tjhiggins 🐀

Camp is cold and it gets dark early.

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@hwinkler4real I'd add one more

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@powderski I have a desk job. I'm not a pro skier. It's one of the few places I can go to check the primordial feeling in my stomach, making the conscious decision to do something with real physical risk. On other runs I take an easy cruiser and stop in the trees to just listen to silence

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The third latch on the feed store went on in the spring, and it was a different style entirely, which Dave had done on purpose, having worked out over fourteen months that Keith is not defeating latches, he is defeating a category of latch.

Keith opened it on Thursday at 6.40am.

Dave knows the time because he was at the kitchen window with a cup of tea, watching a goat he had personally paid to have outsmarted spend ninety seconds on a mechanism that had cost £34 and two hours of a Saturday.

Keith went in.

Keith came out.

Keith had eaten nothing. The bags were where the bags had been. The bin lid was still on the bin. Nothing on that concrete floor had been touched by anything.

He walked back to the south bank and started on the knotweed.

Dave stood at the window for a while longer with a brew going cold in his hand, and then he went and looked in the feed store himself, in case there was something in there he had not noticed and Keith had.

There was not.

Dave's log, that evening: "Third latch. Ninety seconds. Took nothing. He wanted me to know he could."

Dave has added a column.

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@GSO_Police @SanRamonPolice

[Penfold @elbow112]

Look at this pair of clever fkrs 👀 😆

[Greensboro Police Department @GSO_Police]

Just to make you all aware of a crime you may be committing without even knowing it.
When a dog or cat stretches, you must look at them and say, "oooooooo, biggggg strechhhhhh".

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@powderski Mountain High is Southern California. I would go back out of pure, morbid, curiosity

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@FreddyLA7 Don't eat the lettuce. Do. Not. Eat. The. Lettuce.

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@dinahaddie 🥳

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@realNickCurry I intentionally stay away from the job topic when meeting people. I'll go to the weather conversation before I ask "what do you do".

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@MandyLSimard Sodden

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@FreddyLA7 Freddy, you are going to have an interesting time adjusting, when you get back to Germany.

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@MerriamWebster is the "cha cha cha" mandatory?

[BuffaloRon @BuffaloRon]

Me: I'm going to eat healthy

Lettuce: I'm going to give you explosive diarrhea

Oreos in the pantry: I would never do that to you

[Anish Giri @anishgiri]

The Myth of “Love Learning”

People often ask me how to get better at chess. My answer is almost the opposite of what people expect.

You don’t have to love learning.

In fact, if you wait until you love the process, you’ll probably never become very good.

We romanticize improvement. We imagine great players waking up excited to study endgames, analyze losses, or memorize opening lines. Sometimes that’s true. Most of the time it isn’t.

Improvement is often boring.

The difference between an amateur and a professional isn’t that the professional enjoys every minute. It’s that they keep going when they don’t.

People say children are fearless learners. I’m not so sure.

Children quit things constantly. Piano. Swimming. Languages. Football. Chess. They usually continue only because someone else insists they do. Parents. Teachers. Coaches.

Discipline often comes before passion, not after.

The same is true for adults.

We tell people to “follow your curiosity.” That’s wonderful advice if curiosity happens to last. Usually it doesn’t.

Every meaningful skill has a point where curiosity runs out and routine takes over.

That’s where improvement actually begins.

Chess certainly did not always feel like play to me.

There were tournaments where the last thing I wanted to do after six hours of defending a miserable endgame was analyze another five hours.

There were openings I studied not because they fascinated me, but because my opponents forced me to.

There were positions I analyzed simply because they were objectively important.

Not because they were fun.

Because they needed to be done.

People often criticize schools for asking the wrong questions.

But there’s another side to that story.

If everyone only studied the questions they found interesting, most people would develop huge blind spots.

Sometimes someone else knows what you need to learn before you do.

Nobody is naturally curious about tax law before becoming an accountant. Or anatomy before becoming a surgeon. Or rook endings before losing enough of them.

External structure isn’t always the enemy of learning.

Often it’s the bridge that gets you to the point where genuine curiosity develops.

The biggest obstacle isn’t fear of looking stupid.

It’s our addiction to doing only what feels rewarding today.

Modern life gives us endless opportunities to switch the moment something becomes difficult.

A new opening.

A new productivity system.

A new app.

A new hobby.

Very few people simply keep doing the same useful thing for years.

That’s the superpower.

So when people ask how to improve at chess, I don’t tell them to fall in love with learning.

Love helps.

Curiosity helps.

Being willing to fail helps.

But none of those are reliable.

Build habits that survive the days when none of those feelings are there.

Because mastery isn’t built on motivation.

It’s built on showing up after motivation has left the room.

[Nebraskangooner @Nebraskangooner]

This is tripping me the hell out...

[tjhiggins 🐀 @tjhiggins]

@powderski yes.