Practicing Your Scales

Recently, one of my favorite questions to bug people with has been, What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales?” If you don’t know the answer to that one, maybe you are doing something wrong or not doing enough. Or maybe you are (optimally?) not very ambitious? - Tyler Cowen

In Tyler Cowen’s post, Learn like an athlete, knowledge workers should train, he presented the above question. A few days later he answered it for himself in a follow up blog post, how i practice at what I do.

The following two are no secret but here’s how I practice my scales”:

  1. I write everyday. I try and write about things that I want to understand deeply, explore further or burn into my memory.
  2. I read everyday. I’m very careful on the content I ingest. Ideally, I read from a variety of different fields and mediums. I also try to read books that are above my level ocasionally.

How do you practice your scales?

March 8, 2020


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