In our increasing immediate satisfaction and everyone is a victim and gets a trophy society; the lesson of incremental progress and persistence is so lost on so many people.
I built a manufacturing business from the ground up. When people come to visit, they look around at the facility and the activity and ask, "without a background in that, how did you manage to get this done?" That question is always perplexing to me as I just put together a plan and kept tacking one project and one problem at a time... moving forward.
Someone that builds a house knows this thing. Most people just buy a house and don't get the building process is one of incremental steps and progress.
I am always schooling young people on this... the 10,000 hour rule. I tell them that making a good living requires becoming a master in some discipline that has commercial value. Working full-time is 2080 hours a year. So if someone practices a discipline full-time for about five years, they will become a master. If they put in 20 hours a week, it will take ten years. If they are really smart, dedicated and focused, they might reduce the time required, but the point is that they have to invest in becoming a master.
I tell them that thinking their college degree qualifies them for a good career is bunk. The truth is that college is actually a delay in career launch, and they would need to make up the time once they start working after graduating. The only thing the degree provides is a leg up in the hiring competition, but someone that started working earlier while attending night school would generally be in a much better competitive place.
It is fantastic how people look at someone successful and think, with some resentment, that it happened quickly or was based on luck. They look at Elon Musk for example and claim that he is just lucky and that his wealth is just a recent thing... ignoring all the steps he took, and all the challenges he had to overcome, to get where he is today.
In my later years in manufacturing I hired a graduate mechanical engineer that couldn't work problems I had to do in my 2 yr associate in electronics program. Bending deflection in a solid steel bar per load applied.
Now that I'm retired I don't have the chore of hiring. And I'd be hard pressed to hire college graduates again.
When I started teaching high school, every year I had a couple of students that were entrepreneurs. The Internet made it easy for these kids to start a business and if they stuck with it, they could make it work. I had a few students that were earning double my salary. Upon graduation, they were not going to college, they were well on their way to becoming very successful business people.
Today, the majority of my students have no interest in working at anything except to be a rapper, a YouTube influencer, or a sports star. They think it is very easy to make lots of money for very little work. Most do not even graduate because they do not need school. Those that do graduate usually meet their graduation requirements by doing credit recovery. They failed every class for 2 years and so enter credit recovery where they can earn credits by taking online classes after school where they only read and take a test. The test answers are shared by the students and are freely available. All they do is stare at the computer screen, hit a button every 20 seconds to stay in the online course, then pull out their slip of paper with the answers to pass the test. They can do 4 years of school in one year.
When they get out, they are unemployable and most decide to just live at home because their parents let them play video games all the time.
Now schools are pushing DEI, such as the lowest grade a student can earn is 50%, even if they did not do the assignment or test because we do not want them digging a hole they cannot get out of. They have learned they only need to work the last three weeks of a semester to make it to 60% so they can pass.
This is not real life. One can dig a hole so deep they cannot get out of it. Why are a large proportion of homeless drug addicted? Their only goal is to score the next high and for them, rock bottom is when they finally OD and die. Today, there are plenty of people and governmental agencies that are willing to give them all the money they need to continue on their current, downward spiral.
I find it ironic that I attended high school during the Great Recession of the 70s. Since I was 8, I always had a job. My first was a paper route. By 8th grade, I had taken up horse back riding. I paid for everything by working at a horse ranch 7 days a week. I spent 4 hours after school every day and 10 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. I worked 60 to 80 hours a week during the summer. I eventually was able to give riding lessons, train horses for other people and I was able to get my driver's license at 14 because I was working on a ranch. I could only drive to and from work and for ranch related jobs. I was driving a 2.5 ton flatbed once a week during the summer over the Sierra Nevada to Carson Valley to pick up a load of hay. I had to load and unload the hay myself.
I enjoyed the work. I made my job by finding something that others did not want to do and then becoming good at it.
I was working at this job through community college. At the community college, and went through a trade program to learn about Electron Microscopy. There were only two places in the US at that time that taught this. After I graduated, I went to a 4 year university, got a job working in a lab operating an electron microscope and paid my way through school. I also married my wife during this time. We have. been married 41 years now. She was working her way through college.
I even knew how to service the Electron Microscope so I saved the lab money by servicing it myself and they did not have to call in a technician every time it went down. I was given a few substantial pay raises.
I had learned from my grandfather, that lived through the Depression and was never out of a job more than 24 hours. He started working at the age of 8 after his father committed suicide after the 1929 crash (his father lost everything). He got their broken down Model T running and immediately found a job delivering goods to local stores.He then converted it to a dump truck and got jobs on road construction projects.
My grandfather worked until the age of 85. He had to stop working due to health problems and passed away at the age of 87.
I am retiring after this school year. That only means I will be leaving one job, moving to be near my son, his wife, and my young grandson. I will also find a job so I have something to do.
When I read your posts I feel like I've fallen down a rabbit hole. I had no clue how bad, even farcical, that academia has become. Its discouraging because we know that it doesn't have to be this way. Like Charlie Brown crying out doesn't anyone know the true meaning of Christmas?, is how I feel about leftists f-ing up our educational system. Can't they see what they're doing? None of that crap was allowed when I went to school in the 70s and early 80s. I had to actually do the work to get good grades and to graduate. Seems like scamming and working a DEI system is a common pathway now, and it sickens me. Those are stupid, retarded, evil people doing those things.
I think we now live in a world where people are bombarded with headlines, memes, slogans, short clips, entertainment and googling the "right answer" to things while many people struggle with reasoning, first principles, in depth understanding, rationales and history. I mean, look at social media and the media as a whole and tell me which of those ways of understanding the world makes up 99% of everything and which one barely ever gets discussed.
Sometimes quick fixes work. Sometimes lucky breaks happen. Most of the time try, try again, while tiresome, is often effective. The truth is putting in the time, the work and persistence leads to a rewarding pay-off more than just monetarily.
Playing long odds is a suckers game. Oh, when the Powerball Lottery gets above a billion I think the opportunity cost makes it worth a couple of my bucks, but I'm not planning on ways to spend all that cash!
Yeah, to be clear, I definitely exclude playing games of chance from the try, try again scenario. In that scenario time, work and persistence leads to less money in your pocket 99.9999999999999 to infinity of the time. Sure, someone is going to win, but "your" chances are mighty damn slim. I feel sorry for people who spend money on lottery tickets hoping to be the winner. I suppose a small number just do it for that slim to none chance, never expecting to win. I've never purchased a lottery ticket of any kind, but if I did, I'd probably be that winner who lost their ticket😆
Very well said, John. You need to find a way to share your wisdom to a larger and larger audience. Countless people would benefit from your wise advice.
"Stop looking for exceptions and just stick to the damn rules, and you will go further over time than the vast majority of human beings around you."
Until, of course, you realize that following the rules might keep you out of trouble, or it might not, but it definitely won't get you what you want or where you want to go. Rules are for keeping society intact & functional, not facilitating the success and happiness of individual people.
You know that Japanese salaryman, working that job he hates and living that dreary, grey life he dreads going home to? He was once a straight-A student and has never had so much as a parking ticket.
I didn't say you had to go to college, load up on debt, and work your whole life at a job you hate. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but it depends on what your goals are. What you are describing is the basic expected end goal on that lifestyle choice, If your goals are more than that, then you need to structure your life accordingly, do more than that and not count on luck to get you there
In our increasing immediate satisfaction and everyone is a victim and gets a trophy society; the lesson of incremental progress and persistence is so lost on so many people.
I built a manufacturing business from the ground up. When people come to visit, they look around at the facility and the activity and ask, "without a background in that, how did you manage to get this done?" That question is always perplexing to me as I just put together a plan and kept tacking one project and one problem at a time... moving forward.
Someone that builds a house knows this thing. Most people just buy a house and don't get the building process is one of incremental steps and progress.
I am always schooling young people on this... the 10,000 hour rule. I tell them that making a good living requires becoming a master in some discipline that has commercial value. Working full-time is 2080 hours a year. So if someone practices a discipline full-time for about five years, they will become a master. If they put in 20 hours a week, it will take ten years. If they are really smart, dedicated and focused, they might reduce the time required, but the point is that they have to invest in becoming a master.
I tell them that thinking their college degree qualifies them for a good career is bunk. The truth is that college is actually a delay in career launch, and they would need to make up the time once they start working after graduating. The only thing the degree provides is a leg up in the hiring competition, but someone that started working earlier while attending night school would generally be in a much better competitive place.
It is fantastic how people look at someone successful and think, with some resentment, that it happened quickly or was based on luck. They look at Elon Musk for example and claim that he is just lucky and that his wealth is just a recent thing... ignoring all the steps he took, and all the challenges he had to overcome, to get where he is today.
Life is a climb, not a boat ride.
In my later years in manufacturing I hired a graduate mechanical engineer that couldn't work problems I had to do in my 2 yr associate in electronics program. Bending deflection in a solid steel bar per load applied.
Now that I'm retired I don't have the chore of hiring. And I'd be hard pressed to hire college graduates again.
When I started teaching high school, every year I had a couple of students that were entrepreneurs. The Internet made it easy for these kids to start a business and if they stuck with it, they could make it work. I had a few students that were earning double my salary. Upon graduation, they were not going to college, they were well on their way to becoming very successful business people.
Today, the majority of my students have no interest in working at anything except to be a rapper, a YouTube influencer, or a sports star. They think it is very easy to make lots of money for very little work. Most do not even graduate because they do not need school. Those that do graduate usually meet their graduation requirements by doing credit recovery. They failed every class for 2 years and so enter credit recovery where they can earn credits by taking online classes after school where they only read and take a test. The test answers are shared by the students and are freely available. All they do is stare at the computer screen, hit a button every 20 seconds to stay in the online course, then pull out their slip of paper with the answers to pass the test. They can do 4 years of school in one year.
When they get out, they are unemployable and most decide to just live at home because their parents let them play video games all the time.
Now schools are pushing DEI, such as the lowest grade a student can earn is 50%, even if they did not do the assignment or test because we do not want them digging a hole they cannot get out of. They have learned they only need to work the last three weeks of a semester to make it to 60% so they can pass.
This is not real life. One can dig a hole so deep they cannot get out of it. Why are a large proportion of homeless drug addicted? Their only goal is to score the next high and for them, rock bottom is when they finally OD and die. Today, there are plenty of people and governmental agencies that are willing to give them all the money they need to continue on their current, downward spiral.
I find it ironic that I attended high school during the Great Recession of the 70s. Since I was 8, I always had a job. My first was a paper route. By 8th grade, I had taken up horse back riding. I paid for everything by working at a horse ranch 7 days a week. I spent 4 hours after school every day and 10 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. I worked 60 to 80 hours a week during the summer. I eventually was able to give riding lessons, train horses for other people and I was able to get my driver's license at 14 because I was working on a ranch. I could only drive to and from work and for ranch related jobs. I was driving a 2.5 ton flatbed once a week during the summer over the Sierra Nevada to Carson Valley to pick up a load of hay. I had to load and unload the hay myself.
I enjoyed the work. I made my job by finding something that others did not want to do and then becoming good at it.
I was working at this job through community college. At the community college, and went through a trade program to learn about Electron Microscopy. There were only two places in the US at that time that taught this. After I graduated, I went to a 4 year university, got a job working in a lab operating an electron microscope and paid my way through school. I also married my wife during this time. We have. been married 41 years now. She was working her way through college.
I even knew how to service the Electron Microscope so I saved the lab money by servicing it myself and they did not have to call in a technician every time it went down. I was given a few substantial pay raises.
I had learned from my grandfather, that lived through the Depression and was never out of a job more than 24 hours. He started working at the age of 8 after his father committed suicide after the 1929 crash (his father lost everything). He got their broken down Model T running and immediately found a job delivering goods to local stores.He then converted it to a dump truck and got jobs on road construction projects.
My grandfather worked until the age of 85. He had to stop working due to health problems and passed away at the age of 87.
I am retiring after this school year. That only means I will be leaving one job, moving to be near my son, his wife, and my young grandson. I will also find a job so I have something to do.
When I read your posts I feel like I've fallen down a rabbit hole. I had no clue how bad, even farcical, that academia has become. Its discouraging because we know that it doesn't have to be this way. Like Charlie Brown crying out doesn't anyone know the true meaning of Christmas?, is how I feel about leftists f-ing up our educational system. Can't they see what they're doing? None of that crap was allowed when I went to school in the 70s and early 80s. I had to actually do the work to get good grades and to graduate. Seems like scamming and working a DEI system is a common pathway now, and it sickens me. Those are stupid, retarded, evil people doing those things.
I think we now live in a world where people are bombarded with headlines, memes, slogans, short clips, entertainment and googling the "right answer" to things while many people struggle with reasoning, first principles, in depth understanding, rationales and history. I mean, look at social media and the media as a whole and tell me which of those ways of understanding the world makes up 99% of everything and which one barely ever gets discussed.
Sometimes quick fixes work. Sometimes lucky breaks happen. Most of the time try, try again, while tiresome, is often effective. The truth is putting in the time, the work and persistence leads to a rewarding pay-off more than just monetarily.
Playing long odds is a suckers game. Oh, when the Powerball Lottery gets above a billion I think the opportunity cost makes it worth a couple of my bucks, but I'm not planning on ways to spend all that cash!
Yeah, to be clear, I definitely exclude playing games of chance from the try, try again scenario. In that scenario time, work and persistence leads to less money in your pocket 99.9999999999999 to infinity of the time. Sure, someone is going to win, but "your" chances are mighty damn slim. I feel sorry for people who spend money on lottery tickets hoping to be the winner. I suppose a small number just do it for that slim to none chance, never expecting to win. I've never purchased a lottery ticket of any kind, but if I did, I'd probably be that winner who lost their ticket😆
Very well said, John. You need to find a way to share your wisdom to a larger and larger audience. Countless people would benefit from your wise advice.
Merry Christmas!
"Stop looking for exceptions and just stick to the damn rules, and you will go further over time than the vast majority of human beings around you."
Until, of course, you realize that following the rules might keep you out of trouble, or it might not, but it definitely won't get you what you want or where you want to go. Rules are for keeping society intact & functional, not facilitating the success and happiness of individual people.
You know that Japanese salaryman, working that job he hates and living that dreary, grey life he dreads going home to? He was once a straight-A student and has never had so much as a parking ticket.
I didn't say you had to go to college, load up on debt, and work your whole life at a job you hate. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but it depends on what your goals are. What you are describing is the basic expected end goal on that lifestyle choice, If your goals are more than that, then you need to structure your life accordingly, do more than that and not count on luck to get you there