Make Your Own Way

Transcript:

Hello, this is a bit of an off-the-cuff recording — just something I came across recently. I’ve been exploring my personality and how to work with it, and I’ve been using AI to bounce ideas off of. It’s a good outside analysis tool for me, because I can’t really analyze myself. Having some kind of outside source helps me personally.

One thing that came up while we were talking back and forth was my ISTP Myers-Briggs personality — called “the Virtuoso,” though it’s a bit of a misnomer. Traditional virtuosos are supposed to go really deep into one thing, but ISTPs can pick up pretty much anything and run with it. Jack of all trades, master of some, et cetera. But that’s not the point.

The point was, we got into a discussion about me wanting to learn instruments — guitar, piano. The AI pointed out that with my personality, practice is going to feel very tedious and won’t seem like a good use of time. Which is exactly what I’ve experienced pretty much my whole life. I have hated music practice.

But it made a suggestion: take the thing you want to do — a certain guitar riff, a certain passage on the piano, a certain chord progression — and just go in and do it. I’m not saying you’ll nail it immediately, even if you’re someone who can pick things up quickly. But if you start doing it, you’ll notice the specific skills you’re missing. Like, oh, I can’t play with both hands — so I’ll practice that a little, then come back and apply it here. It gives the practice a purpose.

The idea is to get into the project and pick up the skills as you go, rather than try to learn all the skills first before starting the project. And that’s a mistake I’ve been making.

My analysis of arts — drawing, music, et cetera — is that there’s a certain progression you need to go through to be good. For music, you practice. For art, you practice drawing, et cetera. I got caught up in that because I thought, well, if I want to play piano, I have to go through these steps — and I’d get to step one, get bored, and drop it. Obviously.

The point is: yes, that’s one way to do it, and it’s tried and true. But it’s not for everyone, and it’s not the only way. Tons of musicians have probably done exactly what I’m describing — they just picked up the instrument and did it. They didn’t follow the prescribed steps. So it finally occurred to me: if one of my strengths is picking something up and learning it quickly, why am I not doing that here? I thought I knew the “proper” way, got caught up in that thinking, and never just said — okay, what if I just do it instead?

That was an interesting revelation that came out of the AI discussions.

There were a couple of other things too. The other one was about me being a free spirit — something I’ve only really put into words recently, even though I’ve been living it. I tend to want to wander around, poke into things, learn things. That’s my natural state. But trying to finish projects involves a lot of work.

There’s the old 80/20 rule — anecdotal, but the idea is you can do 80% of a project with 20% of the effort, and the remaining 20% requires 80% of the effort. It more or less holds true in a lot of things. It also connects to the concept of the skill plateau — you reach a certain level of adeptness where each additional gain takes a whole lot more effort. That’s what separates people who want to learn a skill for enjoyment versus people who want to go really deep and chase all those small gains. Both approaches are equally valid, but I am not someone who likes to go deep in most subjects.

Getting back to the free spirit thing — the AI made an interesting point: for these projects, not only does it help to redefine “done” — meaning getting to a minimum viable product, an MVP, something you could hand off to someone — but that sense of doneness is actually good for me. I do have a personality quirk where I see things through to the finish. I’m just not someone who likes to polish and maintain things afterward.

So that leads to this: if I get a project done and get it off my plate, it frees me up. It’s like removing a shackle from my leg. I made a list of my projects and — oh boy, there are a lot of them. But if I focus on shipping them as minimum viables and just getting them out, that’s one less shackle, one less weight on my soul.

Those were the discoveries from last night. These recordings are another part of it — I enjoy talking. There’s a voice in my head I call the Professor. He likes to come out this way. It’s not about teaching or guiding people forcefully; it’s conversational. It’s sharing the knowledge and insights I have, which I genuinely enjoy. Working with ideas is one of my favorite things. So that’s what these audio logs are for — hopefully at some point I’ll put them somewhere others can enjoy them.

But those were the two things I wanted to share: not getting caught up in an established path and making your own if you so desire, and getting projects to at least some kind of done-point so you can let them rest — and let your free spirit be free again.

Thank you so much for listening.