Anecdotes and Happenings from Student Teaching! Week 1

So, as many of you know I have begun the final chapter of my undergrad and am now student teaching.  My assignment is Woods Cross High School and I will be studying with Todd Campbell.  I've decided that I should start chronicling my adventures via my blog, which also means I will start consistently writing again.  I may also skip a week here and there but I will do my best to be punctual about writing.  So here is what happened this week!

Sorry for not blogging

Yeah so I've been in the worst, most terrible, shittiest mood ever the last couple of months, erm, year.  So I haven't really blogged much because I'm so completely consumed with negativity and anger.  So every time I want to blog I start typing, then about halfway through I realize how angry my writing is, so I end up erasing everything and not blogging at all.  So I'm taking a break from blogging pretty much until I have something funny, positive or just good to write.  Most of my recent blogs have been really dark, sad and depressing and I think I need to stop publicly posting these things, and perhaps password protecting those blogs so that way I can still write and not have everybody read them.

Anyway, I'll try and think of something good to write soon, I promise.

I'm getting sentimental over you.. Snow College

Yes, I am going to get super nostalgic over a college.

Some rather apparent observations about quite obvious stuff

So, before you head past the jump, I want you guys to know that I am so sorry that I haven't blogged lately. It's been kind of a rough patch for me and everything I've wanted to blog about would simply be too much personal for this blog.  So I finally found something to write about that isn't too much.

Why I Rage

This is going to be a long and extremely personal post, so if you are one of my few subscribers it will be you guys alone who see this.

How to Make Incremental, Sustainable Progress at Starcraft.

Hey there, I'm Josh Birch.  This is my blog about music, minimalism, and behavioral change (joshbirch.wordpress.com).  Let's get to work.

Firstly, know that I am not great at Starcraft.  BUT I have made a lot of improvement in what is really a pretty short amount of time, and as anyone who read Tim Ferriss will tell you, this is the quality you're striving to achieve when making progress.  This ability of mine derives from a simple procedure I follow when I learn a new skill.

I remove all the extra shit.

For example, caring whether you win or lose on ladder is extra.  The ladder plays differently than tourneys do, and your rank on ladder is NOT the end-all be-all stone tablet of how good you are at the game.  Stop caring about it, if you find yourself caring about it, go do something else because you are definitely not getting better at that moment.  Like poker, you leave the table when emotions are running your game.

That being said, once you are emotionally separate from the results of any particular match: TRACK! TRACK! TRACK YOURSELF!  Make a spreadsheet of the builds you are doing, the builds your opponents are doing against you, and whether you win or lose.  Track the problems you are having with macro OR micro, and pick one thing that you are having trouble with SPECIFICALLY, write it down, and work only that for the next week. 

You will find that 80% of the time, you are not macro-ing as hard as the opponents that are beating you.  You could throw total garbage units into a perfectly built army, and if you three times as many of them plus a new army on the way you will win every time.  When you are starting, STARCRAFT IS A NUMBERS GAME.  Go watch Moneyball, and then Moneyball your playing.  Hire only effective players, that are cheap to improve (that's a metaphor... just in case you didn't catch that.)

Also, when you are beginning:  LIMIT YOURSELF TO A SINGLE BUILD.  If you think this isn't enough to get good at the game, I implore you to go watch Goody.  He is the all-encompassing master of simplifying the game for terran, and ANYONE can learn a great deal watching him.  Like, how learning one solid build, mastering it, and even applying it into situations people will tell you it doesn't apply in, can get you into grandmaster league on this continent and make you and incredibly successful tournament player.

This choice is up to you, but if you are a protoss player I recommend two/three gate robo, and if you are terran I recommend you watch Husky's cast about the 3 barracks timed push. 

Final note, if you apply the lessons in this post, that means that when you are done setting up these habits you have

• Narrowed down to a single build that you are working on.
• Stopped caring about the results of the games individually so you can improve on a planned, routine practice.
• Become macro-oriented like every successful pro of all time.
• Tracked your strategy in comparison to other strategies on ladder to analyze OBJECTIVELY what works and doesn't work and WHEN.

These habits combined will make you Captain Starcraft (this is cartoon reference... if you didn't catch that.)  And ALONE will carry you past platinum league when mastered.  I do not recommend that you start all of them all at once however, because that is not an effective mode for behavioral change.  Pick ONE and track to make sure you do it in some form EVERY DAY FOR A MONTH.  When you have successfully done that, keep tracking that habit and add the next one.  Going any faster than that will surely lead to you not doing any of them... trust me on this.  The changes you make slowly that last forever are infinitely more valuable than the changes you make quickly that last two weeks.

So, keep doing what you are doing, but change JUST ONE THING and track the results of that change.  You will watch, even during the course of one month, your ladder rank skyrocket (even though you don't care) and your win-rate grow... slowly but surely.  Like the tortoise, not the hare (that was a reference to a fable... if you didn't catch that.)

 

Humbled by a Puzzle

If you ever want a humbling experience, I suggest you try doing a puzzle.  But not just any puzzle, a puzzle of a Tiger's face.