A New Skill

Jan 8, 2007

This weekend, I was teaching my friend to drive. The mind, as usual, wandered. Not surprisingly, I was thinking about the time I learnt to drive. I put in lot of effort in getting every maneuver right. To illustrate: I practiced something more than fifty times, although I got it right in about six tries. This made me absolutely positively confident of doing that. Now that I think about it that way, I guess in order to be confident, not only do you need to know something, but you also need to know that you know it. This is what practice is all about, right? You can learn anything pretty quick. To be confident about it, your poor mind needs to see you successfully do it several times.

These thoughts led me to think about what I’ve done since. I’ve had several ‘personal firsts’, sure. Lots of them. But if I were to make a list of them on a sheet of paper, I would be forced to give that the title: “What I Dabbled In”.

If I were to become really good at something, what should it be (first)? Lisp? The thought of that is enticing. Let me make a small (non-exhaustive) list of things I’ve had going on for a while and want to get good at. It is no secret that I pretty much suck at all of them at the moment. Lets see…

Lisp, Linux, Web programming Racquetball, Abs, Endurance Stock-trading French, Sketching –(done very little)

I haven’t been using “overwhelming force” on any of them. I REALLY find Lisp to be enticing as I have few ideas that are, in my humble opinion, best implemented in Lisp. It certainly looks daunting, considering how much effort I will have to put in to do anything remotely worthwhile. But this intrinsic difficulty in itself makes it appealing. Hmm. I’ll keep you posted.

(Hey! I just noticed that my previous post was #2^8!)

4 comments

Ruchi wrote on Jan 08, 2007:

Why so much of self-disdain?

Kirubakaran wrote on Jan 09, 2007:

@ruchi
I think you are referring to:
"It is no secret that I pretty much suck at all of them at the moment."

No, it is not self-disdain at all. Just an honest status update. 'Reality', if you will :-) I didn't say it in contempt. I simply said it as something I need to work on.

Anyway, you know that my narcissism precludes self-disdain :-p

Saaral wrote on Jan 18, 2007:

thats what a warrior does... practice with his sword, such that he can act on his instinct instead of thinking on the necessary movements when in war :)
when u practice that way, it becomes a part of u...

Gorilla Bananas wrote on Jan 22, 2007:

"If I were to become really good at something, what should it be (first)?"

Very good question. Humans who can make the soles of their feet meet behind their head impress me. But not as much as those who have mastered the flying-trapeze.

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