Hitting Walls

Plants bend when they bear fruit

Introduction

This is going to be a disappointing post. Let's go. According to Wikipedia:

In endurance sports such as cycling and running, hitting the wall or the bonk is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles.

I'm referring to a slightly different kind of a wall, but one that impedes development of a skill because of the way we have developed it or just hitting a skill cap achievable using the technique that you've mastered. I've noticed that I'm currently not improving at several of the things that I've been pursuing. This blogpost will hopefully put some of those concerns on paper so I can work on it.

The Expert Beginner

As explained by Erik Dietrich in his amazing Blogpost, an expert beginner is someone who gets good at doing things in a certain way and is unwilling spend anytime to learn other techniques and get better because is an "expert". This impedes him from getting better simply because he thinks that he's already doing the best that's possible.

Chetan before 2014

1. As a kid I spent a lot of time on art and paintings, soon I got real good (or so I thought). After a while I realised that I wasn't improving. My painting skills were only as good as they were two years prior. That's a really bad sign and I soon gave up art. The way I drew (or still draw) is trying to exactly replicate what's visible without guidelines and without painting in layers. Now that I've read a book that has pointed out these mistakes, it's time to get to work.
2. As a kid I went through Karate. After 7 years of half hearted effort, I realised that I was incapable of getting a black belt. I was simply not serious enough about the sport to put in the hours required to make it to the big leagues. There was a technique problem. The inability to be as good as some of my peers always shot me down. It left with an unsurmountable wall and I had to quit sooner or later.
3. In school I was never good at languages. The problem continues even today. I was simply unwilling to anything more than I was already doing to improve. It's only over the last three-four years that my English has slightly improved after reading some books. I never read a book during my entire school life, obviously there was no way I could get better.
4. I played a ton of Dota back in college, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't climb past 2.5k MMR.

Reading and Understanding

I've been reading a lot about skilling up recently and understood that Walls come in several forms and can halt or degrade our progress in almost any sphere of life. From gaming to sporting to careers to relationships, walls are everywhere all around us. We can't avoid them (forever).

When we start a new skill, we struggle initially. But we soon gain confidence in our abilities and show rapid improvement. Then after a while of rapid skill acquisition, we strike a firm wall for a variety of reasons. Here the effort we put into skilling up is not proportional to our time spent. The output is nearly flat and this can be incredibly frustrating. Here is where people make the mistake of thinking that they've gained expertise and stop investing time into skilling up. Hence the term "Expert Beginner".

Chetan in 2020

1. Cubing: Let's start with a forgotten hobby. I can solve a Rubik's cube (3*3*3) using my own algorithms. If fact this helped me solve a 3*3*3*3 hypercube. But the catch is that I still have a poor understanding of parities, so I'm completely stumped by 5*5*5 Professor's cube or even the simpler Revenge cube. Also since I never got interested in learning the speedy algorithms (like F2L), I can never solve the cube faster than 30 seconds.
2. StackOverflow: Though I know how to answer questions on SO, there is tier of questions (like language internals) I cannot attempt simply because I don't have the required level of understanding. This will mean that I can only answer a small subset of questions which everyone pounces on anyway.
3. Hearthstone: I simply don't know the game well enough. I got to legend about two and a half years ago with my own creation. But as soon as I got to legend, I lost about 10 games in a row. I was playing an anti warlock deck and still to 7 warlock decks in Legend. It's not even funny how different the skill level between the players is. I have not made it legend after that. But that's a wall that I'm not looking forward to climbing again.
4. Reading: I'm not sure what my reading speed is, but it's not great by any means. This means that I'll be missing that magical 50 books per year target again.
5. Running: I can barely run 5 km without stopping now. I have no idea how I'll ever complete a full marathon.
6. Relationship: This is going no where. The one girl I dated ran off when we needed to have a serious conversation. But I now know better than to fall for lust again. Thanks to Corona though I'm stuck at home swiping left, right and centre (once a day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
7. Typing: Owing to poor typing technique, I can't get faster than 30 wpm. It's time for some serious practice and technique learning.
8. Scrabble: I can't do better than an average of 22 points per word without improving my scrabble vocabulary. I have a lot to learn and that can be really overwhelming.
9. Coding: Since all I've been doing till now is web development. I don't think I'm leaning anything off late from my day job. Also due to the bad practices that I've picked up over the last four years, I barely ever write test code. I now realise it's value in gaining confidence in the code written. I also now understand that coding is a means to an end, and the real answer is automation. Learning to automate repetitive tasks and getting good at doing so.
10. Career: Staying in the software industry will inevitably drive you to a glass ceiling with no way to reach actual managerial positions like CTO of a company. None of us are going to get as lucky as Zuckerberg and build a php site to rate women and become a billionaire.

What now?

1. Painting: I've just read a wonderful book about painting and art. Now I plan to draw at least once a week equipped with this new found knowledge.
2. Cubing: Understand what parities are, why they occur and how to solve them without mugging the algorithms.
3. Reading: Figure out how to read each type of book effectively. See if author is just filling pages, then skip them. Try to get the summary of each chapter and write about the book once I've complete reading it so I can always go back to it.
4. Running: After the Corona situation settles down, I'll start seriously running. I also have a wonderful book about running whose scheme I plan to follow.
5. Relationship: Honestly not a clue. These is one book I want to read before I get into a serious relationship and I hope both events occur soon.
6. Coding: I will diversify into more than just web development. The bulk of my concentration will be aimed towards automation of all kinds (including writing tests). I want to pick up hardware automation as well with the ultimate goal of automating daily jobs like ironing and cleaning toilets.
7. Typing: Find a good online course and practice everyday. Learn which key is supposed to be typed by which finger and commit to muscle memory.
8. Memory: Memorise the order of a fully shuffled deck of cards and recite it. I know the techniques, but I have to actually learn it.

Conclusion

We are bound to hit walls in life, the key is to realise it's going to happen and then figure out how to deal with it. Be adaptable and ready to change your techniques when it's not yielding good enough returns. Don't turn into an expert beginner and enable the dead sea effect. Don't be cause of mediocrity to thrive.