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Comment on The Pyramid Method: A Simple Strategy For Becoming Exceptionally Good

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It's easy to think there are ways to shortcut in the art and tech worlds, but this technique is how sports people work. You don't get straight into the Olympics or Formula 1, but you work your way up through local clubs and divisions, represent your city, represent your state and work your way up.

Anyway, awesome article. It's easy to forget all this stuff when you're working with computers and everything seems so accessible (when, in fact, it's really no different to "real life").

It's important to realize though that the article leaves one of the most important things out. It's just a happy coincidence that the metrics used at the pyramid were representative of the metrics used in the industry as a whole.

It's just /just/ about finding a place with metrics and concentrating--the most important part is finding the venue with the RIGHT metrics, and that takes an understanding of what the industry metrics are.

Bingo!!

This is an awesome method IF you're in an industry or area which is close enough to this description. AND IF your up-and-coming talent can fit into this kind of process.

Albert Einstein did not appear at the academic equivalent of a Pyramid Club (A major university).

Wouldn't the academic equivalent of a Pyramid Club be academic journals?

Perhaps so - and "publish or perish" is the academic equivalent of appearing at the Pyramid club night after night. Einstein did publish but only once he was, indeed, so good they couldn't ignore him.

So, the first part "be so good they can't ignore you" certainly works - if you are really, really good. Of course, by the nature of a large scale society, most people, even most really good people, aren't so good they can't be ignored. Someone who is a bit smarter than an average full professor but who has no official credentials would probably not be hired if they wrote a few above average research papers and got them published in a modest journal. Someone who writes an earth-shattering research paper would get hired but, well, that's by its nature unusual.

Of course, every field has a somewhat different path to success, which is one of my points...

Einstein's Pyramid Club was relativity itself.

This is true, almost. His paper on Brownian Motion was his 'so good they can't ignore you anymore' moment.

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