2020-01-27

Excellence

Last night, I rented the movie Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words. It is a well-edited compilation of interviews with Frank Zappa over the course of his career. For the average moviegoer, the film has little to offer, but for the Frank Zappa fan, the film is a must-watch. I will not bother with a formal movie review, however, since Eat That Question mostly consists of footage available on YouTube that has been compiled nicely into a cohesive narrative, providing insight into Zappa's artistic vision. There is nothing new to say about this film footage. If you know about this film, chances are good that you already know whether you plan on seeing it. I'll let my "review" stand at that.

Just because all of this footage had been previously released, however, doesn't mean that I had personally seen it all. One particular moment in the film stood out for me the most. When asked why he thought everyone considered him a hippy rockstar and not a composer, Zappa said something to the effect of, "Probably because they haven't been conditioned for excellence."

This seems like an arrogant thing to say, but Zappa expounded on his point, and the point recurred a few times over the course of the film. He said that the American education system mostly focuses on turning American children into adults who will succeed at getting boring, low-level factory-type jobs and buy cheap merchandise. Elsewhere in the film, Zappa references a rejected article he wrote for Time Magazine. (The article was subsequently printed in Zappa's autobiography, The REAL Frank Zappa Book.) In that article, Zappa makes the claim that Americans have a preference for "cheese," which is Frank's euphemism for cheap, low-grade, low-brow cultural artifacts like cheeseburgers and "chrome dinettes." In the film, he contrasts this American proclivity to the tendency of much older world cultures to take pride in the thousands of years of cultural history they enjoy. He points out how silly it must appear to, say, Europeans, that Americans are so fond of something like a cheeseburger, when in Europe they enjoy recipes that date back literal eons, evolving along cultural lines all the while.

So, Zappa's point was about aesthetics. Zappa believed that people ought to learn how to appreciate art, and history, and music, and pretty much everything else by taking the long view. For Zappa, it made a lot of sense to tout the likes of Beethoven as the greatest composers of music of all time. Their work represents the culmination of hundreds if not thousands of years of musical development. The great composers were worth taking pride in, because they truly represented the evolution of music as art. When we compare that to the latest top 40 thing by... oh, let's just choose a name out of a hat and say Imagine Dragons... there is not much of a comparison to be had.

To be clear, Zappa's point wasn't that it's morally wrong to enjoy Imagine Dragons. His point was that the American culture and education system such as it is leaves people completely unequipped to make informed artistic decisions about what is artistic and what isn't. Instead, the mere suggestion that Beethoven might actually be superior to Imagine Dragons elicits social media vitriol: music is subjective, and what's wrong with liking Imagine Dragons? and I'd much rather listen to pop radio than some dumb orchestra.

Suffice it to say that none of these objections defeat Zappa's point.

On a related note, somebody compiled data from Goodreads.com and provided a list of the most beloved and most hated English language classic novels of all time. To my chagrin albeit not to my surprise, Moby Dick, the single greatest novel of all time, a literary accomplishment so profound that most people will never understand the extent of its genius, ranks as one of the most-hated classics. Why?

Part of it has something to do with what I just said about it: the genius of Moby Dick is so tremendous that I don't think most people can really even understand what Melville accomplished in writing it. Even understanding the profundity of that novel is a pale reflection of the white-hot flame of ingenious creativity that was required to conceive of it; and even conceiving of it is a pale shadow compared to the actual writing of it. Moby Dick tells a thoroughly unique tale with intensely philosophic moral symbolism and a disarmingly charming prose; and that, in and of itself should be enough to make it a great novel. But then Melville found a way to literally fuse the complete works of Shakespeare with the Holy Bible -- literally, I mean he literally wrote his novel by assembling passages from both Shakespeare and the Bible to craft the language of his own story, making symbolic references to each individually, and both simultaneously, all in the service of an entirely separate story he wrote himself. And the unsuspecting reader would be none the wiser, because the novel reads wonderfully and wittily throughout. This novel isn't just Treasure Island for adults; it's a true artistic accomplishment.

But that brings me to the other reason Moby Dick is such a hated novel, and this ties to Frank Zappa's opinions as articulated above. The modern American reader does not have the mental tools required to properly evaluate Moby Dick. It kills me to think that one of America's greatest contributions to mankind's artistic canon is beyond the educational platform of the overwhelming majority of Americans.

This is precisely what Zappa wanted to warn us about: we should be remembering Moby Dick for the ages. Moby Dick is what should be leaving a lasting impression on American culture. Instead, I think more Americans probably recognize the names of politicians, pop stars, and other such flashes in the pan. This is not because Americans are too stupid to understand greatness when they see it. Rather, it's because our culture, our media, and our education system have all failed to provide us with the tools required to evaluate culture and art, and Americans left to their own devices are disinclined to pick up the slack.

By coincidence, I happened to see a video on Facebook yesterday of someone cooking boiled prawns in the Southern style. The recipe went something like this:

  • Put a bunch of water in a giant pot and bring it to boil
  • Add a large concoction of spices, primarily salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper
  • Boil corn on the cob and potatoes in the spice/water mixture
  • Remove the corn and potatoes, then add raw crawfish, prawns, shrimp, whatever, and boil until cooked
  • Remove some of the shrimp and put in a mixing bowl with some of the corn and some of the potatoes
  • Pour a half cup of butter over everything
  • Squeeze some lemon juice over everything
  • Add a bunch of lemon pepper, pepper, cayenne pepper, "cajun seasoning," smoked paprika, and a bunch of other mixed spices that are all various kinds of salt, pepper, and chili powder
  • Stir
  • Dump on a plate
Here's a shorter version of this recipe: Boil three different ingredients, then cover them in butter, salt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. This isn't a recipe for crawfish, it's a recipe for butter and cayenne pepper.

Amazingly, the broth that was created by boiling seafood in water for a couple of minutes -- while not as flavorful as it could have been, had someone with a sense of taste undertaken to make seafood broth -- was probably the most flavorful part of the entire recipe. What did the cooks do with the broth? Nothing. It was a wasteful byproduct of boiled potatoes and shrimp covered in butter.

As I watched this video, I heard in my head the voice of an old French colleague of mine, who once complained to me about how disgusting American food looked when they served it. He thought it was revolting to see big, messy globs of food heaped onto plates with no sense of care. He was right. It's hard to find a restaurant in America that doesn't serve big, salty globs of stuff. I ran past Cracker Barrel this weekend, and it was packed; I went to a nice Syrian restaurant, and it was not packed.

Why do Americans prefer boiled Southern potatoes to braised Syrian lamb? Why do they prefer Harry Potter to Moby Dick? Why do they prefer Imagine Dragons to Beethoven?

Because Frank Zappa was right: Americans lack the tools to evaluate culture properly, so we queso dip while other cultures get remoulade. It's baffling. Don't we want more for ourselves?

2020-01-22

A Novelty Problem

There are many reasons why guitars are more popular than pianos. One is that, unless you happen to own a temperature controlled airport hanger, it is impossible to collect pianos. Not so for guitars. You could fit two dozen guitars into a standard-sized coat closet. There are also many different kinds of guitars, each one with its own unique sound, which justifies the purchase of another guitar. "I don't have that kind of guitar, and I need it to make that kind of sound!" They're also priced low enough that one can buy several guitars for the same amount of money as a piano. And then there's all the peripheral stuff that goes with the guitar: the straps, the strings, the pedals, the plectrums, each one with its own claim to improving your tone.

We see a similar thing in bicycles. It's not enough to buy and ride a bicycle. One also has to get the right kind of helmet, riding gear, water bottles, safety lights, fitness trackers, shoes, and so on. If a person decides to make the leap into bicycling, he'll eventually find himself investing in the sport as much as riding his bicycle, just as a guitar player will find himself investing in music gear as much as playing his actual guitar.

Golf, too, is similar. Once you've made the initial investment, there is always something more; a new driver, a better pair of shoes, a ball retriever... anything that will enhance the golf experience. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of club-swinging.

There are many such hobbies and sports. I've chosen to single-out male-oriented hobbies, but I could have mentioned their female equivalents, too. Do you really think women need to buy seventeen different kinds of skin cream, or five colors of eyeliner, or a different jacket for every type of cold weather, or five differently scented candles or soaps that can't be used together without causing some sort of olfactory overload? And, of course, the coed hobbies are the worst of all, since all dollars from sexes and genders can be exploited equally.

Marketeers are quite clever, and armed to the teeth with tools to extract more of your spending money. To be sure, in many cases, there are good reasons to spend more money on your hobby. One very simple reason is that it's fun to own a new guitar, bike, golf club, hair conditioner, or yoga mat. It's fun to complete your collection, to curate a perfect room full of enticing gear, sure to motivate you to do more of what you originally started out doing, anyway.

But if we're being honest, most of us should admit that we over-spend on our hobbies. A few of us will even admit that it would be better to spend less money. So, how do we resist the urge to spend money on fancy new stuff that will surely make us happy -- especially if we're spending within our means?

Here's one solution: Make part of the experience of your hobby the source of novelty, rather than the gear used to engage your hobby. Instead of buying a new guitar, learn something new on one of your guitars. Instead of buying a new bike, go on a new kind of bike ride. Instead of buying a new driver, go to the driving range and perfect your swing with your existing driver.

When we make incremental progress a source of novelty within our hobbies then we are less inclined to buy new things. The trick here is that the increment has to be a meaningful one. You can't simply learn a new song and expect that to replace your desire for a new guitar. Instead, you have to learn something that feels awesome and makes you want to do more of it. You have to learn a new technique, or play a lick you already know at a record speed. You have to impress yourself so much that you don't think a new guitar is as impressive as what you've just done. It's a little more work, but it's ultimately much more rewarding.

This is one of the reasons that children are such a joy. They can learn new things from existing, on-hand stuff and be entertained for hours; meanwhile, the same stuff would typically hold little appeal to us adults. This past weekend, I taught my daughter how to play a new card game. She doesn't usually play with cards, so the opportunity to play a game with dad, using a somewhat novel toy, was irresistible to her. I asked my wife if she wanted to play, and she emphatically said, "No, thanks." Truth be told, if it were only my wife and I, neither one of us would have chosen to play cards together. Those cards had been collecting dust in a closet for a long time. But then again, no one has offered to teach either of us a new card game.

So, my daughter didn't need to watch a new cartoon or a new movie, and she didn't need to buy a new toy. She just needed to expand her ability to play with our existing toys, namely, a deck of cards. It works the same around dinner time, too. She could sit and bore herself to death with cartoons or coloring pictures, or I could have her help me bake biscuits, or cookies, or peel carrots, or measure ingredients to put in the bowl. Things that I find to be relatively mundane, because I do them so often, are new and fun for my daughter. Not surprisingly, I recently found myself in a bookstore, perusing the cooking aisles for a source of new recipes -- something to make my mundane daily task of cooking everyone dinner more interesting. It took me fifteen minutes to realize that I didn't need to buy a new cookbook. I just needed to use the tablet I already own to look up some new recipes!

Again, to avoid seeking novelty in new stuff, seek incremental novelty in stuff you already have. Learning how to make falafel is a nice tool to have in the kit; it's enough to make a person excited to cook again. Learning a new guitar technique, or a better way of chipping onto the green, or a new card game, can all help you find the novelty you're seeking. We seek that novelty when we shop, but we don't need to. We simply need to avail ourselves of the novelty available in our life as it is now.

This relates to another concept I may or may not have mentioned on the blog: depth versus breadth of experience. Finding novelty in a new guitar makes your guitar-playing experience broader. But finding novelty in a new playing technique will make your experience deeper. I, for one, find that to be a positive move.

2020-01-20

Lactate Threshold, Critical Velocity, And Other Stories

Recap:

Some time went by, and I never bothered to elaborate on the training approach I've taken over the last four weeks.

I mentioned that I was going to start doing two fast runs per week (Mondays and Wednesdays), plus a plyometrics day on Fridays. I never circled back to the blog to say that I was also going to incorporate P90X's "three weeks on, one week off" monthly training cycle into my regimen, then change again. Tony Horton bills this as "muscle confusion," but that concept doesn't really apply to running. One doesn't really want to confuse one's running muscles. Still, there's a lot of good evidence in support of taking on a lighter load every fourth week to help reduce fatigue, and that means the fifth week is as good as any other to make another adjustment to the training regimen. Then, on for another three weeks, and yet another lighter week at week #8. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Last week was my fourth week, making it a lighter or "transition" week between what I was doing previously, and what I will be doing now. Interestingly, my overall training load increased last week, rather than decreasing:


Notice that my "relative effort" training load (from Strava) indicates a consistent upward trend for the past four weeks, up to and including last week, which was my "light" week. (The data from Garmin tells a much different story, though, and according to that data, my load did indeed decrease last week.)

As part of my one-month cycle, I did a guided lactate threshold test using my Garmin watch and chest strap HR monitor on Saturday. I will do this again next month in an attempt to chart my training progress using some semblance of cardinal measurements and real data.

Garmin's lactate threshold test produces a lactate threshold heart rate value and a lactate threshold running pace value. My numbers on Saturday turned out to be 167 beats per minute and 6:37 per mile. These results surprised me. I frankly expected a higher lactate threshold, meaning a higher heart rate value and a faster pace time.

Skeptical, I decided to read up a bit more carefully on lactate threshold. The USATF's VO2 max pace chart, as quoted here (p. 2), indicates that 10K race pace corresponds to approximately 92% of VO2 max, and from this value we can calculate various other estimated paces using the percentage values in the USATF table.

My most recent 10K time, taken in early October 2019, was 39:40, or about 6:23 per mile. With the help of some algebra, we can see that lactate threshold pace -- 88% of VO2 max -- corresponds to 6:35 per mile. Thus, assuming I have not lost any fitness between October and today, Garmin's estimate was only 2 seconds off. That's far more robust than I expected! I have gained some faith in Garmin's lactate threshold estimation technology.

Lactate Threshold Training

Having now established a 2020 training benchmark for myself, the next logical question to ask is, "How can I improve my lactate threshold?" The internet is replete with articles on improving lactate threshold, but why read all those articles when it can be summarized in a single sentence? 
The most common recommendation for improving lactate threshold is to run 30-minute sessions at lactate threshold pace
For me, this means something like this: 2-mile warm up, 30 minutes at 6:37/mile pace, 2-mile cool down. Pretty basic stuff. I might try it. 

However, while reading up on lactate threshold improvement, I came across an interesting article here. Read the whole thing. It is highly informative and, if you're a training geek like me, absolutely fascinating. In particular, the article contains a discussion about training above lactate threshold pace. Summarizing the approach used in a York University study, the article states:
The idea that intense workouts are best for boosting LT was even more strongly reinforced in research carried out at York University by Stephen Keith and Ira Jacobs (‘Adaptations to Training at the Individual Anaerobic Threshold,’ Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 23(4), Supplement, no. 197, 1991). In the York investigations, one group of athletes trained exactly at LT, a very popular way to attempt to heighten LT, for 30 minutes per workout. A second group divided their 30-minute workouts into four intervals, each of which lasted for seven and a-half minutes. Two of the intervals were completed at an intensity above LT, while the other two were carried out below LT. Each group of athletes worked out four times per week for a total of eight weeks.
What happened? (Emphases mine.)
Which strategy was better for boosting LT – working at LT intensity or putting in the time above it? After eight weeks of workouts, both sets of athletes achieved similar increases in VO2max and LT. The actual gains in LT were absolutely tremendous, averaging 14 per cent in both groups! Advances in muscle-cell enzymes were also rather splendid – and nearly identical in the two groups. In an endurance test in which group members exercised for as long as possible at an intensity which corresponded to their pre-training LT, the above-LT trainees seemed to hold an edge, continuing for a total of 71 minutes, while the at-LT subjects could last for only 64 minutes. However, this difference was not statistically significant. 
At first glance, these results seem to suggest that there’s not much advantage to be gained by sweating through above-LT workouts, but wait! If you’ve been following carefully, you probably noticed that the above-LT athletes really logged only 60 minutes of quality work per week (4 x 15 minutes), while the at-LT subjects put in 120 weekly minutes of quality exertion (4 x 30 minutes). To put it another way, the above-LT athletes achieved the same gains in LT and VO2max as the at-LT folks (and perhaps enjoyed a slight advantage in endurance) – with only HALF the total training time. It’s reasonable to assume that had the above-LT athletes stepped up their volume of above-LT work a little bit, they would have outdistanced the mundane at-LT trainees.
So, training above lactate threshold corresponds to greater increases in lactate threshold than simply training at lactate threshold, because training above LT increases LT more efficiently on a per-minute basis.

This all reminded me of so-called "Critical Velocity" training.

Critical Velocity

The article I mentioned above when citing USATF pace percentage values, by Chris Puppione of UC Davis, includes several amusing discussions about how coaches and trainers are always looking for a new magic training elixir that will enable athletes to suddenly and momentously acquire a tremendous advantage over their peers. Here is one such excerpt:
There are no secrets in distance running—no new revelations and no magic bullets. Somewhere, some other coach has already done it. Somewhere, some exercise physiologist has already written about it. Knowing this, however, has not stopped coaches from exploring better ways to train their athletes year to year. Knowing this does not stop us from picking through our copies of Running with Lydiard, Road to the Top, or Daniels’ Running Formula to find that one piece of information that we may have glanced over without giving it the attention it was due.
Puppione is right, of course. There really is nothing new under the sun. He mentions that "Critical Velocity training," which is gaining lots of new press thanks to the quite admirable success of the Tinman Elite racing team, can trace its roots all the way back to the 1960s! That's more than half a century ago. 

Still, Puppione does incorporate CV training into his coaching of athletes at UC Davis, and reports good results in doing so. He explains that the advantages of CV training over LT training are mainly that the athlete can reap many of the benefits of both LT and VO2 max training, simultaneously, and at substantially reduced overtraining risk compared to VO2 max training.

It makes sense, but keep in mind that the difference between LT and CV training is about 2%, or about 7 seconds per mile. To be sure, seven seconds per mile is a substantial increase in pace over the course of a few miles, but the difference is not enormous. Think of it this way: If my lactate threshold pace were to run a 10K against my critical velocity pace, my CV pace would win by about one minute. My race pace would win by two minutes.

Can seven seconds per mile really result in such great training improvements? It's tempting to buy into the hype, but again Puppione offers a voice of reason. He points out that he uses CV training early in his athletes' season to quickly ramp up their lactate threshold. Then, he focuses on VO2 max training during the middle of the season while reducing weekly mileage, to improve his athletes' speed without overtraining them or over-taxing their muscles. Finally, he incorporates a bit more CV training at the end of the season so that he can reduce the athletes' training load even further as they prepare to taper for the final, major competitions of the season.

In other words, CV training is a good tool to have in the tool kit... but it's not the whole kit.

Back to Me

As for me, what can I learn from all of this? How can I apply my newfound knowledge to my own recreational training regimen?

Looking back across the past month, I realize that I probably was overtraining. By the end of my third week, my muscles felt exhausted, and I couldn't really complete the workouts I had scheduled for myself. Well, I could complete them, but I wasn't getting the most out of them. I was essentially training at VO2 max pace twice a week, and adding a quite difficult plyometrics day to the mix. My weekly mileage decreased a bit, and my body started to feel worn down. 

I can improve my training, at least in the near term, by doing more workouts at or above lactate threshold, although not so fast as VO2 max pace.

I had originally planned on making speed the focus of my next three weeks of training. Speed, of course, involves a lot of training at VO2 max. I am less excited about that approach now, however I did happen to notice an interesting aspect of Puppione's recommended training sessions. He structures his CV training workouts as follows:
  1. 5-10 minutes warm up
  2. CV intervals (say, 4 x 2K at CV pace with 2 minutes recovery in between)
  3. 5-10 minutes recovery run
  4. VO2 max intervals (say, 5 x 200m at VO2 max with 200m recovery in between)
  5. 5-10 minutes cool down
You'll notice he adds some VO2 max intervals at the end of the workout to condition athletes to "run faster in a fatigued state." I believe that adding some VO2 max intervals to the end of my threshold runs and/or CV runs will enable me to improve the quality of my training runs.

So, friends, that's what I'll be doing for the next three weeks. Two weekly hard workouts at-or-slightly-above lactate threshold pace, with recovery runs and a weekly long run.

Let's see how it goes!

2020-01-17

Bond. Jamie Bond.

CNN reports -- a year or more after this was ever a social media issue, anyway -- that there will not be a female 007.

Good.

The notion of a female Bond has always struck me as a disingenuous concept. For years, James Bond was the archetypal example of what men shouldn't want to be: violent, womanizing, etc. He's everything feminism purports to stand against. If traveling around the world, shooting or sleeping with people as an "international man of mystery" is an anachronistic display of chauvinism, then surely this should also be true of an "international woman of mystery," too.

Unless, of course, the proponents merely wanted to give men a taste of their own medicine, in which case, yes, the suggestion is disingenuous. After all, chauvinistic behavior should be sexist and wrong, no matter if coming from a male or a female. And if James Bond's behavior isn't objectionable, then there should be no need to turn him into a woman.

It's a bit sad because, in the old days, someone who wanted to know what a female James Bond might be like would have simply undertaken to write a story about a female international spy. Such a writer wouldn't have needed to make her a literal female James Bond. The story would be written in response to the question, "What if James Bond were a woman?" Then, a completely new story would have unfolded, featuring a female spy placed in a universe of James Bond motifs, and through storytelling, the writer and the readers would get to explore how a woman might handle a similar position.

It's also sad because, it's not like there have never been any attempts to do this before. Take, for example, La Femme Nikita. Or, more recently, Salt. Taking a female spin on a classic spy story is certainly a valid storytelling project, and potentially a very interesting one (even if you're not particularly fond of Salt or La Femme Nikita).

But to take a classic lead character, a romantic hero, and turn him into a woman "because diversity" strikes me as a truly stupid form of storytelling. There's no refined thought behind a process like that. The political declaration becomes the story, and frankly, that's not a very interesting political declaration.

More importantly, though, stories should not be stupid, blunt political declarations. They should be stories. Stories can have political messages, of course. They can be persuasive and moving. But to accomplish this, the writer must put forth a little though and a little care into how the story is constructed, told, voiced, etc. There's more to it than simply chopping off James' head and attaching Jamie's instead. 

2020-01-13

An Offhand Thought On Political Reform

In an overview of his five-part series on wealth and wealth taxation, The Hoover Institute's John Cochrane makes a fairly innocuous and casual statement: "Saez and Zucman want to confiscate billionaires' wealth, because they think billionaires have too much political power."

Years ago, I went on a half-vacation to El Salvador, during which I had the opportunity to hear a lot about recent (post-civil-war) Salvadoran history from the guides at several museums and tourist spots. It was said to me that, after the civil war, the Salvadoran government fired the entire police force and every politician in the country, and hired all new people; people whose families had not previously been in the police or the government. It was a fresh start, so to speak. (The Chapultapec Peace Accords.) I am not an expert in this subject, so I cannot say to what extent the "average Jose's" understanding of the Chapultapec Peace Accords aligns with the literal truth. That's not important. What's important was that it struck me as being an incredibly wise idea to bar prior politicians and their families from getting into politics.

It makes sense in El Salvador, because these politicians and policemen were precisely the aggressors who had stoked the flames of the country's terrible, terrible civil war. Surely it's an idea that wouldn't scale well to a relatively stable country like the United States. But that doesn't mean there isn't some wisdom to be gleaned from it.

Suppose, for example, that Saez and Zucman are correct when they note that billionaires have too much political power. One solution might be to eliminate billionaires. A different solution, however, might be this: impose strict limits on the political power of billionaires. If the problem is that too many billionaires influence government, then why not outlaw that kind of influence?

Perhaps there are gains to be made from barring billionaires from holding public offices or lobbying positions. Perhaps we could limit -- or eliminate -- the ability of politicians to invest in companies owned, founded, or run by living billionaires. Perhaps we could outlaw the kind of private meetings had between politicians and billionaires that are otherwise inaccessible to average, non-billionaire citizens. Perhaps we could prohibit the granting of major tax loopholes, credits, or waivers to billionaire-owned companies unless they are extended to all other businesses at the same time.

These limits would not necessarily need to be so strict as to strangulate a billionaire's ability to participate in the political system. Billionaires could still found non-profit organizations or fund academic research. They could still vote like the rest of us. But they would be prohibited from engaging in special audiences and agreements with the government at any level.

These ideas, too, would limit the political power of billionaires. We need not confiscate their money.

It's a somewhat natural impulse for people to believe that, if billionaires corrupt government, then we should simply do away with billionaires. I think it should be at least as natural an impulse to do away, not with the billionaire, but with the influence. Why do these propositions never seek to impose harsher limits and punishments on politicians? Why do we only ever punish one side of a two-sided corruption?

2020-01-06

The Incrementalist's Mannifesto

Last night, I bought a book that I hope to review on this blog sometime soon. It's called Learn Python the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code, and its author is Zed A. Shaw.

I didn't go into the bookstore looking for a book on Python. I went because we found a bunch of gift cards lying around that we wanted to use up before they expired. When I got to the bookstore, I decided that what I wanted was a book that taught me some kind of practical skill. I seldom have time to read these days, and if I'm going to read anything at all, I'd like it to be something useful, rather than just some excuse to pass the time. (I have many other, more interesting ways to pass my time than reading.) Maybe I could learn how to draw, I thought to myself, as I perused the arts section. Maybe I could find a book on classical or flamenco guitar technique, I thought to myself, as I perused the music section. Maybe I could find a cookbook that could teach me to expand my cooking repertoire, I thought, as I perused the food section...

I found no such books in any section, because all of the books that potentially could teach me such things are written all wrong. I don't want to sit and read for two hours, taking notes, studying supplemental information, and committing concepts to memory. If I were going to do all that, I'd just enroll in a class. I don't have time for all of that. What I need is a way to learn a new skill through short, concentrated, daily practice. That's how we learn musical instruments. That's how we learn languages. That's how we train our bodies. New skills should work the same way.

So, I was slightly encouraged when I arrived at the Technology section and found a variety of programming books in which coding is taught through the use of short projects and case studies. That seemed like something I could work with. Python is also heavily utilized in my career industry, so this wouldn't merely be a practical skill, but also a professional one. I was narrowing down my search.

What sold me on Learn Python the Hard Way was looking at the Table of Contents: The book is organized into a series of coding exercises. I browsed the book's Introduction, and was pleased to discover that the book was written using the Direction Instruction teaching method. Direct Instruction is the method we used to teach our daughter how to read, and it's the preferred teaching method in all the best schools. The reason is because it really works. It breaks a subject down into small sequential lessons in which each lesson builds incrementally upon the one preceding it. By the end of a full set of lessons, students tend to absorb material better and retain it for longer than any other teaching method. Direct Instruction can be a little boring, and the first lessons are often the most difficult -- hence the name "...the Hard Way." But if one persists in this kind of instruction, one stands to gain more than any other competing instructional technique.

So here we have small, incremental changes that add up to major successes in the long run. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because I've blogged about it before. In fact, I write about it all the time. The other day, I wrote about how I was using this approach to modify my current running regimen. More to the point, I wrote a blog post six years ago entitled "Incremental Fitness," that quickly laid out the general idea. The truth is, over the years, I've discovered that the absolute best way to improve your fitness is to stick to a fundamentally sound routine while making small changes to it week-by-week or month-by-month. This ensures that the body has enough time to adapt to new exercises and improve upon them, without ever gaining so much efficiency that fitness improvement is sacrificed to mastery of technique.

Then there's music. I've been keen to improve my guitar technique. I'm pretty fast, but I'm not the kind of player I'd like to be. I'm not the kind of player who can take an interesting passage or lick and play it comfortably with tone and feeling as soon as I think it up. I stumble through a lot of what I want to play. I play well enough to impress laypeople, but not enough to impress fellow players. I want to change that. To that end, I picked up a book recommended by Dweezil Zappa (I think), called Guitar Aerobics by Troy Nelson. Again, the idea here is very simple: One lick per day, every day, for 365 consecutive days. The licks increase in difficulty week by week until, by the end of a year's time, one will have hopefully improved his playing dramatically. Best of all, the time commitment to these practice sessions is minimal. I can work my way through each lick a number of times and still have a little time left over to practice or write my own material. All the while, I'm becoming a better player, day by day.

I've applied the incremental approach to personal finance, stowing away daily, weekly, and monthly amounts of money, based on certain criteria, and funnelling that money into a diversified set of savings and investment instruments. I also stopped buying things that I wanted outright, and instead created a dedicated account for my own personal entertainment expenses. This account grows by a miniscule amount, but it grows every day, and within just a few short weeks it was easy to learn the fundamental lesson here: It doesn't take very much money to add up quickly if you save it consistently.

You don't have to clean every room in your house on "chore day." All you really need to do is commit to spending just five minutes cleaning the house each day. That will add up, and if it doesn't solve your clutter problem, add a sixth minute. Big deal. I don't know what the magic number is for you; maybe it's seven, eight, ten, or fifteen minutes. Whatever it is, it's a small and doable number for you to use to incrementally clean your home, rather than relying on a large and unpleasant house-cleaning project.

Again and again, the lesson presents itself in every conceivable context. If you want your life to get a lot better, don't try to work through a major catharsis. Forget about "new year, new you" and all such nonsense. What works better than anything is to simply identify one small thing that can be slightly improved, make a tiny (but permanent) change to that one thing, and then continue on about your day. Changes like this, made consistently over time, will eventually result in your whole life being better.

I call this approach Incrementalism. It's not a revolutionary idea, and I'm not the first person to have thought of it. But it does have the power to revolutionize your life, and if reading about it here gives you an idea to improve your situation in some small way, that's a good thing.