Tumble Blog

The Difference Between Hard and Easy

Nicky Hajal — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:46:50 +0000

Shortly after launching Nice Translator, I became friends with a teenage user from Greece. He emailed me to report a problem and we continued chatting after I found out he was interested in learning to program.

One day, talking about HTML, I shared a thought I’d recently had about learning: something is only hard when you don’t know how to do it. This may seem obvious, but I don’t think we generally approach new skills with that in mind.

My Greek friend would look at my programming and say ”Wow, that’s hard to do.“, doubting whether he could do it himself.

Although I once felt the same way as I pored over tangles of code, that generally isn’t how I experience it these days. Programming poses challenging problems, but it’s not hard for me to do. And in between those challenges, it’s really pretty easy.

We treat difficulty as a trait laden within a skill when it is actually a subjective perception.

Hard, Challenging, Easy

First, I think we need to get a few things straight because I can already hear your brain trying to convince you that hard and challenging are the same thing and that easy is completely different. But, I see them as three distinct feelings we encounter when we try to do something, so let me clarify the differences:

Hard: “There are barriers ahead and I don’t know how to scale them.” – We say something is hard when we don’t know how to do it and, on top of that, don’t know how to figure out how to do it.

Break dancing is something that I’ve thought about doing but never put much effort into. As a result, I don’t even know where to begin. Watching someone break dance looks like sheer magic, I don’t understand how it’s possible. To me, it seems so hard.

Challenging: “There are barriers ahead and I know I can bust through them.” – To the break dancer, what they do takes a lot of physical and mental energy; they’re pulling out moves they’ve never done before and they don’t know if they’re going to work.

But it’s challenging, not hard. They have strategy and technique, they understand how it should work. If it doesn’t, they know how to figure out what went wrong and tweak from there.

Easy: “There are no barriers.” – But truthfully, when they’re really in the groove and having the most fun – flipping and spinning and doing all the things that look so impressive to me – that’s when it feels easiest to them. That’s when there isn’t much conscious thought at all and everything is just flowing, one move to the next. We all experience this in one activity or another.

Language is an example that we can all relate to. Most of the time, speaking your native tongue is so easy, you don’t even have to think about it. Despite the fact that speaking is an incredibly complex skill, words often just flow naturally with thoughts.

But if you find yourself writing a poem, or a blog post like me right now, you will no doubt come to moments where those very same skills suddenly feel incredibly challenging.

And, of course, when you try to understand or speak a language you have little experience with, that same skill feels unfathomably hard. I find it impossible to believe anyone can understand and speak Arabic. Yet, my dad and his family do, with ease.

Difficulty varies by person and circumstance – it is not inherently stitched into anything we do.

The reason all of this matters is because how we feel about something we want to learn is so closely linked to how well we learn it and, more importantly, if we do at all.

When I first approached learning to read sheet music I saw it as a complex and traditional-but-unnecessary component to learning piano. It seemed hard so I pushed it as far away as I could and just watched tutorials on YouTube. A few months later, after wanting to play a song I couldn’t find a video for, I came back to sheet music. This time I decided to perceive it differently and noticed that in many ways it’s much easier than learning from a video:

I can go through at my own pace, note by note
I can clearly see the whole piece, getting a feel for its different sections and overall musical landscape
I can mark it with notes
And, hell, if I can read text,why wouldn’t I be able to read music? It’s not that different.

Our brains avoid learning the things we’ve hastily labeled ‘hard’ or ‘impossible’ – can you really blame them? When you, instead, notice what specifically the challenge is or what specifically the advantages are, you suddenly feel much more motivated to learn and in that excited state more of it sticks.

No surprise, then: I learned to read sheet music and now it’s just a tool to help me do what I want musically (and the more I use the tool, the better I get with it.)

What Makes Something Easy

Don’t worry, I haven’t gone off the deep end! I know there’s more to learning than just mindset. It takes action, practice, execution. But how do we know which actions to take? How do we know what to focus on?

If we can agree that difficulty is subjective, then what is the difference between us in the time that a skill goes from hard to easy? What changes? Once we understand that, we can focus more pointedly on those areas and not waste time, energy and morale spinning our wheels.

Here’s what I think it boils down to:

1. An understanding of a skill’s components and how they interact.

This is probably what most people consider learning to be. This is learning the names of notes on a musical staff , how they match on a keyboard and are grouped into scales. In programming, it’s understanding functions, if statements, iterators and on and on.

There are always more and more components of a skill to learn. This is often the point people get stuck and begin feeling overwhelmed by how complex a new skill is. To them, learning all the components feels like learning the skill itself, but it isn’t and doesn’t bring any real satisfaction.

The components of a skill are merely one piece of picking it up, perhaps the least important one. This is because you only need to know a small subset of its components before you can actually begin to apply them and feel the thrill of doing.

2. An understanding of what’s important.

This is why it’s so important to begin understanding what’s important for a given skill. How few components do you need to actually start doing what you’ve imagined yourself doing?

Generally, we are taught by others from simplest to most complex. The problem is that importance doesn’t follow this same organization and we spend an enormous amount of time picking up superfluous knowledge we won’t use anyway.

The master has a vision that they’re aiming for and has come to understand what is actually important to get there.

As students, we can drastically reduce the time it takes to learn something new by understanding precisely what we want and keeping our minds actively questioning whether what we’re focusing on is actually important to get there. The result is that you really feel the impact of your practice because you’re immediately applying it and momentum quickly builds.

3. A process for handling new problems.

When we say that someone is experienced at something, what we’re really referring to are the processes they have devised in previous attempts to handle difficult situations. These processes are most specifically the difference between hard and easy. They allow otherwise difficult tasks to be performed in the background so our brain can focus on new things, on creation.

When my mom begins a new painting, she calls upon years of predefined methods for composing the piece, sketching the subjects, laying the foundation layers of paint and building up the layers of detail. It is not what she knows about painting that makes her an excellent painter and defines her style, it’s the processes she’s personally developed over her life time of artwork.

And when she writes about these techniques on her blog, she really has to think about what they are, because ordinarily she doesn’t, she just paints.

I tend to be better at learning on my own which is a disadvantage because having a good tutor is really about passing down processes. The advantage of learning alone, though, is that I’ve noticed the importance of owning your processes. They need to be personal, even if they were passed down. When you feel a technique is yours, you feel responsible to improve it over time.

Scales were created by musicians trying to create a process for identifying notes that sound good together. Recipes are the shared processes of chefs everywhere. Reading and memorizing this knowledge, these components, provided by other creators is great, but realize that what made them so good at what they do was their willingness to cut themselves loose and own their techniques.

What I hope to communicate in this piece is that, I don’t care what anyone says, you can do whatever the hell you dream yourself doing. The only thing preventing you from doing it is that pesky feeling that it’s hard.

But that feeling can be shaken, quickly, by having a clear understanding of what you want, identifying the most important components to getting there and then forging away with an active mentality that is constantly accumulating new and improved techniques.

If it’s something meaningful and exciting enough to you that you’re willing to take a crack at it with this mindset pretty much everyday, I have a ridiculous amount of confidence that you will be successful (keep us posted!).

How to Turn Errors on From Within a PHP File with ini_set()

Nicky Hajal — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:33:03 +0000

It’s always best to have errors turned off in PHP when you’re running a production site. Sometimes, though, you want to show errors on a specific page. Just add this to the top of your code. Easy!

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

How to Put PHP var_dump() in a Variable

Nicky Hajal — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:17:41 +0000

It’s often useful to use var_dump() while debugging but sometimes you aren’t ready to output to the screen yet. Here’s how to store PHP var_dump() in a variable:

function grab_dump($var)
{
	ob_start();
	var_dump($var);
	return ob_get_clean();
}

Be the Wind: What to Do When Things Aren’t Working

Nicky Hajal — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 16:01:18 +0000

You know what I love about programming? There are a lot of problems. Every step of the way, you’re taking something that doesn’t do what you want it to and making it work.

As I improved at this I thought, “Cool, I’m getting to be a better programmer.” Lately, I’ve been realizing that the fundamental skills of coding reach far outside the digital world.

In fact, programming has made me a better person, largely because it’s taught me what to do when things aren’t working.

Sometimes while developing software you come across a bug that you just can’t seem to figure out. You swear it must be a problem with the operating system or programming language and have to remind yourself that this is almost never the case – it’s your problem to fix.

For a programmer, this is the Dip. There are no clear, sensible paths to go down next. You want to give up because things just aren’t working.

What I’ve learned is that in situations like this, the only important thing is to create motion by any means necessary. In other words, changing absolutely anything even remotely connected to what you’re working on.

Delete pieces here and see what happens there, add lines of code even to check parts you assume are working fine. Make changes that you know won’t solve the problem because they still may lead you there.

The only objective is to shake things up and unearth new pathways to explore.

When something isn’t working, put priority on trying new things quickly instead of finding a direct route to the solution. This seems to be a universal tactic; it’s improved every facet of my life I’ve had the insight to apply it to.

I’m no sailor but I know that when you’re on the open seas and using the wind as your driving force, the problem isn’t going into a headwind – even energy going opposite to your desired trajectory can be channeled in a useful way. The problem is when there is no wind, no motion.

Being stuck is being in a sailboat lost at sea, water stretched to the horizon in all directions, with no wind – except we may have more control over the gale than we think.

At Chris Guillebeau’s recent booktour stop in New Haven, I found myself making a recommendation I never had before.

Kimberly has a great blog where she writes about education but has been feeling like posting some off-topic articles and wasn’t sure where they fit. She was having some doubts.

The trouble with doubt is that you don’t continue to work while entertaining doubts on the side – they halt your movement and leave you in the middle of the ocean without even a gentle breeze blowing past.

So, despite my general opinion that blogs are about personality and that off-topic posts are often where readers connect most with a writer, I suggested that Kimberly try having a second more personal blog on the side.

I’m not really sure if this would be better or worse, but the outcome itself doesn’t matter. What matters is answering doubt with action, observing what happens and going from there.

(By the way, Kimberly seems to be kickin’ butt even without the second blog!)

A New Perspective on Change

We treat change as if it’s something rare, precious and important to get right. We believe that there’s a such thing as ‘good’ change that works in our favor and ‘bad’ change that doesn’t. Change “we can believe in” implies that there’s some change we can’t.

But, it’s only when we make fewer changes that it becomes more critical for each of them to have positive effects.

When we, instead, start treating change as an ordinary reflex to doubt and stuckness, it has a new purpose. It becomes less about being right directly and more about exploring the unknown and discovering solutions to problems along the way.

All changes become good, because all of them provide real answers settling our doubts one way or another so that we can move forward.

Next time you’re frustrated because you can’t seem to wake up on time, can’t quite capture a character in a novel you’re writing, feel uninspired by your latest design or are just unsatisfied with some aspect of your life, start experimenting with changes.

Consider that it may be better to consciously make a few mistakes than to simply stagnate.

You can’t leverage stagnation but a gust in any direction can help you discover what you’ve been looking for all along.

“What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?” is Not an Existential Question

Nicky Hajal — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:54:40 +0000

On a few occasions at parties back in my college days, I would ask a new friend, “So, what do you want to do with your life?” It didn’t take long to realize that this is a question people rarely think about and hate to answer.

A look of shock would spread across their face as soon as the word “life” rolled off my tongue, as if they’re thinking, “Is he allowed to ask that?”

But that shock is quickly buried with indifference, “Hm, I dunno, I’m still in college.”, they’d say.

What?! We’re talking about what you want here. What does it mean that you’re so willing to shrug that off?

They would treat that question as if it were some great philosophical interrogation, amongst the likes of, “What does it mean to be good?”, “Is there a God?”, or even “What is Twitter for?”

They treat it as if it’s a question that may be interesting to ponder over but not particularly practical during their day-to-day lives.

I believe quite the contrary.

Asking “What do I want to do with my life?” should be, as programmers say, a “cheap” process – one that you can run frequently and without hesitation.

It should be the guiding question that we ask each morning and the question we ask each night as we reprocess our day’s work and fun. If any question served as a beacon guiding us through life’s foggy waters to true happiness, it ought to be this one.

I’ll admit that at times I too struggle with this simple but seemingly-weighty question. I think about it often but still find myself clamoring for words and settling with, “Eh, I dunno.”, when someone pops the question.

At a time when we are, more than ever, empowered to work towards precisely the life we want, why are we so unsure of what that is?

Are you surprised to hear that I think school may have played a role?

School taught me that for at least 5/7th of my life, what I want doesn’t matter. It taught me that in life, you are generally not given adequate reasons for the expectations placed on you – you just accept what others want.

Is it any surprise that, after 20 years of this, me and my peers are a bit stunned at the possibility that what we want might matter, after all?

School also taught me that right answers are very important.

With questions like, “What do you want to do with your life?”, right is what we make it to be. This is not the type of question we were taught to answer, but precisely the type to consider if we want to live satisfying, meaningful lives.

When I’m asked what I want to do with my life my mind immediately thinks, “Oh boy, I better get this right.” … “Wait a second, what does right mean, here? Something impressive or something achievable? Something noble or something ordinary and relatable? Oh, screw it…”

“Eh, I dunno.”

The problem is that we take this question to mean much more than it actually does. We assume that it means, “What are the most important things you want to accomplish throughout your entire life.” We view it is a long-term, future-oriented question just barely related to the moment we’re in now.

Are we forgetting that this moment is life too?

Asking what we want to do with our life everyday refocuses it as a question not about the future but about now. It turns it into a dynamic question with some answers changing over time and others that stay solid, standing out as the bedrock of what we want for ourselves.

With this new understanding, maybe we’ll begin to feel more comfortable chatting casually about what we tend to want today and in our greater lives. Maybe we’ll start understanding the trends of our desires and find that being able to communicate and conspire with other people about them makes us exponentially more happy.

Now, if you asked me “What do you want to do with your life?” I’d probably say something like:

“I want to build exciting things and be constantly learning whatever I need to in order to do that. Right now, for example…”

That’s not about 10 years from now. It’s about today and it’s pretty much the center of what defines my happiness in life.

Connecting with another person on such meaningful grounds is an experience beyond any other and it starts by first connecting with ourselves about what we want in life.

There are Barriers Keeping You from What You Want: Do You Know What They Are?

Nicky Hajal — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:21:47 +0000

If you’re anything like me, you have a lot of goals set but it sometimes feels like your actions are betraying your desires. For awhile, I thought this was just the way things were and it was out of my control – some days you’ve got the will-power other days you don’t.

More recently, I’ve come to realize that, if you pay close attention, you’ll become aware of very clear, even if tiny, barriers that stand between you and what you want. The process of eliminating them rightly restores control of your actions into your own power.

I was never very interested in exercise growing up. I played a little baseball, was in pretty average shape, but certainly no athlete. About a year and a half ago, I thought it was pretty lame to not be using my body more than I was and I wanted to become someone that enjoyed working out.

In the next split second, my mind ran through all the things that made it so difficult to start. Before I’d given it much conscious thought, I moved on to more comfortable things, like programming and reading blogs.

Wait a second, slow down, Brain!

What would happen if I just set aside a bit of time to think about what was specifically keeping me from getting out the door and into some form of exercise?

I reigned myself back in and started thinking meticulously and unabashedly about what was keeping me from exercising, one by one, taking steps to identify those barriers and ways I might solve them.

Barrier: It’s cold out, I hate running in the cold.

Solution: Get a gym membership.

Barrier: The gym is probably too expensive for me.

Solution: Stop assuming and check it out. Oh, it’s in my price range.

Barrier: I don’t know what kind of exercise to do and want to experiment.

Solution: At the gym experiment, try something new everyday.

Barrier: I don’t always have a car available.

Solution: Walk to the gym once and see if it would be manageable to do continuously.

Barrier: The walk was nice, but way too cold.

Solution: Order some long-johns, gloves and a lock to use to store them while working out.

Barrier: I’m not used to the gym and afraid of looking stupid

Solution: Go to the gym, embrace your inexperience, learn from others

What I realized was that most of my barriers had nothing to do with working out and much more with getting to a place where I could work out.

Seeing them separated out made them much easier to attack and once I’d eliminated all of the barriers, working out couldn’t have been easier – it just flowed.

For months I worked out everyday, until realizing I was over-training. Who’da thought that would be my problem?!

Identifying barriers is great because it satisfies both our analytic and emotional minds.

On the one hand, it’s about slowly processing each step of our resistance and analyzing the cause and effect associated with it. In this sense, we’re carefully adding or subtracting and observing changes, like a chemist slowly titrating a solution, waiting for the sudden reaction.

On the other hand, isolating barriers involves a certain self-empathy – understanding not who we are now but who we’re going to be in a future situation. You a day before going to the gym is a totally different beast from you moments before going.

Considering, “How will I feel, honestly, in X situation?” allows you to understand “Is this what’s keeping me from my goal?” and prepare emotionally, in advance.

Afterall, who wants to admit to themselves that part of what’s keeping themself from working out is looking stupid at the gym? Yet it was something I was feeling regardless of whether I acknowledged or not. Even in that case, where there is no clear thing that can be bought or done to remove the barrier, being fully-aware makes it possible to objectively push forward.

For months, a barrier for me writing-wise was that I couldn’t decide what software to write in. WordPress, TextMate, textfiles – so many options, what to pick?.

Can you believe that, though? Months!? It’s true. I’d be embarrassed except everybody has barriers like that for the things they wish they did (that’s why they only wish they did them).

Perhaps, that’s the real discovery: the barriers themselves are usually extremely petty and surprisingly easy to surmount. The problem is not the barriers but that we allow our brains to skip right to “Ok, I won’t do this”, without carefully considering, “Why not?”

In fact, the more seemingly-stupid your barriers are, the longer you go without recognizing them. Your brain rationalizes, “a barrier that stupid couldn’t have been keeping me from doing what I want to do for so long. It must be something else. Let’s move onto something comfortable now and forget about this whole thing.”

No, it is that stupid thing. Acknowledge it. Fix it. Clear the barriers, take action, set strong precedents and bask in the build of momentum pulling you in the direction you want to go.

How to Install Red5 0.9 on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Nicky Hajal — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 03:22:19 +0000

If they aren’t already installed, add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse

Then, install some required libraries

apt-get update
apt-get install java-package
apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
apt-get install sun-java6-jre
apt-get install ant
apt-get install subversion

Now, download and install Red5

wget http://www.red5.org/downloads/0_9/red5-0.9.1.tar.gz
tar xvfz red5-0.9.1.tar.gz
mv red5-0.9.1 red5
mv red5 /usr/share/

Let’s try running it now:

cd /usr/share/red5
sh red5.sh

You should see a bunch of text appear, the last line looking like:

[INFO] [Launcher:/installer] org.red5.server.service.Installer – Installer service created

Now try going to http://your-server-address:5080 in a web-browser. You should see: