Is This Anything? 23
I'm reading an 1854 edition of Scientific American, which is a thoroughly charming experience, it's got a very Progress Studies vibe full of 1) optimism and 2) specific descriptions of how mechanical things work. Also, the letters page is full of stuff like this:
Half Bricks.
We believe that a benefit would be conferred upon masons, if brickmakers would mould half-sized as well as whole bricks. Half bricks are often wanted for beginning and finishing rows, so as to have every alternate row break joint. To obtain these, the masons have to break whole or trim broken bricks. This occupies considerable time which would all be saved by half mould bricks, of which a certain number might be made for every thousand of whole bricks of the common kind.
This, to me, is a very relatable form of Thing: an idea for how something in the world could be better, that the author doesn't really have anything concrete to do with, so is writing to the newspaper about it to get it off their brain.
I figured the ATVBT readership would be exactly the type who would have these kinds of ideas in spades (complimentary), so please submit yours for publication in a future edition.
If you're very talented at something, much of the advice you get about it will be wrong. At minimum the public advice about the thing is likely to be not-written for you, and specifically to be written for the average person, so it might just not be helpful or relevant. For example, perhaps a lot of the advice is too simple or basic to be helpful to you.
But I think in many situations the ultra-talented should actually do the opposite of what most people should do, so the widely cited advice would be actively harmful for them. For example: most people who enjoy [singing/dancing/acting/sports] should not try to become professionals at those things, and a lot of advice for the average person should rightly advise about "how to get the most out of [thing] as a hobby while also working another job for money, because you will absolutely never make any money from doing [thing]."
But if you're actually truly top 0.1% aptitude at one of these skills, that advice might stop you from putting in the work that would allow you to fully develop your excellence, and therefore be exactly the wrong thing for you to hear.
It's not really clear to me how you figure out correctly whether you're ultra-talented at something vs just being deluded in your own favour, as many people are. But as I age I've seen extremely talented people whither away their aretḗ, which I think is a tragedy, and I wish they'd been given different advice 20 years ago.
One very helpful piece of advice I got is that anytime you do something you've been avoiding, you MUST immediately congratulate yourself on doing it rather than berating yourself for not doing it sooner/better/more.
You can literally give yourself a cookie, or pat yourself on the back, or just rabidly fight the voice in your head that's like "well FINALLY you did it. But if you'd done it three months ago then...." and replace it with a voice that says "You did it! Well done!"
If you berate yourself after doing a thing you've avoided, you're training your brain to associate completing this kind of task with being berated, and therefore increasing the likelihood you will avoid it even more in future. Bad, don't! (But if you've done this in the past, don't feel too bad about it, just congratulate yourself on not-doing it in future).