Author Archives: Ben Casnocha

Admiring Excellence, An Ongoing Series

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I recently watched two documentaries I highly recommend: Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Being Elmo. Each is about a craftsman and his craft: Jiro, a master sushi maker in Tokyo, and Kevin Clash, the brains and voice behind the muppet Elmo. Both available on Netflix streaming. It reminded of my post last year titled Admiring Excellence, which I’ve re-posted below. It’s a topic I continue to think about almost every day…

At a San Francisco Giants game a couple months ago, I joked to Cal Newport, who was sitting next to me, that the Newportian analysis of the game had nothing to do with bases and balls and everything to do with the years of deliberate practice that rocketed each player to the peak of their profession. Cal sees remarkable talent as the product of years of craftsmanship.

I thought about that moment at the ballpark with Cal the other week when I was listening to a commentator who, after reporting that the Houston Astros (one of the worst teams in baseball this season) beat the Giants, said that it doesn’t matter how bad the opposing team is–when you’re competing against professional athletes, it is always hard work to win. The worst player on the worst team in the major leagues is still one of the best athletes in the world. When you see a National League pitcher go to bat and hack at balls way off the plate, he looks like he’s never swung a bat before. Yet, that hitter was probably the best hitter on his high school team by far. When professional pitchers are made to look silly at the plate, it’s a reminder of how good major league pitching is. Only those who devote their professional careers to hitting stand a chance–and full-time pitchers, obviously, do not.

You don’t need to be a pro at the craft to admire it in others. In the baseball example, if you don’t know the rules of baseball you won’t appreciate the players’ talents. You need a base level of knowledge. But you can be an amateur and still be awed by the pros, if you let yourself.

Why admire excellence? First, admiring excellence is part of appreciative thinking. In a terrific, packed restaurant, admiring excellence becomes appreciating the myriad details the restauranteur has nailed to make the dining experience flawless. Purchasing a product on Amazon becomes appreciating the data analysts who processed billions of bits of data in order to optimize the shopping cart process. This appreciative, admiring mentality is also a backdoor entrance–in the house of feelings–to gratitude. “I’m grateful to be in the presence of someone who’s world class at their craft.”

Second, consciously admiring and recognizing the excellence of someone is the first step to becoming a master yourself. If the key to mastery of any skill is deconstructing what current masters did to get to where they are, then step one is knowing when you’re around professionals–and letting yourself admire them!

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From Josh Kaufman, a Craftsman’s Creed.

Via Carlos Miceli, Denis Dutton’s TED talk, which Carlos summarizes as: “Meticulous work, regardless of the field, is beautiful. We find beauty in skilled performances.”

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Lessons and Reflections from Publishing the Start-Up of You

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I just published a long article/essay on the process of publishing The Start-Up of You. In addition to sharing background on how Reid and I came to partner on the book, I share lessons learned and insights on the key editorial questions that define a book, how to ask for and incorporate feedback from early readers, the reality of self-doubt and self-dissapointment that’s part of the process in a project like this, and much more. I hope it’s useful for authors and entrepreneurs alike. Since it’s long, I suggest printing or viewing in Readability mode for your convenience. Enjoy!

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Bootcamp Model of Learning

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The “bootcamp” model of learning is on the rise–learning via a focused, intensive period of time dedicated to learning one thing.

I did a 10 day intensive meditation bootcamp. All meditation, all the time.

A friend recently completed a four day rationality bootcamp — where you learn and think about the meaning of rationality and how to become more rational yourself.

Another friend recently completed a 10 week Ruby on Rails bootcamp — where you intensively study the Ruby programming language and by the end are employable as a web developer.

Another friend recently completed the 10 week Singularity University at the NASA Ames campus — where you think deeply about how to change the world and network with the likeminded.

In all cases, you stop what you’re doing, travel to a place, surround yourself with teachers and students, and go deep on the topic. The upside to learning this way is obvious. It takes hours to get into creative flow. Deliberate practice — which is a structured way to learn something — requires sustained attention. In an always-on and distractible culture, the rare act of deep immersion can produce differentiated insights. At my meditation retreat, the deep, sustained focus mattered because it was only after 80 hours of continuous meditating where I was able to achieve some of the more profound insights. Had we done two hours a day over many weeks, I don’t think I would have ever reached the heights I did.

The downsides to the bootcamp approach are perhaps less obvious. One downside for me is what you might call “social marination.” I rely on my network to teach me things via ongoing conversation about an idea bouncing around in my head. I might read a book about something, blog about it, then talk to someone in my network, get emails from readers on the topic, then read another book, then perhaps listen to a speaker at a conference, etc. Over a multi-month period of time, consciously and unconsciously, I begin to crystalize lessons or insights. (Is another downside the idea of spaced repetition memorization?)

Formal schooling is the anti-bootcamp model. You study many different topics at once–it’s a constant balancing act. As David Brooks once noted, to be an excellent student you have to train yourself to not let yourself become too interested or immersed in any one thing. I should note that the liberal arts school Colorado College is an exception. There, you study one class per semester. It’s interesting more schools haven’t tried that model.

Finally, the bootcamp model of learning doesn’t have to be a formal class at a campus. Ryan Holiday suggests a bootcamp model to reading books. Interested in the civil war? Read 10 books on the topic in a row. Then pick a new topic. One topic at a time.

My questions in close: What are the skills that lend themselves particularly well to learning-via-bootcamp? Should a model for investing in yourself include attending bootcamps of this sort?

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The Wisdom in India

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“If I were asked under what sky the human mind…has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions to some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant — I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life…again I should point to India.”

— Max Müller, via the opening chapter on Hinduism in The World’s Religions.

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Different Messages From Different Women

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A couple hours before I went off the grid and headed to the 10 day silent meditation course, I spoke to my mom and to my girlfriend, who knew about my anxieties / doubts. They each proactively, independently told me the following.

Mom: “If it’s not working out, it’s okay to come back early.”

Gf: “Be brave. Don’t come home early.”

Both are important thematic messages to hear in life from people close to you–strive forward and take risk, but we’ll support you if you fall.

It seems just too right that I encountered this zen balance in advice right before leaving for a meditation course…

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