To the extent that skills are like money, we can apply model of compound interest. But I’ve actually never encountered a skill that you can consistently get 1% better at forever. I think that there are diminishing marginal returns to the time and effort a person devotes towards improving skills.
Maybe if I start doing as many push-ups as I can once per day, I will have a surprising improvement in my ability to do push-ups at first, but the daily improvements will taper off with time. If I can bench-press 134 pounds, I don’t think my body can increase that by 1% every day. Eventually my progress will slow and even hit a physical limit. I’m skeptical that any skills exist that can be scaled up like this. I’m actually not sure there are any human skills that can be scaled up like this. Can you think of any examples? Maybe memorizing vocabulary?
To the extent that skills are like money, we can apply model of compound interest. But I’ve actually never encountered a skill that you can consistently get 1% better at forever. I think that there are diminishing marginal returns to the time and effort a person devotes towards improving skills.
Maybe if I start doing as many push-ups as I can once per day, I will have a surprising improvement in my ability to do push-ups at first, but the daily improvements will taper off with time. If I can bench-press 134 pounds, I don’t think my body can increase that by 1% every day. Eventually my progress will slow and even hit a physical limit. I’m skeptical that any skills exist that can be scaled up like this. I’m actually not sure there are any human skills that can be scaled up like this. Can you think of any examples? Maybe memorizing vocabulary?
EDIT: I corrected a mis-spelling.