Off Topic: Be Arrogant!
It’s sad to see how much people waste of what the worldwide internet community has to offer. I know, I know — it’s English. Always English.
Today’s post starts with the difficulty of learning English. I intend to wander a bit through my own experience and try to provoke you.
- I can’t read English well enough, so I only read translated books
- I can’t read English well enough, so I only read Brazilian sites
- I can’t understand English well enough, so I only listen to Portuguese-language shows
- I’m too lazy to read subtitles, so I only watch dubbed films
Sometimes I see these childish, meaningless manifestations of anti-Americanism — usually from kids wearing Nike, watching ESPN, eating frequently at McDonald’s, listening to Coldplay and Dream Theater. I think to myself: why do I sense, beneath all that fury, a hint of envy, insecurity, and low self-esteem?
I don’t know if that’s what it is — and I have zero interest in investigating further — but that’s what it looks like. Honestly. Everyone criticizes what they think they can’t have, trying to disguise that pang of envy. Money can’t buy happiness, yadda yadda. Americans are imperialists, yeah yeah yeah.
Whatever.
Meanwhile, when asked if they know English, the standard answers come out:
- I can read reasonably well, but I don’t listen very well
- I can understand a bit, but I don’t write well
- I’m still taking a course, but I understand more or less
Honestly, when someone asks me a direct question, I give a direct answer. If someone asks, Do you know English?, I answer, Of course.
Arrogant? Sure — nobody achieves anything without arrogance, among other important traits like ambition and skepticism. But let’s analyze arrogance first.
Yes, No, and Maybe
I’m not talking about the type who claims to know everything but knows nothing. That’s not arrogance — it’s stupidity, pure and simple, because sooner or later the mask slips. Though sometimes it doesn’t, and even a complete idiot manages to do well. That’s because they got lucky surrounding themselves with people inferior to them — in the land of the blind…
As a friend once put it, it’s a sin to leave an idiot with their own money. True.
You need to be arrogant — very arrogant. The only way to be arrogant is by knowing exactly what you’re talking about. If you have the guts to say you can stop a truck with one hand, you’d better actually be able to do it, because I will absolutely put a truck in your path. That’s what I expect other people to do with me.
If someone asks me: Do you know X?, I have only two direct answers: Yes or No. Saying no once in a while is forgivable, acceptable. Saying no frequently is defeatist. What do you mean you don’t know something as basic as X? Saying no all the time is admitting a weakness. Always saying no is admitting your own incompetence.
That’s why nobody just says No. Instead they prefer to say more or less, I think so, almost there. The way I see it: no and maybe are the same thing — neither of them is Yes.
Now, if you say Yes frequently, prepare to be hammered. Nobody likes people who always say Yes, because they feel diminished: How come he knows and I don’t? And because of that everyone will try to knock you down, out of pure pettiness. They’ll even say, big deal that he knows — I could know that too. You could — but you don’t.
After all that, the point I’m getting to is: Get used to saying Yes all the time and face the consequences.
Easier said than done. Obviously — that’s what makes people who say Yes unique. Everyone else: those who say No — the losers — and those who say more or less — the wafflers, is what we call the average.
Average of the Average
And what’s wrong with being average? Why do I need to be different from everyone?
Great question. From the time we’re babies, we’re trained to be the same. It’s the civilization model that worked. Each person equals every other. We all are born, grow, and die the same way. We’re all brothers. We’re the average. We study in classes with dozens of students, together, equal. We wear the same uniforms. We read the same books. We have the same teachers. We do the same activities. We do exactly the same things, from kindergarten through university graduation and beyond. A long journey of about 15 years. At least 1/6 of your life, conditioned to the average.
You only need an average grade to pass a year. You pass on the average. Average, average, average — always the average. Why does everyone struggle with university entrance exams? Because in that case average doesn’t work: only the cream of the crop gets in. Those who were challenged throughout childhood to think above average will never struggle with something trivial like an entrance exam.
And why this insistence on talking about average? Because nobody seems to care. Because everyone seems to think it’s good to be average.
I want everyone to remember one thing: the word average is the root of another: Mediocre — and I guarantee nobody feels flattered being called mediocre. Remember that the next time you think it’s fine to consider yourself part of the average.
After all that semantics, I return to the excuse — I mean, topic — that originated this post: English. And what does all of this have to do with it? Because the overwhelming majority of Brazilians belong to the camp of No and more or less. Not knowing English, or knowing it more or less, makes them part of the average. In my view, that makes them purely and simply mediocre.
A Small Chapter from My Journey
I’ll admit that up until I graduated high school, I was always part of the average. I always got the best grades — 9s, 10s. But still part of the average: I did elementary school in the same time as everyone. I did middle school and high school in the same time as everyone. Getting many 10s means nothing. Being invited, on merit, to study at MIT at age 12 might eventually mean something. Getting a 10? Nothing.
But I also quit a lot of things midway. I quit the Japanese course I was taking alongside elementary school. I quit the intro programming course I started at 12. I quit the English course I started at the end of middle school. The obvious reason: I found it boring. The less obvious reason at the time: I learned faster on my own. Keeping the same pace as the other students frustrated me enormously.
I speak more Japanese than many people who completed their courses. I speak more English than many who graduated from renowned programs. And I certainly program better than many who have post-graduate degrees and multiple certifications. Three Yes answers in a row. My arrogance is well-calibrated today. Now I need to defend that word.
An arrogant person has to be persistent. You can’t say Yes today and change your mind tomorrow. An arrogant person has to defend their position tooth and nail. An arrogant person who pulls that off earns respect. But someone who merely thinks they’re arrogant and can’t deliver on the promise is just digging their own grave deeper. And someone who on top of that lacks self-awareness digs faster. You can’t live on illusions — sooner or later someone will expose you, and by then the grave is ready. I’ll provide the headstone.
The English course in my neighborhood when I was a kid was very weak. But it was enough to learn the basics. Even so, just 2 two-hour classes per week was not much. That barely adds up to a measly 216 hours of instruction. Ridiculously little. Example: to start speaking Portuguese you studied at least 7,000 hours. From when you were a baby until at least age 3, you learned all the structure you needed for fluent conversation. Why the illusion that a mere 600 hours — even a thousand — of theory are enough to become fluent in another language?
Most people don’t become fluent. I’ve known many who took 5 years of good courses and still speak poorly. Embarrassingly poorly. I’ve seen celebrities on TV, educated people, who make me cringe. I feel uncomfortable watching acquaintances speak that Portu-glish, or whatever they call it.
After a few months, I myself dropped out of the course. I figured it wasn’t going to work. This was near the end of my second year of high school. My English was passable, above average for the school. But that also meant nothing because the Brazilian average is very low. I only started caring again when I began attending university, after a gap year.
Back then I only bought technical IT books in Portuguese. There was no Amazon.com, so imported books — or anything imported, in those dark days of market protectionism — were somewhat exotic. No cable TV. Our Internet was limited to local BBSs. Access to information was limited with the few resources we had. Because of that, worrying about English was never a priority.
The Comeback
Then at university I met people more arrogant than me. Much more. They were sharp. Programming was almost a second nature to them. Some sketched integrated circuits over breakfast. And, of course, reading books in English was natural for them. So natural that I felt bad reading mine in Portuguese. Today I don’t know if they were actually that good, but back then I was definitely inferior. Being arrogant, naturally that hurt my pride.
What do you do in that situation? First, admit the mistake of being ignorant — not knowing. Second, make up for it. Third, make sure you’re never caught short again. In short: be proactive.
I set a personal policy: given two resource options, one in Portuguese and one in English, always choose the second.
Beyond just reading in English, I had the luck of witnessing the birth of the mass internet. Back then there were no localized browsers, no Portuguese-language operating systems, no software in Portuguese. Everything at university was in English: a black-and-white terminal, a few Unix commands, and basically willpower. I could have said No and finished university exactly like everyone else, or I could say Yes and figure it out.
That systematic effort in reading — and writing through IRC, emails, and newsgroups corresponding with Americans — made me quite comfortable and fluent in written English. But conversation was always the bigger challenge. Since the VHS era, I never rented a single dubbed film and always avoided watching movies on broadcast TV. From then through the entire transition from VHS to DVD, I always rented subtitled films. At first I’d do my best to follow both the subtitles and the dialogue. It was very hard at the beginning, but when DVDs arrived I started watching films with both audio and subtitles in English.
After several years and literally hundreds of films, I finally reached the point where I could turn off the subtitles. And since then it’s become routine. When I watch films with others, I ignore the subtitles. Dubbed? I won’t watch it. I’m very purist about these things. Purist about quality. My arrogance won’t let me watch a film below the minimum quality of a DVD. We’re in the high-definition generation, HDTV after all.
My Free Time
Last year I started listening to audiobooks. An obvious thought crossed my mind: the time I was spending in traffic, between work and home, was a huge waste. In a 24-hour day, I was systematically losing more than 8% of my day. Counting only the 16-17 hours I’m awake, I was losing almost 12%! That’s a lot. At least 2 hours every day, 5 days a week. More than the 2 hours in 2 days of any corner language course.
Thanks to the internet and BitTorrent, I downloaded dozens of books. I read all the fashionable titles. In the car. I read all the Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien books. Classics like Neuromancer, 1984. Great works like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the late Carl Sagan. And much more. Easily 500 hours of audiobook in one year. And I have more queued up.
And for the past few months I can’t peel myself away from Podcasts. But I don’t listen to any Brazilian ones. It has nothing to do with Brazilian xenophobia or being an American sellout, blah blah blah. First, because I find that kind of argument a complete waste of time. Second, because I believe more than idealistic anti-Americanism, it’s just an excuse to avoid learning English. Third, because my goal is to improve my own English — I already practice my Portuguese during the other 15 waking hours.
Which ones do I listen to? My favorites are the TWiT.tv network, led by the easygoing Leo Laporte with guests on shows like This WEEK in TECH featuring the sharp John Dvorak, Merlin Man, and others. Steve Gibson on Security Now!. Paul Thurrott on Windows Weekly. Merlin Man, Alex Lindsay, and Scott Bourne on MacBreak Weekly. Chris DiBona on FLOSS Weekly.
Speaking of John Dvorak, his controversies also live on his own show Cranky Geeks. I’ve followed Dvorak for years — since the early 90s in PC Magazine. There’s also Patrick Norton on DL.tv. Cali Lewis from GeekBrief|TV doesn’t break any big news I don’t already know, but her charm is worth 5 minutes of the show. Same goes for the equally charming (it’s always good to hear female voices) Veronica Belmont on the daily show (yes, interesting news, EVERY DAY!) from C|Net, Buzz Out Loud.
And we can’t overlook this: many of the podcasts I follow daily have TV-quality production. At TWiT, the video podcasts are in high definition. The audio tracks have excellent production and mixing quality. The hosts have great diction, speak very well, topics are very well curated, and the editing is sharp. There’s almost no amateur feel to it — which I personally detest. Professional studios exist today like Pixel Corps, with Alex Lindsay.
The Revision3 channel is also right up there, with the great Diggnation featuring Kevin Rose commenting on the front-page stories from the excellent Digg.com. Anyone who wants to be well-informed has practically an obligation to follow Digg. And once again, people frustrate me. How can you go around trying to talk about Web 2.0 and all that blah blah blah without knowing what’s happening in Silicon Valley? Nobody read Business Week’s Valley Boys from last year? Kevin Rose is one of the representatives of the new generation of young, wealthy internet entrepreneurs and Podcasting is one of the biggest Tech media channels today.
Finally, back to the reading side: my routine involves Google Reader. As I mentioned, I have about 90 RSS websites aggregated in Reader. During the day, between 50 and 100 new stories arrive per hour. I don’t read all of them. In a day I might read a dozen solid pieces. First, it takes experience and knowledge to distinguish junk from useful content. Second, it takes dynamic reading — just scanning and moving on. I can go through 100 news items in 15 minutes, and I guarantee I don’t miss anything important.
Sounds like a lot? Of course it’s not. It takes a substantial chunk of my time, but it’s a systematic routine. As natural as brushing your teeth or taking a shower — when you skip it, you probably feel off for the rest of the day. That’s what separates Olympic athletes from recreational players: dedication. Everyone who wants to achieve something needs to step out of mediocrity and do things that, to the mediocre, seem like too much, impossible, unattainable.
I have one more argument. When I meet someone with more knowledge or skill in my field than I have, I just think: he’s as human as I am — so whatever he did to know more, I can do too. Everything is achievable. There is no end. Because for every ceiling there’s always a higher one. It’s simply a matter of stopping saying No, more or less, maybe.
Start saying Yes and don’t look back. If you turn back it will be harder to start again. Every step backward means two steps forward just to get back to where you were.
Be arrogant, for real. A true arrogant laughs at difficulties so they can boast about their victories. Those who don’t fight have no victories — and therefore can never truly be arrogant.
Epilogue
I think it’s worth giving a little extra help. Below are links to my Google Reader and iTunes OPML files — that is, the full collection of websites, blogs, and podcasts I subscribe to and consume daily. Some are old links I’ve kept for more than a decade. I hope you find them useful, and I hope everyone knows what to do with an OPML file.
If you don’t, read this link and this one.
Why so much promotion of podcasts? Simple: because it’s the most practical way to absorb tons of high-quality informational content to practice that dreaded listening. Forget those horrible cassette-based language courses. Learn from the real thing.
My next steps: keep improving my English every day and then move on to something else. I want to learn Chinese — Mandarin — the next major prerequisite for the future after English. The interesting part? The only good materials I found for learning Chinese are written in English! Virtually nothing decent for learning Chinese exists in Portuguese.
English is the starting point for everything. No use fighting it, no use stalling. The vast majority of the best materials, especially in our technology field, are written ONLY in English. Don’t fool yourselves — everything else is a pale copy of the original.
You are exactly what you make yourself