How To Study Hard - Richard Feynman

USB of an ordinary person by studying hard would get to be able to imagine these things like I imagine of course I was an ordinary person who studied High there's no Miracle people it just happens they got interested in this thing and they learned all this stuff they're just people there's no Talent a special miracle ability to understand quantum mechanics or a miracle ability to imagine electromagnetic fields that comes without practice and reading and learning and study so if you say you take an ordinary person who's willing to devote a great deal of time and

study and work and thinking and Mathematics and time and I then he's become a scientist there is a small subset of the people that can be very happy being obsessive about things and you know Obsession can often get things done that just practical prudent pedestrian work won't or at least won't for a very long time but I do think that great things require a lot of hard work so there's no way you can expect to change the world without working really hard by the way even changing the world you know the folks that I respect

the most nudged the world in like a slight Direction slight very very slight I think to have great outcomes you actually do need to work at like three standard deviations above the mean but when I read about companies going to like four day work weeks and stuff I'm just like I'd chuckle because I can't get enough done with the seven day week I don't know how and people will say oh you're just not working smart and it's like no I I work pretty smart I think in general like and I think the focus should be

more like how much you do so I I'm kind of like believer on a high level in this 10 000 hours kind of concept where you just kind of have to just pick the things where you can spend time and you you care about and you're interested in you literally have to put in 10 000 hours of work um it doesn't even like matter as much like where you put it and your you'll iterate and you'll improve and you'll waste some time I don't know if there's a better way you need to put in 10

000 hours but I think it's actually really nice because I feel like there's some sense of determinism about being an expert at a thing if you spend ten thousand hours you can literally pick an arbitrary thing and I think if you spend ten thousand hours of deliberate effort and work you actually will become an expert at it and so I think it's kind of like a nice start and so uh basically I would focus more on like are you spending 10 000 hours one other thing that I think is helpful for the psychology of it

is many times people compare themselves to others in the area I think is very harmful only compare yourself to you from some time ago like say a year ago are you better than you year ago it's the only way to think um and I think this then you can see your progress and it's very motivating you will waste time doing something wrong yes you will eventually figure out it's not right you will accumulate scar tissue and next time you'll grow stronger because next time you'll have the scar tissue and next time you'll learn from it

and now next time you come to a similar situation you'll be like oh I I messed up I've spent a lot of time working on things that never materialize into anything and I have all that scar tissue and I have some intuitions about what was useful what wasn't useful how things turned out so all those mistakes were uh were not dead work you know so I just think you should they should just focus on working what have you done what have you done last week