Persistence

Is the key. It is what will help you get over the brick walls. I should probably watch pausch’s lecture again.

Seinfeld has a method in which he creates a chain of days he has worked on new jokes. The cool thing about this method is that it makes you excited about not wanting to break the chain, as opposed to writing jokes/working out/etc. Some people will say that if writing jokes doesn’t excite Seinfeld, he shouldn’t be doing it. A similar comment could be if working out doesn’t excite you, you shouldn’t do it. Both statements are very short sighted. They are in the same category as the statement “Follow your passion”.

I, personally, am a fan of Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Being passionate about something goes hand in hand with what you are good at. But passion is not enough to become better. No skill or talent improves linearly with time or with usage. The thing that separates hobbyists from professionals is the deliberate practice and persistence to shoot through the plateaux. The plateaux or the brick walls are what demotivate even the most passionate people. That is the point where many people give up. Unfortunately, passion cannot independently help you power through. This is where persistence comes in.

Another way of looking at this is that passion is the global goal of the search algorithm; and persistence is the obstacle avoidance and local goal (waypoint) generator for the search algorithm.