 I was about to drive home then it started raining so I'm gonna wait 10 or 15 minutes to see if it stops If not, I'll just go but in the meantime, I thought I'd answer a question Someone asked a little while ago. Sorry. I haven't gotten to this but I've been thinking about it in the back of my mind a little bit and the question was Basically, how do I know how to do so much different stuff? He phrased it better than that, but that was basically the question and It's not that I know how to do a lot of different things. I don't have a lot of specific skills More like I have Some really good basic skills like some really good generalized skills. So yes, like the difference between having specialized skills and generalized skills, so like Specialized skills would be a specialized skill would be shooting a dart at a dart board That is the competition distance away the competition just is you know all the official measurements and everything It's all perfect and someone will go there and do that like a million times and look they'll get this muscle memory in their arm They can do it without even thinking and hit the bullseye or the triple 20 or whatever Well a less generalized skill would be able to hit the hit the board from anywhere in the room and Did I say get less generalized a more generalized a less specific a more generalized skill would be able to Would be being able to throw anything at the dart board from anywhere in the room, you know within reason of course more generalized skill would be Just the ability to throw just about anything at just about anything and hit it So and then if you get more generalized that than that you just get into generalized hand-eye coordination, which you can do for a lot of things So You know the guy who has just generalized Hand-eye coordination if you put him on that line with the dart board and tell him to throw He's not going to be as good as the guy who has that specialized skill I can like hit the bullseye with his life's clothes almost However, if you tell him to go across then to the other end of the room Pick up a chair and throw it at the dart board the guy with generalized hand-eye coordination It's probably gonna do a lot better It's much much more useful in unknown circumstances to have generalized skills or maybe you could say attributes You know stats versus skills So let me give you a few examples. I'll give you a physical one and a brain old one Okay, so I used to run track and field a lot But I also I also did lots of sports and the reason I did lots of sports Was so that I didn't get used to only doing one thing So I wouldn't build up that muscle memory that would that would give me a specific specific skill and Make it more difficult to do other things So when I ran track and field Because I did so many different things. I had the body of someone who just did a lot of things So I was like 200 pounds running against guys who were mostly just focused on The running of these middle-distance races. They were all like a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty pounds So, you know, it's easier to move a lighter person around the track. It just takes less energy So if I wanted to specialize in the in the middle-distance running events, I could have dropped 50 pounds or so and And it would have been a lot easier But I wanted to maintain Generalized skills, you know, I didn't want to lose strength I didn't want to lose all this other stuff to get this specific skill So instead I would go on like 20 mile runs wearing About about a hundred pounds of weight vests and ankle and wrist weights weight Yeah, about a hundred pounds and that that like forced my body to maintain the muscle mass while getting enough Endurance that I could run like a hundred and twenty pound guy While I was 200 pounds So it takes it takes more work to get Generalized skills up to, you know, close to the level of someone who's specialized skilling But you can do it as long as you have good work at it. No Okay, I have a good academic Or mental example here and this is I think of this one because It's one of the few times someone else has mentioned, you know, I kind of generalized skill to anyway I was I was at university. It was maybe first or second semester advanced placement physics and I would always attend the first couple days of class just because You know, I got to see see how things are see if it's actually okay to skip class all the time And I'll explain why I would skip class in a minute. It wasn't just because I wanted to go party Okay, so the first day of class I Get there and there's this TA, you know a teacher's assistant some grad student He was pretty smart guy definitely in the genius level And he was talking to some other people and I just overheard him say all these classes are just f equals ma F equals ma is just force equals mass times acceleration. It's just a simple mathematical equation, but he was stating that very plainly that the entire class is just that You know, you need some algebra and stuff But but all it all boils down to f equals ma everything we're gonna learn in the class and I was like And I thought about for the next week and this is something I generally did anyway, but because I heard someone say it I thought specifically about his example so You know in the class they were teaching us these these long Equations we were supposed to memorize so that when we come up against Specific circumstances we can take the variables and the numbers and plug them into these equations And then we get the right answer to whatever we're trying to figure out And we're just supposed to memorize these because there's a whole bunch of these equations that apply to different circumstances but You know for the first week every time they came out with one of these equations I just break up the equation and say okay this section here is the acceleration This is the mass and this is the force Yeah, just force equals ma as long as I know how to calculate the a and the m and the f and you know It was all just variations as long as you had basic good basic understanding of You know that the basic concepts and algebra and how to calculate each basic thing You can put it all together into these more complex equations without having to memorize anything Just having a good grasp of the basics Now I did First I want to say don't don't start skipping classes because I'm saying this and then get in trouble and say oh Jamie Did it and you said it was fine. No no go to class if you skip class you have to really think about it first know what you're doing and Don't just don't blame me for it because like things would happen like I would get called into professors offices sometimes and Be accused of cheating and in fact in one of these physics classes this happened I was very polite about it. He wasn't too accusatory, but he was like you know something's going on here You know you you don't show up to class all semester. You just show up for the exams and you're acing the exams So you're passing the class fine even though you're getting a zero on on Homework in a zero on attendance. You're still doing fine on the class But I want to know what's going on because you you're not writing down any of their correct equations How are you getting these answers? Basically, are you cheating? So I you know I said to him and this In this particular meeting I remembered what this the TA said so I said to him well all this is just f equals ma all these equations and he was like You have to explain a little more. So I was like okay first first question here What's the equation? I'm supposed to do for that. Now. This was funny because he didn't know the equation He had to stop pull out his book and look it up. Oh, here's the equation writes it down I was like why don't you memorize that? He's like Well, I can drive it and I was like that's what I'm doing Because this section of the equation is f this section is m this section equals a and then the guy was like You know I wish I could teach classes like that Because that is a much better way to learn because you're understanding what's going on here The problem is all these students have come in here so with the mentality that they just have to Memorize and regurgitate. They don't want to understand They just want to know what they have to memorize and what they have to plug in here and there and bar for back out and And he was right you would people would learn so much better If they would understand instead of memorizing specific things because then you end up with a bunch of very Specialized skills that you have to memorize as opposed to just having a generalized understanding And I got a lot of respect for that professor that day. It was it was a good meeting Anyway, so that's that's the basic gist. Hopefully I didn't go off in too many tangents there so I Always try to work on my my generalized skills my attributes rather than specific you know specialized skills for things and And Actually, one of the ways I do that today since I'm not in school skipping class is I'm always trying to do things that I've never done before and then I don't prepare for them I just go there, you know, just like I would go into the exams unprepared. I Mean I was prepared with with my preparations, but not I hadn't prepared the way You know what they wanted me to so I always come I always try to give myself challenges I've never faced before So that I can Get a deeper understanding of my basic things and you know learn I always end up learning more stuff that way and Whenever I'm learning something. I don't apply it just to that thing I try to I try to make generalized rules before I put it in my head So it applies to everything I know in my head. So yeah If you want to learn how to do lots of things or more specifically if you want to learn how to just be Generally competent and be able to do anything work on work on your Work on generalized skills learn the basics and understand those really really well Understand the basics of like every subject in school and you will you'll be able to master things that People in each one of those things who isolates them won't be able to understand. Okay Think the rain stopped enough without getting into too much detail. Here are the attributes to which I aspire Honor honesty imagination love courage strength life humility Gotta take care of my mind body and spirit