Creating Idea Emergence & Why the 10.000 Hour Rule is Wrong

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Hey there.

I hope you've had a great week.

What I've made for you

Tweet—The 10.000 hour rule is wrong.Yes, you have to put in a lot of effort over many years to get good.

But 10.000 hours isn't some magic number.It was just the average practice time in a certain study.

What matters is the quality of your practice, as well as amount of practice.

Thread—Productivity apps and tools for thought that do too much often fail—and how apps like Obsidian are differentProductivity apps & tools for thought that aim to become a Swiss Army Knife for users seem to fall short in almost all areas, while specialized tools are taking the cake in each.

PodNotes update 🎙️The plugin is now in the Obsidian community store.

I've also made a ton of progress on the next major release.Soon you'll be able to create podcast notes and capture timestamps without using any external plugins.

It features a templating system similar to that of QuickAdd, so you'll be able to customize what your timestamps and notes will look like entirely.It'll be out soon: it just needs some more love and polish. 

Creating new ideas, knowledge, and idea emergence

I love checklists.

So much so that I made one for, well... creating new ideas, knowledge, and idea emergence.

It's not a step-by-step process, but rather a list of questions I use to reflect on ideas and concepts.

• What happens if I modify X part of Y idea?

  • What happens if I modify multiple parts of Y idea at the same time?

  • Play around with modifications to the idea. Can you change it, but still leading to the same result. Is it more efficient at doing its job? Less?

  • Modifying a little vs. modifying a lot. What is the difference?

• What can you relate this idea to?

  • What emerges (emergence, systems) from the connection between the two ideas? 1+1=3?

• What happens if you apply the idea in another field? In the same field, but in another context?

  • Can you generalize the idea—make a mental model out of it?

• What if you inverse the idea? I.e., what if it did the opposite?

  • E.g. what is needed to achieve the opposite of the goal the idea was meant to solve?

  • E.g. what is the reversal?

• What happens if you take this idea to its extreme ends: lower and upper?

• Does this idea conflict with a bias? A fallacy?

• What is the atomic version of this idea?

  • I.e., the smallest possible version that still works individually.

• Try paying attention to even the smallest details of the idea for a good amount of time.

• Try putting the idea into context—understand why it was built and established: which goal does it serve?

Not every question has to be answered.Think of them as prompts for further thinking; like questions from a friend helping you think better and clearer. 

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