Why can others succeed quickly and you can't? Because the foundation is too weak!

These years have guided a lot of newcomers, they are motivated, very hard, but are difficult to quickly reach a high level. Many people's surface problems, although specific and micro, a variety of, but the essence of the problem are pointing to the same - the foundation is too thin.

A reader came to me for guidance on writing skills. The first time I saw this was when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and the second time I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and the third time I was a student there. I'm not a full-time writer or a language teacher, and I don't want to mislead people. But the other side is very tough and eager to learn, so I can't force him to refuse, so I asked him to take an article to show me. A look, found that he brought a large section of the seven patchwork "text", the full text of neither point of view, before and after also no logic, it is difficult to call "article".

I asked and found that he did not have any concept of "writing an article", and what he understood by "writing an article" was: to find a bunch of information, put it together, and change that information with his own words, so that they would not be like the original.

This is the first time I've tried to find an article.

I tried to tell him the most basic way to write an article: first of all, there should be a core point of view, which is like the root of a tree; from this point of view, there are branches and trunks, which are the structure of the article; and then from each branch and trunk, there are leaves and trunks, which are the proof of the examples of each branch and trunk.

In order to make it easier for him to understand, I tried to narrow down my writing style to the simplest set of structures, using the plainest language, and explaining it in a variety of ways.

In order to make it easier for him to understand, I tried to narrow it down to the simplest set of structures, using the plainest language and explaining it in various ways. He also tried hard, and every time he heard a bit of guidance, he changed a draft to show it to me.

The insight of things, the logic of the meticulous and the foundation of the writing can not be short-term rely on a sentence or two of guidance to improve the problem. I had no choice but to tell him the truth, because his foundation was so poor that it would be very difficult for him to make a living from his writing in the short term.

He kept proving to me how hard he was working to prove that he could do it by himself.

The idea that nothing is impossible as long as you work hard, and that you can do it as long as someone else can, is probably the biggest poison to humanity.

In fact, if a person is hard enough to work hard in the right direction, and smart enough (or talented enough), the three conditions are in place, the long-term may really be able to do anything, but if even the foundation does not have, in the short term, a lot of things are capitalized impossible. If you always ignore the basics, you're going astray, and there's no way you can succeed in any endeavor.

Some people may ask: Mimi, you yourself also wrote "How to quickly reach the level of excellence in an unfamiliar field", which is not their own piapia face it? You're a cat liar!

In order to avoid a day of self-deception of the crowd flocked to hit me in the face of the cat, Mimi must be emphasized here: rapid success is a basic premise, that is, you have the foundation of the relevant areas, that is, the preconditions of the field.

If you want to take a college calculus course, I'm going to assume you've done all the high school math. If you say that you haven't even passed first-year math, or even elementary school math, then there's no point in talking about "fast learning" when you don't have a decade's worth of accumulation ahead of you.

A few days ago, a reader left a comment asking for tips on how to make macarons, and when he realized that he had only just begun to learn how to bake, he tried three or four times without success. I can only politely say that this is equivalent to just start touching the piano want to play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", basically no solution to persuade them to start practicing from the most basic chiffon cake whipped egg white.

The so-called 10,000 hours of expert theory, in fact, is to say that the time to pile up the necessary (non-sufficient) conditions for success - that is, pile up enough time may not be able to become an expert, do not pile up enough time will inevitably become an expert. This is a natural and objective law that no one can escape.

Without a sufficient foundation, it is equivalent to even the most primitive accumulation of time are not available, which is a huge time difference.

For example, high math only requires one year of study on the surface, but the preconditions for high math - elementary school math and secondary school math - require twelve years of study. Most students invest more than two hours a day in math, and in twelve years, even after deducting the summer and winter vacations (90 days), there are 6600 hours invested. That means that a person without any elementary or secondary school math foundation, want to learn in a short period of time to complete the university higher data, even if very hard (let's assume that 10 hours a day to invest), but also need 660 days, or nearly two years to bridge the gap of the finished foundation.

People who play the game understand that upgrading is a matter of accumulation, and although the previous level has less experience value and less money, if you don't pass the previous level first, you won't be able to have the conditions to play the later level with high experience value and more money. The reasoning behind the monsters and upgrades also holds true in reality. It's just that in reality, it doesn't clearly say "level x" with a lock, and when you click on it, a reminder pops up saying "complete all the previous levels before you can open this one", and it doesn't sprinkle flowers to tell you "congratulations on passing the level" after you've passed a level. The first basic level coexists with the second difficult level, so many people tend to ignore the existence of the basic level and choose to directly impact the difficult level, only to return home in defeat.

The foundation is divided into two parts: the basic conditions and the basic skills.

The basic condition is the concept of can and cannot.

What are the basic conditions for getting involved in sports? It's that you have to have a passable health condition, a condition that allows you to breathe freely, run and jump without suddenly fainting or causing injury. If you don't have the basic conditions for participation, the first thing to consider is how to make yourself able to fulfill the most basic conditions. For example, if you are in a state of illness, then the first thing to consider is to cure the illness, rather than considering whether to participate in swimming or running.

The basics of getting started are the concepts of what you know and what you don't know.

In some areas, there is a clear distinction between those who can and those who can't. Swimming, for example, is a simple matter of throwing a person into the water and that's it; math is also very simple. There are many other areas where it is not so clear what you can and cannot do, and a large number of people are in a state of "not knowing what you can't do". For example, in the field of talking, singing, writing, which has a very low barrier to entry, you can tell two jokes and feel that you can talk about it, and you can sing two love songs in the karaoke room and boast that you are better than Eason Chan, all of which are very common self-perception misunderstandings.

How do you check whether you've mastered the basics? The first thing to do is to see if you have mastered the most basic requirements of these areas. For example, if you know the most basic methods of vocalization, such as how to open the throat, master the vocal position, find the fulcrum, to gas mastery of the voice. Another example is baking macarons, do you know what temperature of eggs to whip the meringue with, what speed to whip, what timing to put powdered sugar, how to avoid foam, how to scrape and mix?

When you have a clear grasp of the various basics of a field, the fundamentals can be considered to have passed.

The basics and fundamentals are important factors in the ultimate success. How important is it? Look at the Olympic Games when the countries sent the top athletes, in the selection of how much attention to the basic physical quality, the usual training how much attention to the basic skills you will understand.

If you want to play good basic skills, you have to do the homework to get started in this field honestly and with hard work.

Want to write a good article, first figure out what is called genre, the central idea of the article, the general idea of the paragraph. To write an argumentative essay, figure out what is called argument, argument, argumentation, and then honestly in accordance with what, why, how to do the three-part structure to do the eight-legged essay, and so on can write a point of view of a clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear. If you start to read "how to write more than 100,000 readers of the article", I'm sorry, must waste no doubt.

Want to sing a good song, first practice vocalization, if you come up to sing "dead to love", really dead will not love again. Want to talk about the piano, first play doleimifaso practice techniques. Want to learn erhu, first learn to pull the cotton, Er, not, pull the empty string ......

Want to know what the basics of a field, you can search for information, seek advice from the bulls, read books, however, no matter by what means, can not replace their own thinking and practice. Don't expect that there is a "Sunflower Magic Book" hidden somewhere in the world that will instantly make you invincible. If there is, it is bound to be at a significant cost.