Ideas on the Synergy Between Seemingly Unrelated Skills or Hobbies

Albert Einstein was known for his research in theoretical physics, but he was also known for practicing Mozart on the violin when taking breaks from his work. His son Hans has been quoted, "[W]henever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve all his difficulties." This suggests that playing the violin wasn’t merely a hobby to distract Einstein from his frustrations, but the practice of the violin may have actually improved his ability to develop his research in physics as well.

Another example is an anecdote from "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. Adam Marlin is an orthodox Jew who came into his faith and started studying the Talmud in his twenties. Marlin adopted the practice of studying one page from the Talmud daily, pushing his cognitive limits in order to understand what he was reading. In the course of his daily practice, Marlin was convinced that his religious studies improved his cognitive and creative abilities in running his business.

The idea of Mental Models is something I learned from Charles Duhigg's book, "Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity." Duhigg describes a Mental Model as a story that you tell yourself about yourself as you go through your day. People who are very skilled at what they do have robust and detailed mental models. For example, you may have created a mental model about posting idea lists on NotePd. You have a process of coming up with the ideas you want to write about, opening a new draft, when to resort to the AI Assistant to fill out a list, and so on.

I think if you have a robust and well defined mental model in your mind, you can transfer that mental model to another practice. If you have the process of coming up with fresh, well written idea lists on a daily basis ingrained in your brain, you can transfer some of those processes to something unrelated like a workout routine. Sure, not everything would transfer, but certain fundamentals like consistency, awareness, and determination would.

This is a concept from James Altucher's "Skip The Line." The basic idea is if you want to start a new profession or hobby, you can draw from your experience or "borrow hours" from what you've done already. The most relevant example from the book for what I'm trying to describe is that of Maria Konnikova.

Maria Konnikova has a PhD in Psychology who borrowed hours from her degree to help her win up to $250,000 in poker tournaments. Her experiences in studying psychology as well as her obsessive interest in Sherlock Holmes gave her an advantage in reading people while at the poker table. Her hours spent in research also helped her master the statistics necessary to count cards in the game as well.

In James Altucher's "Skip the Line", he expresses the idea that each skill really consists of a number of micro skills. I believe that the concept of "execution" is a microskill that is intertwined into all skills. Not necessarily the execution of any particular skill, but "execution" as it's own skill. Knowing all of the theory in the world doesn't help if you don't execute on your knowledge. The more you execute on skills, the more you develop your skill of execution. Execution might be most often associated with muscle memory, but I believe properly practiced "execution" can improve creativity, problem solving, and decision making as well.

This continues my thought of everything being connected to and feeding into everything else. "Spoke and Wheel" is also an idea from "Skip the Line," but I have a different take than what is described in Altucher's book. Altucher's "Spoke and Wheel" describes the wheel as a core business and the spokes as the different ways to monetize the business. The following is my bastardization of this concept.

A wheel consists of a hub (the center of the wheel), the spokes, and the rim (the circumference). The hub in this case is the primary hobby you want to improve. The spokes would consist of things like deliberate practice, strategy, equipment, various micro skills. The rim of the wheel is execution, keeping the wheel together. Unlike a real wheel, some spokes can be reused for another hobby/skill "wheel." The rim is "execution," keeping the wheel together and allowing the wheel to roll along smoothly.

If any artists reading this offer to volunteer a sketch showing the concept of this wheel, I'll gladly republish this list and give credit to the artist.

While I want to believe something like peeling potatoes all day will improve your web design skills, there is the problem of transfer. In Scott H. Young's "Ultralearning," Young points out the situation of high school students who passed certain AP exams yet failed the corresponding college class's final exam miserably. The conclusion Young came to was that simply "learning" a subject wasn't enough, you also have to create a project to implement what you've learned to truly master it.

This draws back into my thoughts on execution and deliberate practice. Simply absorbing theory isn't enough to truly learn something, but constant execution of a daily practice can mysteriously benefit a practice that's completely unrelated.