Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Just work smart, daug, why are you putting in all those hours? And so it makes a lot of people that struggle feel like they’re a failure because I don’t see it. And then the choice they have, well, I’ll just be lazy and then maybe the profound truth will come to me somehow. And yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever, and I don’t think I’ve met great engineers that find the smart way without the extremely hard work. The annoying thing about those great engineers is then looking back, they forget the hard work because they remember all the joy they now are experiencing from all the efficient, smart work they figured out how to do. They forget. So when they give advice they give the stupid advice of, well, just do it like the easy way And here’s the easy way. But no, you have to put in the hours. Musical instrument is a beautiful example of guitar and piano. I’ve put in, I don’t know how many thousands of hours. And now when I’m explaining stuff jiu-jitsu as well, I sound like one of those people just relax in jiu-jitsu. By the way, just relax is a really wonderful thing for physical endeavors like piano and so on. But to learn how to relax your hand, how to relax your mind, your body and use whatever the biomechanics of your body to apply the correct kind of leverage and the timing and all that, that takes thousands of hours of learning. Just to learn how to relax takes a lot of really hard work. In jiu-jitsu that takes many months of getting your ass beat over and over until you ride the bus home crying. Your ego completely shattered and destroyed. And then a little element is figured out late that night or next morning. And from the depression, there’s this little plant that grows this flower of insight. And you use that insight to then get your ass kicked again all next month and year. And then you grow and grow and grow. And from that you discover how beautifully simple jiu-jitsu is or Judo is, just speaking for myself, or piano or guitar. And then yes, the profound truth or the mastery of a skill feels simple when you finally arrive to it, but the path for most people is going to be a hard one. I think I should make an addendum to the phrase, I think the phrase should be work hard, get smart.…

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