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”:
- I write everyday. I try and write about things that I want to understand deeply, explore further or burn into my memory.
- 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?