Scott Young
speaker
174 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Scott Young’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
When they're too hard, they become frustrating.
And this sort of zone where we're like totally absorbed and engaged and happy with it, that happens at this kind of, this sort of right level of difficulty.
Yeah, I mean, some of that I think is when you have a well-learned skill, there is a kind of, again, going back to this flow idea that where you are not being too deliberate about it, you're not being too focused on what you're doing and you can kind of lose yourself in the skill.
But at the same time, I think it requires a lot of like external conditions.
And sometimes those conditions are present and sometimes they're not.
My friend Cal Newport has this quote,
I think it's from Chuck Close originally called Inspiration is for Amateurs in the Context of Writing, which is that all writers desire this kind of like free-flowing writing.
It just comes naturally and it's beautiful prose.
And he was like, well, that's an amateur mindset.
The professional mindset is that while actually struggling through figuring out what you're going to write and having these kind of grinding, halting attempts, that's what real writing is.
That's what it is to be a really good writer.
And so I don't want to say that that's what I desire out of my writing sessions all the time.
But I think it is sometimes comforting because when you have those beautiful days on the golf course or writing an essay or doing whatever you're doing where it just comes so easily and you feel like you're doing really well, cherish them, enjoy them, but recognize that
You know, performing a skill, performing something that's difficult, even when you're good, can have that kind of struggling, problem-solving moments.
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