80% of What You Study is Useless

What is the role of teach? To teach a lot? No. In fact, it's to teach the least

Surely you know someone who thinks voting for the Conservative Party is a crime against solidarity.

Surely you know someone who thinks that an email should be written like a snail mail.

Surely you know someone who believes that the best TV show ever is The Wire.

Surely you know someone convinced that a Spanish omelette should have onions.

And surely you know someone who thinks the opposite for each of the above.

Cioran once said that if someone is very sure of something, it's because they haven't dug deep enough.

But, hey, it's also cool if someone digs deep for you.

As soon as you see many elements linked to a situation, you'll find that situation more complicated.

Google “choice paradox”.

That's why the role of a teacher is to give you minimal material: just enough for you to do your tasks.

The less, the better.

A colleague asked me this morning how I'd process some of his data.

I gave him a one-liner code solution.

And he goes, “Oh, that's obvious!”

Hold on. There's a catch here.

What I offered wasn't the best solution. But it was a solution based on the programming elements I've taught him over the past months.

If I'd taught him more elements, today's solution would've been better (more efficient) than what I proposed.

But he'd have such a mess in his head that none of them would've seemed obvious.

Today's solution seemed obvious because he's been using it for a long time.

So, why didn’t he think of it sooner?

Because he can't believe that the little I've taught him can be applied so broadly.

When I teach data handling, I aim for 20-80 rules: 20% of the codes cover 80% of my tasks.

I swear on Baby Jesus there are such codes. Even if you don't believe it, even if my colleague doesn't, even if my students don’t.

I teach very few things. But they’ll be useful for almost all applications. And my only goal is that, with practice, your codes seem obvious.

I organize trainings where I teach you very little, but it’s useful for almost everything.

Tell me what you do (80% of your tasks), and I'll let you know what I can offer.

P.S. You can hit reply to this email.