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46 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
46 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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lastmod: "2021-09-12T22:47:44.0000000+01:00"
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author: patrick
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comments: true
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date: "2016-08-05T00:00:00Z"
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aliases:
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- /be-a-beginner/
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title: Be a Beginner
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summary: Being a beginner at something is great, especially if it's something that humans are built for.
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---
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TL;DR: Being a beginner at something is great, especially if it's something that humans are built for.
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Humans are, among other things, [persistence hunters].
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That means one of the ways we are adapted to catch prey is by the brutest of brute-force techniques:
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on foot, we follow a large animal as it runs, until it sits down and dies of exhaustion,
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whereupon we eat it.
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We're pretty slow, but we can run for hours in the full heat of the day
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(we're unreasonably effective at regulating our own body temperature)
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and we just don't stop.
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One of the adaptations by which the human body is built is the ability to run at a constant speed for a long time.
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This art is, of course, increasingly unnecessary,
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as we have supplanted it with tools wrought of pure intellect (agriculture and so forth);
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but the underlying mechanisms are still there in [most of] our bodies.
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If you start something as a beginner, you make extremely rapid progress.
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The general effect has a name: the [Pareto principle],
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which is a rule of thumb which states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
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If you just learn the most basic 20% of something,
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that often gets you 80% of the total possible effects.
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Beginners improve rapidly in most human endeavours.
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I started running using the NHS [Couch to 5k] programme, about nine weeks ago.
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In that time, I have gone from being able to run fitfully for about thirty seconds before having to stop and breathe,
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to being able to run for thirty minutes and only stopping because that's when the timer finished.
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It wasn't particularly fun, but it's always satisfying to improve rapidly at something,
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and it is certainly better to be able to run for half an hour than not to be able to run at all.
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(I had a similar experience with lifting weights, a year and a half ago, except I actually find that fun.)
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This post is to recommend being a beginner every so often,
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and specifically to point to the Couch to 5k programme for those who don't currently do things that involve running.
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[persistence hunters]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
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[Pareto principle]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
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[Couch to 5k]: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/couch-to-5k-week-by-week
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