I read a twitter from Andrej Karpathy:

How to become expert at thing:

  1. iteratively take on concrete projects and accomplish them depth wise, learning “on demand” (ie don’t learn bottom up breadth wise)
  2. teach/summarize everything you learn in your own words
  3. only compare yourself to younger you, never to others

So I write this for think about this topic.

1 Understand the basic rules

  • Depth
  • Feynman Technique : If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

2 from Beginner’s zone to Reality

AK avoided a hard truth of the real world:
Value is defined by relative position, not absolute effort.

Once we leave the beginner’s zone and enter a world of limited resources and real competition, comparing only to our past selves becomes a slow path to strategic self-destruction.

The path to true mastery isn’t just about grinding. It requires regularly switching between two modes:

  1. Monk – focused practice, deep execution, internal growth, building strength.
  2. Seeker – going out, studying the best, analyzing strategies, recalibrating direction.

Use the monk’s focus to solve execution problems. Use the seeker’s insight to solve strategy problems.