First off, there was an html error in my Never Eat Alone link that I’ve fixed.
Are you saying something similar to, “I can practice baseball every day for 30 years, and improve by a huge margin, but I will only be ever so good, simply because my mind will only ever go so fast, and my body can only strengthen so much?”
Mostly “my mind will only ever go so fast.” I mean it primarily in the sense of IQ; to my knowledge there are no interventions that obviously raise adult IQ, so much as there are interventions that lower IQ and they can be avoided. For example, people who are creatine deficient (primarily vegetarians) have lowered IQ, but there doesn’t seem to be an IQ bonus for getting large amounts of creatine.
Though there probably is an upper limit to how strong you can get, it is unlikely to be a tight constraint over the course of your life. Your maximum IQ will (hopefully!) be a tight constraint for you, and that means focusing on things that you can control pays higher returns (with the caveat that you can and should avoid interventions that make you less intelligent). The anti-pattern to avoid here is thinking that something will make you generally smarter, and being smarter will magically fix your problems (especially if they’re problems of ignorance or willpower). Look for specific improvements (like Anki for memorization of rote facts).
For example, a baseball player might know that having longer arms (or something) would make them better at what they do, but once they’re an adult they’re very unlikely to have a safe and reliable way to extend their arms. But they can develop their muscles, their baseball-specific reflexes, their ability to read the field, and so on. Each of those things requires realizing a specific way to improve, and then practicing that.
First off, there was an html error in my Never Eat Alone link that I’ve fixed.
Mostly “my mind will only ever go so fast.” I mean it primarily in the sense of IQ; to my knowledge there are no interventions that obviously raise adult IQ, so much as there are interventions that lower IQ and they can be avoided. For example, people who are creatine deficient (primarily vegetarians) have lowered IQ, but there doesn’t seem to be an IQ bonus for getting large amounts of creatine.
Though there probably is an upper limit to how strong you can get, it is unlikely to be a tight constraint over the course of your life. Your maximum IQ will (hopefully!) be a tight constraint for you, and that means focusing on things that you can control pays higher returns (with the caveat that you can and should avoid interventions that make you less intelligent). The anti-pattern to avoid here is thinking that something will make you generally smarter, and being smarter will magically fix your problems (especially if they’re problems of ignorance or willpower). Look for specific improvements (like Anki for memorization of rote facts).
For example, a baseball player might know that having longer arms (or something) would make them better at what they do, but once they’re an adult they’re very unlikely to have a safe and reliable way to extend their arms. But they can develop their muscles, their baseball-specific reflexes, their ability to read the field, and so on. Each of those things requires realizing a specific way to improve, and then practicing that.