Monday, July 18, 2011

Patterns

A friend of mine who is a doctor explained that medical school got a lot easier once he realized that medicine is about pattern recognition. Med school focuses so much on the small percentage of cases that are actually, seriously sick that those instances jump out at you in the real world. "Normal" is boring in its normalness. Once you are able to recognize the patterns, it becomes easier to focus on the needs of the patient and ignore the ordinary variability of life.

That why exceptional people and exceptional work jumps out to the trained eye- you see enough great work and you are able to separate the great from the mundane. The hard part is keeping your diet of high-quality whatever at a level that it keeps your senses sharp.

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