Shane Parrish

Swinging →

Published August 26, 2020  ·  All posts on Aug 26

If Rembrandt wanted to rescue something from his masterpiece he would have to cut it down from the enormous arched space it was designed for into something for a residential buyer. So the cutting began.

~ Shane Parrish from, Rembrandt van Rijn: An Intorduction

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I’m not a painter, and I don’t conceive myself a Master at the things I do do—but I sometimes get a yawning disorientated feeling when it’s time to choose between two path diverging in the woods on some project big or small. Do I swing for the center-field fence? Do I paint for the grand, arched space? …or do I cut the idea down to a more manageable size that a normal person would be more likely to engage with?

And then I think: What’s the point of swinging if one isn’t swinging for the fence?

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Experience →

Published August 22, 2020  ·  All posts on Aug 22

So does experience really make you an expert? What does it actually mean to be one? It turns out, we don’t learn from experience in many contexts.

~ Shane Parrish from, Robyn Dawes: Does Experience Make You an Expert?

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You’re really good—an expert even one might say—at many things. But being really good at something… Having a lot of experience doing that something… Does that make you an expert? I think those things are not sufficient. To be an expert one must also explicitly understand the principles underlying the activity. I’m very good at sitting on chairs—but I’ve never studied chairs; their design, their mechanical structure, their aesthetics. I’m not expert.

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