Study Hacks » Cal Newport » Closing Your Interests Opens More Interesting Opportunities: The Power of Diligence in Creating a Remarkable Life
Add this one to your Ho‘omau index (Chapter 4 in Managing with Aloha: Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business
The Banjo Player
Steve Martin made the comments around twenty minutes into his 2007 interview with Charlie Rose. They were talking about how Martin learned the banjo.
“In high school, I couldn’t play an instrument,” Martin admits.
“I remember getting my first banjo, and reading the book saying ‘this is how you play the C chord,’ and I put my fingers down to play the C chord and I couldn’t tell the difference.”
“But I told myself,” he continued, “just stick with this, just keep playing, and one day you’ll have been playing for 40 years, and at this point, you’ll know how to play.”
… If you collapse Martin’s skills into a flat list, he sounds like a Renaissance man, but if you take a snapshot of any particular point of his life, you’ll encounter relentless, longterm focus on a very small number of things… Read more
My Ho‘omau Index is here, on Talking Story. Most recent article there: Ho‘omau, as nature teaches us to do
