There’s no speed limit
A compact reminder that default institutional pace is often a convenience setting, not a natural limit.
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Logged at IST: 2026-08-16 13:11 IST
What it is: DHH shared Derek Sivers' short essay about Kimo Williams, the teacher who reset Sivers' sense of how fast he could learn before starting at Berklee.
Gist: Sivers describes calling a local recording studio before college and meeting Kimo Williams, who offered to teach him two years of theory and arranging in a few lessons. The pace was intense. Kimo kept him slightly over his head, quizzed him immediately, and expected him to prove he understood each idea.
That compressed instruction worked. Sivers tested out of six semesters of requirements, then taught himself other courses and graduated early. The lasting lesson was not just study faster. It was that the standard pace is usually designed so most people can keep up. For someone unusually motivated, that pace can be a floor rather than a ceiling.
Newsletter angle: Good work-culture item: high expectations and fast feedback can change the shape of someone's ambition, especially when the default process has quietly trained them to move at the average pace.