and that is only one of the things that has helped me; among others, getting medicated was also important. But also this is what has worked until now for me, and it might different for you or even me in the future.
My journey to really Getting Things Done is far from over, but I think the most important part is what you said of keeping trying, and (for me), believing it gets better at the end.
I 100% believe in serious generalists for sure, but I can't tell you "what their place" is. Their place is wherever they end up from being serious generalists for 50 years. The only know to know what that place is is to do the work and follow through on the opportunities as they come. It may seem obvious in retrospect, but it cannot be obvious in advance
I think you could also frame it the other way around, it's like a yin-yang thing. the tricky thing is that specialists are more visible and easy to describe, whereas the generalists tend to fill out the interstitial spaces in between – necessary, but hard to explain, and even hard to notice
I definitely agree with that point. This might be a shallow analogy, but it seems like up to this point in time, specialists have been the stars and generalists the coaches that helped them along the way (at least in the extreme noticeable cases and probably more often in between than not) i.e parent/child, coach/player, teacher/student. Just watched the tiger woods documentary so that father/son dynamic is very fresh on my mind
It’s easier to recognize and reward the skill and output of specialists. Serious generalists are often the visionaries whose work spans specializations and creates the environments for specific achievements to occur. Pick a current sports hero, for example, and then work backwards through all the systems, organizations, skill traditions, prior learning, etc that had to come first and all the people who made those things possible.
CS Lewis had a similar saying, that modern people often doubt themselves too little and doubt what they do too much. And I’ve had that in my mind for a long time and yet have, looking back, mostly failed to be serious.
Great post. I think even being aware of this makes a big difference. Some people take being serious as just like "trying really hard" or something, and do this very earnestly. But you can "try really hard" in a completely unproductive and unsustainable way that realistically will never achieve your goals. Systematically examining what it would take to succeed and what might cause you to fail is a much better lens.
Jan 9, 2023·edited Jan 9, 2023Liked by visakan veerasamy
Good piece, I like the wording. "Being serious" feels like the missing piece from my planning
I was talking about the future and thinking long term with a friend a couple days ago and I think this concept would've been really useful to have in mind then. I was trying to ask him if he was serious about something, what was he serious about, I was trying to probe at that. And I was also trying to convey what I'm serious about. I think I failed at both though. I'll have to bring this concept back for round two of the conversation.
My two cents: “Dynamic persistence” mainly applies for seriousness about pursuits, but it's not an accurate-enough definition when discussing seriousness about a person/relationship.
Let me propose an adjusted definition that can apply to both 1) seriousness about pursuits and 2) seriousness about a person: willingness to sacrifice. (ex. sacrificing time, effort, reputation, money, etc.)
It’s not just about the magnitude of sacrifice (i.e. “would you die for ___?”) It’s about the magnitude of sacrifice compared to magnitude of the payoff.
This actually explains why people say the following statement about marriage: “it’s the little things that matter.” This ubiquitous saying is just another way of expressing the idea that one partner sacrifices a bit of time/effort in order to make the other partner a bit happier. People only make little sacrifices for little payoffs in serious bonds, not unserious bonds. If someone were to tell their partner, “X is important to me”, even if X is something most people consider insignificant, and the partner repeatedly isn’t able to reasonably care about it, then the partner isn’t serious.
This same idea — the magnitude of sacrifice compared to the magnitude of payoff — applies to serious pursuits in addition to serious relationships. When Justo Gallego Martínez made the cathedral with his bare hands for 60 years, there were probably not many singular moments in which he had to make a singular immense sacrifice. Nor would his pursuit even have been serious if he only worked on it for a week. It’s precisely the fact that year-by-year, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, he routinely sacrificed a bit of his time/effort for a bit of the cathedral, which demonstrates that his pursuit is serious.
Also, the article discusses seriousness as a binary, but I think it can also be considered a spectrum. Relationships build seriousness over time. Creatives become more serious about their work over time.
What you describe is the difference between elite athletes and guys who don’t make it. 1 million boys play football in any given year; only 300 get drafted to an nfl team. The guys who get drafted are of course physically different
But a huge component that differentiates the best from the ones who don’t make it is intentionality. Do they give everything to the sport? Film study. Weights. Practice. Thinking about the games. Preparing.
I think that I read somewhere that most high school kids pretend to work hard, but athletes work hard at pretend. Maybe that is something worth identifying.
While I was writing this, I rewatched a video by jazz pianist Kenny Werner, and I was really struck by his ability to be so gentle and ruthless at the same time, in a way that's loving and no-bullshit, and also economical. I'm trying to strike my version of that balance, but I think I still need more practice. I think I'll always think that. And I think that's probably for the best.
EDIT: I was going through old notes and found this: "i spent so much of my life frustrated at not being taken seriously, that for a long time i tried to take everyone else as maximally seriously as possible, and funnily this too led to a bunch of crappy outcomes".
Link?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un3p614XExc
"We crush the caterpillars and complain there are so few butterflies."
You have a hell of a way with words, my friend. Really enjoyed this piece.
🥰🙏🏾
So good. Reminds me of One Punch Man
"I'm a hero for fun" + *serious mode activated*
Have been recently moved by reading Piet Mondrian : life and work by Michel Seuphor (who knew him personally in his later years)
Now there is an example of someone who was incredibly serious about his art and moved at a slow pace most people would and did find maddening. And yet everyone knows the grid compositions he produced in his 60s. I always thought of him as a consummate artist and the biography confirmed it in many ways, and it resonates with this essay a great deal.
I don't know how to pursue my goals at this point, but I do keep trying.
What would help you figure out how to pursue your goals better?
I know this sounds like an pbvious question, but sometimes having someone ask you it really helps if you take the time to answer it for yourself. :)
A better grasp of the technological landscape of the future, as well as more confidence in my own abilities.
(I'll ask some leading questions to help, if you want me to stop i will)
do you know who can help you with (a) getting a better grasp and (b) cultivating your confidence?
Not really. I insert myself into scenes I think are relevant but I don't really know how to deep dive or collaborate. And my lack of confidence is mostly the result of a disability which is always present but variable in consequences
Feel free to ignore this (and any other unprompted advice actually lmao -- took me some time to learn that): a cool mental trick I learned recently was to try to really solve the problem in 5 minutes. Might sound dumb ("ofc I've tried that before"), but taking 5 minutes to jot down ideas and then actually trying what you just wrote was a surprisingly insightful way to reveal previously uncovered solutions.
Really I saw this advice here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiJquD34sa9Lyo5wc/resolve-cycles
Of course, that's just one of many things. I've had a problem with not pursuing my goals for some time, and that is only one of the things that has helped me; among others, getting medicated was also important. But also this is what has worked until now for me, and it might different for you or even me in the future.
My journey to really Getting Things Done is far from over, but I think the most important part is what you said of keeping trying, and (for me), believing it gets better at the end.
Do you believe generalists can be serious? Where is their place in this ideal serious world?
I 100% believe in serious generalists for sure, but I can't tell you "what their place" is. Their place is wherever they end up from being serious generalists for 50 years. The only know to know what that place is is to do the work and follow through on the opportunities as they come. It may seem obvious in retrospect, but it cannot be obvious in advance
Perhaps the destiny for generalists is to serve the greater purpose of specialists. Haven’t thought this one through yet
I think you could also frame it the other way around, it's like a yin-yang thing. the tricky thing is that specialists are more visible and easy to describe, whereas the generalists tend to fill out the interstitial spaces in between – necessary, but hard to explain, and even hard to notice
I definitely agree with that point. This might be a shallow analogy, but it seems like up to this point in time, specialists have been the stars and generalists the coaches that helped them along the way (at least in the extreme noticeable cases and probably more often in between than not) i.e parent/child, coach/player, teacher/student. Just watched the tiger woods documentary so that father/son dynamic is very fresh on my mind
It’s easier to recognize and reward the skill and output of specialists. Serious generalists are often the visionaries whose work spans specializations and creates the environments for specific achievements to occur. Pick a current sports hero, for example, and then work backwards through all the systems, organizations, skill traditions, prior learning, etc that had to come first and all the people who made those things possible.
CS Lewis had a similar saying, that modern people often doubt themselves too little and doubt what they do too much. And I’ve had that in my mind for a long time and yet have, looking back, mostly failed to be serious.
This went deep. Thank you.
This will be required reading for all my kids. Thank you
Great post. I think even being aware of this makes a big difference. Some people take being serious as just like "trying really hard" or something, and do this very earnestly. But you can "try really hard" in a completely unproductive and unsustainable way that realistically will never achieve your goals. Systematically examining what it would take to succeed and what might cause you to fail is a much better lens.
exactly!
Love a good Feynman anecdote - and that’s a banger.
Good piece, I like the wording. "Being serious" feels like the missing piece from my planning
I was talking about the future and thinking long term with a friend a couple days ago and I think this concept would've been really useful to have in mind then. I was trying to ask him if he was serious about something, what was he serious about, I was trying to probe at that. And I was also trying to convey what I'm serious about. I think I failed at both though. I'll have to bring this concept back for round two of the conversation.
Common Visa W
Great post 🔥
All of this essay spoke to me, thank you for being so earnest about your work. 🔑
I feel reinvigorated in assessing how I manage my priorities to make more room for the things that I most love working on.
glad to hear it! ❤️🔥💪🏾
Thanks for writing this Visa. <3
My two cents: “Dynamic persistence” mainly applies for seriousness about pursuits, but it's not an accurate-enough definition when discussing seriousness about a person/relationship.
Let me propose an adjusted definition that can apply to both 1) seriousness about pursuits and 2) seriousness about a person: willingness to sacrifice. (ex. sacrificing time, effort, reputation, money, etc.)
It’s not just about the magnitude of sacrifice (i.e. “would you die for ___?”) It’s about the magnitude of sacrifice compared to magnitude of the payoff.
This actually explains why people say the following statement about marriage: “it’s the little things that matter.” This ubiquitous saying is just another way of expressing the idea that one partner sacrifices a bit of time/effort in order to make the other partner a bit happier. People only make little sacrifices for little payoffs in serious bonds, not unserious bonds. If someone were to tell their partner, “X is important to me”, even if X is something most people consider insignificant, and the partner repeatedly isn’t able to reasonably care about it, then the partner isn’t serious.
This same idea — the magnitude of sacrifice compared to the magnitude of payoff — applies to serious pursuits in addition to serious relationships. When Justo Gallego Martínez made the cathedral with his bare hands for 60 years, there were probably not many singular moments in which he had to make a singular immense sacrifice. Nor would his pursuit even have been serious if he only worked on it for a week. It’s precisely the fact that year-by-year, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, he routinely sacrificed a bit of his time/effort for a bit of the cathedral, which demonstrates that his pursuit is serious.
Also, the article discusses seriousness as a binary, but I think it can also be considered a spectrum. Relationships build seriousness over time. Creatives become more serious about their work over time.
For more of my thoughts on seriousness, click here :) https://docs.google.com/document/d/11KpdxPcC4lOfxox9elvKwdpV3p5HfM7z/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109516221415355283490&rtpof=true&sd=true
interesting stuff
What you describe is the difference between elite athletes and guys who don’t make it. 1 million boys play football in any given year; only 300 get drafted to an nfl team. The guys who get drafted are of course physically different
But a huge component that differentiates the best from the ones who don’t make it is intentionality. Do they give everything to the sport? Film study. Weights. Practice. Thinking about the games. Preparing.
I think that I read somewhere that most high school kids pretend to work hard, but athletes work hard at pretend. Maybe that is something worth identifying.
Bravo! Thank you for standing up for seriousness without solemnity.