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Your comment reminds me of the exercise where a class was split into two cohorts, one was tasked with producing just one clay pot (I can't remember the thing no

Your comment reminds me of the exercise where a class was split into two cohorts, one was tasked with producing just one clay pot (I can't remember the thing now), while the other cohort was tasked with making one per day or something similar. Put simply, one group put all of its energy into producing just one, and the other group just turned out pot after pot after pot. At the end, so the story goes, the group that cranked out pots like crazy ended up producing pots of higher quality. In my own life, I can often find out the thing that I'm afraid of learning because I've set it up like that first cohort: making the one perfect thing, instead of putting it out there and iterating on it or making another based on what I learned. Goes with learning languages (I'd do way better if I simply tried speaking every day, but I wait for perfect opportunities).

gamerDude 7y ago
The pot challenge is one group is they get graded just on number of pots made vs. the other on a single pot they can submit. The group trying to perfect one pot ends up making worse quality pots than the quantity group because the quantity group ends up getting way more practice. That anecdote gives me lots of hope. I hope it's accurate! :)
- onion2k 7y ago
  One thing to note about the pot challenge - it works because making a pot is a physical skill that improves with repetition in a situation where mistakes are really obvious. If you were to apply the same principle to something else it might not work at all. If you just write a huge amount of code rather than examining what's good or bad about code you wrote, you'd probably end up writing the same bad code over and over again. Seeing where improvements can be made is sometimes really not obvious and can feel like you're going backwards. For example, learning where functional programming applies instead of writing a class for everything. You need to be able to understand why something is better for simple repetition to work.
jacobolus 7y ago
> (I can't remember the thing now) Don’t worry about the details; it was just a made-up story in the book Art & Fear; I have never seen any evidence such a pottery class ever existed. https://kk.org/cooltools/art-fear/ https://kk.org/cooltools/art-fear/ > The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
- DennisP 7y ago
  How hard did you look for that evidence?
  - markrages 7y ago
    I looked for it before and reached the same conclusion -- it is just a made-up story.
    - Stratoscope 7y ago
      These are the same pots they boil the frogs in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
      - throes_death 7y ago
        and cook the soup in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
debt 7y ago
I’ve heard this lil story before but honestly both strategies are really dependent on the situation. There might be situations where’d you want to continually churn out pots. In other situations, pressure is really high, and you have one shot to get it right. Both strategies depend on the context. If anything, the best approach is to figure out which strategy is needed for the given situation. I would imagine, strategy of churning out pots is the most common one. But safety critical systems certainly need that pot to be right the first time otherwise people die.
- darkmighty 7y ago
  Yea, sometimes if the stakes are high enough you may have to get it right without multiple attempts. Depending on your time constraints, the tips given here seem to apply particularly well: find proxy problems that allows you to learn without as much hardship would be a good idea, as well as the other strategies of breaking it down, etc. Sometimes time is not on your side though, and you have to get it right without time to practice on proxy problems (at least I believe this can occur). Then you can use what I call it the 'Kitchen sink' approach: grab a bunch of tools, a bunch of approaches and start digesting your problem through as many viewpoints as possible. If your problem has safety implications and you can verify it, then well enough. Otherwise you make an attempt if you are sufficiently confident in your solution; and take some kind of NOP otherwise (if a guaranteed 0-return NOP even exists). Also, if you're solving something while time constrained, you may need to reflect afterwards if you could have either prevented the time constraint or prepared better somehow. In general though, there's hope in the sense that if something is verifiable or approximately-verifiable you can approach good solutions with time. At least I have high hopes of always finding a solution given enough time (i.e. "You're not good enough" does not exist). That's only not applicable if your time is finite or in the same vein you need to improve a skill to apply a series of finite-time decisions. Eh who cares about finite time anyway? :P (Yes, in reality everything is limited but there are plenty of tasks you can take your time with...)
maxxxxx 7y ago
I think there needs to be a balance. If we want to keep talking about pots at my workplace there are people who produce the same pot quickly but never ever improve. Then there are others who talk about great pots but never make one. And then there are some that produce a little slower but each pot gets better. Depending on the situation probably any of these approaches makes sense sometime.
laura2013 7y ago
I've heard a very similar story but with a photo class at UF from James Clear's Atomic Habits. Still, very interesting outcome, although I can't say I was surprised based on the odds. Thanks for the share. https://jamesclear.com/repetitions https://jamesclear.com/repetitions

gamerDude 7y ago

The pot challenge is one group is they get graded just on number of pots made vs. the other on a single pot they can submit. The group trying to perfect one pot ends up making worse quality pots than the quantity group because the quantity group ends up getting way more practice. That anecdote gives me lots of hope. I hope it's accurate! :)

onion2k 7y ago
One thing to note about the pot challenge - it works because making a pot is a physical skill that improves with repetition in a situation where mistakes are really obvious. If you were to apply the same principle to something else it might not work at all. If you just write a huge amount of code rather than examining what's good or bad about code you wrote, you'd probably end up writing the same bad code over and over again. Seeing where improvements can be made is sometimes really not obvious and can feel like you're going backwards. For example, learning where functional programming applies instead of writing a class for everything. You need to be able to understand why something is better for simple repetition to work.

jacobolus 7y ago

> (I can't remember the thing now) Don’t worry about the details; it was just a made-up story in the book Art & Fear; I have never seen any evidence such a pottery class ever existed. https://kk.org/cooltools/art-fear/ https://kk.org/cooltools/art-fear/ > The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

DennisP 7y ago
How hard did you look for that evidence?
- markrages 7y ago
  I looked for it before and reached the same conclusion -- it is just a made-up story.
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    These are the same pots they boil the frogs in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
    - throes_death 7y ago
      and cook the soup in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup

debt 7y ago

I’ve heard this lil story before but honestly both strategies are really dependent on the situation. There might be situations where’d you want to continually churn out pots. In other situations, pressure is really high, and you have one shot to get it right. Both strategies depend on the context. If anything, the best approach is to figure out which strategy is needed for the given situation. I would imagine, strategy of churning out pots is the most common one. But safety critical systems certainly need that pot to be right the first time otherwise people die.

darkmighty 7y ago
Yea, sometimes if the stakes are high enough you may have to get it right without multiple attempts. Depending on your time constraints, the tips given here seem to apply particularly well: find proxy problems that allows you to learn without as much hardship would be a good idea, as well as the other strategies of breaking it down, etc. Sometimes time is not on your side though, and you have to get it right without time to practice on proxy problems (at least I believe this can occur). Then you can use what I call it the 'Kitchen sink' approach: grab a bunch of tools, a bunch of approaches and start digesting your problem through as many viewpoints as possible. If your problem has safety implications and you can verify it, then well enough. Otherwise you make an attempt if you are sufficiently confident in your solution; and take some kind of NOP otherwise (if a guaranteed 0-return NOP even exists). Also, if you're solving something while time constrained, you may need to reflect afterwards if you could have either prevented the time constraint or prepared better somehow. In general though, there's hope in the sense that if something is verifiable or approximately-verifiable you can approach good solutions with time. At least I have high hopes of always finding a solution given enough time (i.e. "You're not good enough" does not exist). That's only not applicable if your time is finite or in the same vein you need to improve a skill to apply a series of finite-time decisions. Eh who cares about finite time anyway? :P (Yes, in reality everything is limited but there are plenty of tasks you can take your time with...)

maxxxxx 7y ago

I think there needs to be a balance. If we want to keep talking about pots at my workplace there are people who produce the same pot quickly but never ever improve. Then there are others who talk about great pots but never make one. And then there are some that produce a little slower but each pot gets better. Depending on the situation probably any of these approaches makes sense sometime.

laura2013 7y ago

I've heard a very similar story but with a photo class at UF from James Clear's Atomic Habits. Still, very interesting outcome, although I can't say I was surprised based on the odds. Thanks for the share. https://jamesclear.com/repetitions https://jamesclear.com/repetitions