Reaching the end isn’t the point

Much better is to rebuild the skill entirely with a different approach, one that directly addresses your perennial snags. Instead of slowly getting better at your familiar, limited way, you embrace the awkwardness of learning an unfamiliar but stronger method, as though you’ve never done the thing before at all.

~ David Cain from, How to Level Up

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In the article Cain mentions spending as much as 10 minutes in reading one page as part of his larger anecdote from which he’s drawing this lesson. Sometimes it takes me a long time to find enough tranquility in my mind just to feel ready to read. I always have so many thing on the to-do and should-do lists. By the time I get enough of the urgent items beat back into the shadows, often, another days has passed with too little reading. I should do something about that…

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I write here most days — reflections, quotes, and working with the garage door up. This is one of more than 5,000 posts. Wander to another →

If you like the way I think, you might like what I’m reading. Every so often I send out 7 for Sunday — seven things I’ve savored, about five minutes, whenever they’re ready. No hooks, no nonsense. Read a recent issue →