Transcript - Scraping Bits Podcast #102: Learning Mathematics Like an Athlete

My background. Why learn advanced math early. Thinking mathematically. A "mathematical" / "first principles" approach to getting in shape with minimalist strength training. Benefits of building up knowledge from scratch & how to motivate yourself to do that. Goal-setting & gamification in math & fitness. Maintaining motivation by looking back at long-term progress (what used to be hard is now easy). Traits of successful math learners. How does greatness arise & what are some multipliers on one's chance of achieving it. How to build habits, solidify them into your identity, and have fun with it.

Cross-posted from here.

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Below is a smoothed version of the raw transcript.

DeGatchi: Just for the people that don’t know you, who are you and what do you do?

Justin: My name is Justin Skycak. I am the director of analytics, chief quant at Math Academy. I built all of the quantitative software and do everything sciencey quantitative coding for Math Academy, which is a math learning platform. It’s fully automated. It does everything that a tutor or teacher would do if you wanted to sit down with them and just say, “Hey, teach me as much math as you can in some amount of time.” Maybe I’m going to do it every day a week. It’s basically like you’re having your own personal coach at the gym of math.

DeGatchi: I’ve been using it for some time now, maybe two months. It makes you want to learn.

Justin: That’s great. That’s what I always like to hear.

DeGatchi: I think the barrier to math is so difficult because before that I was learning from textbooks, and I thought I was doing well, but I was never doing the questions. Even if I did the questions, I wouldn’t understand them. They were just doing the answer and the work, and you’re truly left hitting a roadblock each time, whereas Math Academy is explaining why you got it wrong. You’re like, “Oh, I see.”

Optimizing for those is what you need. Before we get deep into Math Academy, I didn’t even get into this. What has been your journey thus far in getting into Math Academy? What were you doing prior, college, etc., and then finding yourself to where you are now?

Justin: I guess the easiest way to think about it is, before Math Academy, I had been leading essentially a couple of parallel lives. Data science and tech were one life. Another life was tutoring, math education, and more pure math stuff. Math Academy has been the merging of these two things.

When this all started, I was in high school and getting kind of bored with my math classes. One summer—I think it was the summer of my sophomore year—I decided I was going to teach myself calculus. I thought it was going to take the full summer, but it actually only took about a month. I was going really hard at it for many hours each day. That was a big moment where I realized I didn’t need to wait for a school to teach me things. I could just learn all this stuff on my own.

This was on MIT OpenCourseWare. For the rest of the summer, I was learning more and more math courses. Around that time, I also started coding—not really serious, just doing an insurance Python course. I was working through that.

Around the same time, I started tutoring at my school and working as an instructor at my local math museum in South Bend, Indiana. That went on for a while. In high school and college, I majored in math and ended up getting a job as a data scientist during college. That’s when it really started to feel like two parallel lives. I’d be working as a data scientist in the office during the day and then going over to the math museum to tutor for several hours in the evening.

It was a lot of work. It was a full-time job, plus the 20 hours a week tutoring, plus doing math homework in college. Everything I was doing at the time felt like just one little piece of the puzzle. I kind of hoped that someday there would be something that pulled everything together. That turned out to be Math Academy.

After college, I moved out to Los Angeles with the intention of starting my own math tutoring company. I tutored for a while, but within one year, I ended up finding Jason and Math Academy. I was really excited about what they were working on. Gradually, things kind of took off. That was the summer of 2019, and fast forward five years, and here we are.

DeGatchi: What actually made you decide that you wanted to get into math? What was the reasoning behind it? Were you just curious? Why were you curious about math?

Justin: That’s a great question. I always liked math. When I was in middle school, math was always my strongest subject. I liked it. I wasn’t super crazy about it, but I didn’t really read books on math outside of school. I was kind of a nerd. I would watch documentaries on black holes and stuff. I wasn’t really pursuing anything seriously, but it was all kind of mathy, physics, and computer science stuff. It was interesting to me.

The thing that really flipped the switch for me, that got me learning on my own, was realizing how deep math is and how much benefit you can get by learning it. The idea that you don’t have to wait to learn this from a school or until you’re in college to learn college-level math—you can do this on your own.

In hindsight, I didn’t fully understand this at the time, but when I started learning a lot of math, it threw me into this virtuous cycle of good things. I was just the obvious candidate for any sort of research opportunity at my school. I did two years of particle physics projects. I was working on a component of a particle detector in high school. I even went to the International Science Fair.

I started realizing that learning a bunch of math gave me a huge leg up on my career. It’s not just about increasing your college prospects and career earning potential. The important thing is you get more freedom and more opportunities to find fun things to work on that leverage your unique skill set.

For me, math was one of those things that I realized I was really good at. It made me special and gave me opportunities to capitalize on a unique skill set I had. It was really fun. I thought, “This is fun. I’m going to keep leaning into this.” I didn’t know where it was going long-term, but I knew it was going somewhere good.

DeGatchi: I feel like math is definitely something that would 10x you as an engineer, as a person. I think your perspective of everything changes after you unlock this kind of language. You start seeing problems differently and modeling solutions in ways you would never be able to without it. For me, at least, it’s been a giant perspective change in how I do everything, including social interactions—thinking about game theory and the probabilities of saying one thing over another and how that impacts decisions and interactions down the road.

It sounds super autistic, but probabilities of saying one thing over another and the impact on decisions—chaos—it’s super crazy. I’m only touching the surface, and I cannot imagine what it’s truly like in your position after knowing so much. How has your perspective changed over the years after gaining so much knowledge within math?

Justin: What you say about having your perspective changed by math—I hear that all the time from people who get serious about math later in life. I always have a tough time relating to that—not because I don’t think it’s true, but because it’s something that’s always felt kind of normal to me.

I guess I just got into math early enough that I don’t really remember not thinking in that way. It’s kind of like if you learn a language that’s very different from your native language. Then, you start to realize interesting things about how you think in that language. Like that, you’re conscious of the changes. Yeah, but if it was your native language, you’re not even sure what the difference is.

DeGatchi: That’s true. I guess a better question is, how do you perceive the load?

Justin: I wish I could say that in every conversation or competition I was able to process all the game-theoretical events that are happening and see the whole game tree. Maybe my brain just doesn’t have enough compute power for that.

For me, it mostly comes down to first-principles thinking. The thing that’s always drawn me to math is that you are going from first principles to derive things. You’re not just whipping out a recipe book. The idea is that you’re chipping away at a problem by finding elements of its core essence that make it easier somehow.

For instance, this might be a kind of silly analogy, but I’ve gotten into home workouts recently and gymnastic rings. The reason I got into gymnastic rings is that I was trying to solve a problem. Gymnastic rings ended up being what I’d describe as the mathematical solution to this problem I was encountering.

The problem was that when I was in high school, I was into lifting weights. I had a barbell and weight rack downstairs in my parents’ basement. I’d go down there every morning and lift weights for 45 minutes. It was a great setup.

When I went to college, I completely stopped. I didn’t have the weight set anymore, and I don’t really like going to the gym to work out. There’s all this friction—figuring out which gym to go to, leaving the house, wearing respectable outside clothing, sometimes waiting your turn for weights. There’s all this friction that makes it easy to say, “Screw it, I’m not doing it today.”

Eventually, after some years, I got pretty skinny and wasn’t really happy with the reverse body transformation. Sometimes I’d tell people, “Oh, I used to bench blah blah blah or squat.” They’d look at me and say, “What? You? You’re a nerd. What are you talking about?”

The idea was that I got into this state of mind where I thought, “Okay, I’m going to figure out how to solve this. I’m going to get back into a workout routine.” But I had all these new constraints. I didn’t have a basement anymore. I was living in an apartment, and I couldn’t just set up a weight rack and slam weights down on the floor. My downstairs neighbors wouldn’t enjoy that.

I’d also be moving every so often. I moved from L.A. to Boston recently. You can’t take your weight rack with you unless you’re getting a big moving truck. I thought, “What’s the minimal approach to this? What’s the core essence of this problem? At the core of strength training, what do you really need to build this thing up from first principles?”

That’s when I thought, “What kind of athletes are super jacked and ripped but not weightlifters?” The first thing that came to mind was gymnasts. What kind of equipment do gymnasts use, especially the guys on the rings? They just use rings. The rings are just hanging from the ceiling.

I thought, “Is there any way I can emulate that?” It turns out you can just put rings on a pull-up bar and do a ton of these rings exercises. Since then, I’ve changed the setup a little bit. I’ve got something like a hammock stand where I hang the rings. It’s not really a pull-up bar anymore—it’s a little less janky and a little safer.

The idea is still the same. It’s a very portable, minimal solution that captures the core essence of strength training. You need resistance, and it has to be portable. The setup can’t actually weigh as much as weights, but you still achieve a high level of resistance without having to carry around that much equipment.

DeGatchi: I did the same thing, actually.

Justin: Oh, really?

DeGatchi: I did the entire ring setup with the pull-up bar, and then I got into calisthenics super heavily. But now I’ve transitioned into weighted skipping rope. The skipping rope isn’t even a rope. It’s a ropeless skipping rope. It’s a little string with a ball of weight on the edge, and you just spin it. It’s the exact same as skipping. You have to use your brain to imagine instead of hearing the cues of it hitting the ground or the whipping sound.

You imagine that, and you have much more freedom. You can do it anywhere. I had the same thought process. I wanted to be completely free from dependencies and not constrained by a physical place. That way, you stay consistent, and consistency is the main thing.

This was the perfect thing. I wake up and treat it as a requirement before having a shower. I get up and think, “If I don’t work out, I’m not getting a shower.” I’ve always had this philosophy. In the Russian military, they have this idea: If you don’t do work, you don’t deserve to eat. They work out before eating. I did the same thing but applied it to a shower.

I do it every morning, and it turns out having good vascular health for oxygen is super correlated with longevity. Since it’s a weighted skipping rope with a one-pound weight on each side, it works your upper body while doing legs. It helps your bone density because you’re always hitting the ground, but it’s not as high impact as running.

Having rules and constraints allows you to problem-solve much better than being open to anything.

Justin: That’s really interesting. I had no idea. I’ve never run into someone who went through the same thought process and came to the same conclusion. That’s really cool. Straight down to the rings!

DeGatchi: It’s a good idea.

Justin: What I’ve been doing currently for leg workouts is using this water bag. It’s literally just a water bag you fill up. It’s 60 or 80 pounds, I think 80 pounds of water. You can do jump squats with it. It wobbles around.

If you fill it all the way, you don’t have to deal with the wobbling as much. But it takes forever to fill up and drain. It’s portable, but not as much as you’d like. I’ll have to check out those jump ropes.

DeGatchi: It’s super good. It’s from a Crossrope, the company. I basically put my life in one bag now.

Justin: Oh, that’s nice.

DeGatchi: It fits perfectly. You can take it anywhere, to a hotel, and stay consistent. That’s the main thing. I think this applies to work too. There’s no perfect plan. The perfect plan comes from trial and error with an imperfect plan, where you discover unknown unknowns and create the perfect plan over time. This only comes from consistently doing something.

I’ve applied that to every aspect of my life, including working out and eating well. For eating, I automated the boring processes. I make a single meal repeatedly. It has all the nutrients I need. I don’t have to think about food or what I want to eat. I just mix up spices or something.

Justin: It removes a ton of complexity from your life to have that.

DeGatchi: Exactly.

Justin: When I was in middle school, I got super into nutrition. I could tell you the calorie counts, vitamin and nutrient information, and macro breakdowns of almost any food item off the shelf. I liked to freak people out with that sometimes. For instance, most people don’t know that potatoes are a really good source of vitamin C—almost as much as an orange.

When you know these first-principles things, you can combine them in ways to come up with hacks that solve problems you need to address. To me, that’s the spirit of math.

DeGatchi: I think you have to know everything at the deepest level you can—build incredibly good foundations—because then you can construct something massive. Imagine a continuously higher skyscraper as an analogy for knowledge. If you don’t have great foundations, your building will collapse eventually, and then you’ll have to restart anyway with good foundations. That applies to everything.

For example, with the potato thing—if you know potatoes are high in vitamin C, you don’t need to buy oranges. You can optimize the potatoes and make roast potatoes or mash. This applies to everything.

I see this more with math. When I tried to get into algebra and calculus, my problem with algebra wasn’t that I didn’t get it. It was that I didn’t know the principles of the language—how to manipulate the characters and their properties. I couldn’t progress because the lack of understanding held me back.

It comes back to the skyscraper analogy. If the foundations are shaky, you’ll come crashing down when you try to advance. You have to drop your ego, be completely vulnerable, and admit, “I don’t know this. I need to go back.” Being okay with that allows you to understand deeply. Eventually, you’ll get good and know everything so well that learning becomes exponential.

When you understand deeply, you can replicate proofs and concepts without even looking because you genuinely know them. That’s been very cool for my learning. It takes longer, and people want to go fast, but I think it’s worth it.

What are your insights into learning from scratch? You’ve done a ton of research on this. Is there anything that makes it easier to go longer, persist, or follow better pathways? How do you stay consistent and want to do it?

Justin: Everything you said about building up your knowledge from scratch and having strong foundations meaning you can acquire new knowledge at a much faster rate—totally spot on. That’s the power of building things up from first principles and having good foundations.

I also agree that a lot of people, especially with Math Academy, come in right before an exam—maybe a month or two before—and say, “I have this calculus exam coming up. Can you help me learn all this stuff?” It turns out they don’t even know their algebra. We’re just like, “We could’ve helped you if you’d come to us a year ago.”

The big question isn’t convincing someone that having strong foundations pays dividends into the future. The hard part is, how do you actually get yourself to build strong foundations? It’s like knowing you should eat healthy or exercise every day. How do you get yourself to do what you’re supposed to do?

Two things come to mind. One is having a goal. The second is gamifying the process a little bit.

Having a goal is crucial. It’s hard to do something seriously if you don’t know why you’re doing it. Before we started the podcast, I asked why you weren’t into math as a kid in school. You mentioned how unclear it was why anyone would learn or use this stuff. Having a goal—a clear answer to “Why are you learning math?”—is key.

If the goal is life-changing, that’s even better. For instance, “I’m learning math so I can get a career in engineering and send rockets into space.” That’s a great, long-term goal tied to your core life purpose. But it doesn’t always have to be that big. Maybe you’re in another field and want to apply math to do cooler projects—analytics, machine learning, whatever. That’s also a great reason.

When there’s no big, overarching goal, gamification can help. Find ways to make building your foundations feel like a video game. For example, that’s how I keep consistent with exercising. I don’t have a big goal other than staying healthy, feeling good, and living a long time. But that’s not a discrete, life-changing event—it’s just regular maintenance.

What works well for me is trying to acquire more skills with the gymnastic rings. I see how close I can get to approximating the moves gymnasts do and get better over time. It feels like completing levels in a video game. I also record myself doing it each morning, so I can look back and see improvements.

If I weren’t recording my workouts and gamifying the process, I might think, “I’ve been doing this for a year. What’s the point?” I could fall off track. But having these specific skills I’m acquiring, seeing video evidence of incremental improvements, and being able to measure progress keeps me motivated.

This approach applies to math and coding too. When I taught the intense coding program within Math Academy’s original school program, it was highly accelerated. The kids didn’t even know how to write a for-loop or while-loop at first, let alone object-oriented programming. It was intense.

When you’re grinding on skill acquisition and building foundations, it’s easy to get discouraged. Sometimes the class would feel that way. I’d tell them, “Look at what you were doing three months ago. That project used to take you a week. How long would it take you now?” They’d say, “Probably a class period, maybe an hour.” That helped them see how far they’d come.

Goals, gamifying the process, and being able to look back at compounded progress—all those things together really help.

DeGatchi: I think being able to recognize progress ties back to why the “why” is so important. If you don’t actually care about the “why,” it will never stick. To broaden it, curiosity or the “why” is super important. When someone asks you about something, you can say, “This is why it’s important.” Once you know why something is important, it changes things. It makes me, at least, more inclined to do something.

Understanding the pros and cons and the return on investment—especially with algebra—shows its importance. Algebra is a fundamental part of math that everything relies on. It’s clear why it’s essential. You can’t do anything advanced without understanding why these properties move the way they do and how they can be manipulated.

At higher levels, you want to be able to manipulate in any way. If you want to invent or create something nobody else has done, you must understand the rules of the game. Then you can bend them to the maximum. It’s like basketball—you can’t play at a super high level without understanding the rules. You do things that seem borderline illegal, but they’re hacks within the rules.

You mentioned you were teaching in this accelerated school. Were there any traits you noticed in exceptional students? What stood out?

Justin: That’s a good question. For the most successful students, being interested in the “why” was always a big one. I remember one student who wasn’t a super-fast learner or a typical precocious math student. But he was always really interested in the “why.” He got very far because of that. Things didn’t always come easy to him, but his interest in the material kept him going.

For others, willingness to put in the work was key. Some students find math easy at first because they’re cognitively set up for it. Arithmetic and algebra come easy, and even calculus is manageable. But sometimes, they don’t care about the problems or the material—they just want to finish homework quickly and get back to video games.

That approach works for lower levels of math, but eventually, math gets hard for everyone. The point where it gets hard varies for each person, but without motivation, things fall apart. The motivation can be intrinsic—wanting to understand why math works—or external, like wanting a career in engineering or AI. Without it, they hit a wall.

One caveat is that motivation or excitement isn’t enough. You have to do the work. Watching the Olympics or workout videos won’t make you as fit as the athletes. You have to make the process amenable to yourself, even if it’s not always enjoyable.

DeGatchi: I was reflecting on this the other day. I went out by myself to a restaurant with my laptop and thought about how much I actually enjoy math now. It’s very ingrained in me, even though it’s only been a couple of months. I think about it constantly—it never leaves my mind.

The more I unravel from these basic things—like algebra and trigonometry, which I’m trying to do deeply—I occasionally explore different fields I’m interested in, like computational complexity, chaos theory, or NP-complete problems. That’s because I’m trying to build an architecture for an AI model, and these problems arise.

There’s a reason I want to explore these things, but I realize I can only get into these interesting subjects by mastering the foundations. It’s like a key—the more foundational stuff you learn, the more you understand other things, and it just keeps going.

When I think about exceptional inventors, like Claude Shannon and information theory, they were incredibly curious. That kind of curiosity drives you to do something not because of a big, overarching goal like inventing something epic. The epic invention is often a side effect of being so curious about a subject. You get so deep into it, fail a lot, and build up a mental model quickly because each failure eliminates one part and narrows your understanding.

It just happens naturally because you go so deep that you become a master of the subject. You know all its properties and how to combine things. For example, working simultaneously in hardware and electrical engineering can lead to inventions because you’ve mastered both fields and can combine them.

There’s a great book about this idea called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. It explains this concept well, using examples like the vacuum tube mutation leading to the computer. It’s super interesting.

What’s your perspective on how great mathematicians and inventors arise? Are there common traits or skills you notice?

Justin: I would agree that it comes down to persistence. We’ve talked about wanting to understand the “why” and having an incentive structure or gamifying the process. You want all these things because each one multiplies your chances of creating something great.

If you’re intrinsically interested in the material, incentivized by external rewards, constantly thinking about it, and combining insights from different fields, you’ll arrive at unique insights. Those insights often end up being valuable.

This is a great reason to learn math or any highly skilled field and combine knowledge. It’s hard to communicate this to kids, though, because it’s nebulous. A teacher might say, “Learn algebra because it’ll be useful someday,” but kids can’t connect that to anything tangible.

By the time the teacher explains, “Apply algebra to another field, and it’ll open up opportunities,” the kids have spaced out. It’s a long-term investment with a big reward, but it’s hard to communicate in a way that beginners can grasp early on.

DeGatchi: Most people, especially kids, don’t see the actual workforce or how society even works. You’re not told that until you experience it, so they would never understand why.

Justin: Right. Even with a great explanation, if they don’t have much experience with how things work, it’s not going to make sense.

DeGatchi: Exactly. Learning is so difficult when you’re starting from scratch with no connections to anything you already know. You have to relate it to something in some way, which is why analogies are so useful. They link concepts to completely unrelated topics, but you see the connection.

I noticed this while using Math Academy. I was taking notes all the time but realized I wasn’t actually learning anything. Note-taking is interesting because you’re putting information on paper for reference, but you’re not really understanding or knowing it. It’s like outsourcing your brain to the paper, making you dependent on it.

Then I stopped using paper and thought, “Wow, my brain is actually recording this now.” It reminded me of programming. I never wrote anything down on paper for programming. It was just constant repetition, which ingrains it in your brain. Neurological connections form, linking things together, and you build an entire mental model.

Starting from scratch is always the hardest part because there’s nothing to reference. Imagine a neuron as a ball of sand with nothing to link to. As soon as you bring in something that relates, you can make a connection. Over time, it strengthens and grows into a big tree of knowledge.

That initial climb is the toughest because the learning curve is so steep. You’ll fall unless you have intrinsic motivation or other supports.

Justin: The more connections you have, the easier it gets. It’s like building a house. Once you have solid foundations and structure, adding onto it is easy. Starting from an empty plot of land and laying those foundations is the real challenge.

DeGatchi: You’re really into the science behind learning. I read your article You’re Not Lazy, You Just Lack a Habit, and it resonated. I completely agree—our habits define us. Of course, life has unpredictable events, but it’s the habits you build in response that shape you.

How did you apply this concept to building the dependency graphs in Math Academy? How do you make habits so easy to repeat daily, especially for the things you know you should be doing but might procrastinate on?

Justin: That’s a great question. Habit building comes down to two things: reducing friction or activation energy, and consistency. I haven’t explored academic literature on habits as much as I’d like, but these are the two key ideas I’ve seen work.

First, reduce friction. Make it so easy to do the activity that forms the habit that you have no excuse not to. For example, you work out in the morning. There’s no “I had a long day, I’m tired” excuse. You just get up and do it.

A morning workout is great because it’s hard to rationalize skipping it. If you work out at home, even better—you don’t have to drive to a gym or deal with waiting for equipment. The difference between starting and not starting is tiny. That makes it easier.

Second, consistency. A habit builds upon itself. At first, it might take effort to get yourself to work out for 10 minutes. But after a week of consistency, those same 10 minutes take less willpower. Eventually, you can scale it up to 20 or 30 minutes with the same amount of mental energy.

Once you establish a habit, it becomes a psychological mechanism that automates the process. That’s when it really takes off.

DeGatchi: You automate the process of getting started, which is always the hardest part. It makes sense—even five minutes a day, done consistently, will eventually form a habit. I think it takes around 60 days for a habit to form. If you do five minutes every day for 60 days, who cares what you do? As long as you make some kind of progress, that’s what matters.

I measure progress by understanding instead of just recording time spent. Some things take way longer to understand deeply, but it’s worth it. Learning is exponential anyway. At some point, it just clicks.

If you don’t enjoy the process, it feels artificial. Why are you doing it in the first place? The habit-forming idea of five minutes a day is fascinating. It’s such a simple concept but so powerful.

Justin: The one caveat to that advice is that some people might misunderstand it. They might think, “If I want to be an expert mathematician, five minutes of math a day is good enough.” That’s true at the beginning to get you on the train, but you have to scale it.

Depending on your goals, you might need to work up to an hour or more a day. Expert musicians practice for hours every day, with very intense focus.

DeGatchi: At that level, it must feel easy because they’ve built up to it. By that point, they genuinely enjoy it. The real question is, how do you get to the point of genuinely enjoying something and wanting to learn more?

Justin: One thing we haven’t talked about is identity. When something becomes part of your identity, it’s no longer a hobby. It’s who you are. For professional athletes or expert musicians, their craft isn’t just something they do for fun. It’s such a core part of their identity that if they stopped, they wouldn’t know who they were anymore.

I feel the same way about working on Math Academy, building the learning system, and studying the science of learning. It’s so baked into my identity that I can’t not do it. I just want to pursue it to its fullest extent.

Of course, it takes time to get there. Maybe it’s a combination of developing expertise, building habits, and reaching a point where you can make unique contributions. When you’ve been doing something for a long time and have built up a lot of habit and expertise, it feels special.

For me, learning advanced math early on gave me the identity of being “the math kid” or “the smart kid.” It came with a lot of opportunities. That identity is still a big part of who I am, and I lean into it more and more.

DeGatchi: Constantly identifying with that thing and truly believing in it, even to the point of being delusional, is important. Your mind is like a seeking machine—whatever you focus on, you’ll find. If you think you’re depressed and focus on it, you’ll find every reason to be depressed. The opposite is also true.

You can truly do anything, and it’s crazy how people don’t recognize this. Maybe it’s societal conditioning. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You do the thing, think about what else you could do, and keep building from there.

Justin: Exactly. You do one thing, it expands your horizons, and you start thinking about what else is possible. It keeps leading to more and more.

DeGatchi: It builds consistency too. I think all the self-help stuff on YouTube—motivational videos and all that—feels like mental masturbation. You just need to find a way to care about what you’re doing. People don’t give things enough of a chance. Try something for two months, do a little bit each day, and really try to understand it. Don’t just see it at the surface level—look for the deeper meaning.

It might sound philosophical, but it’s important. You have to give it time to see the beauty in it.

Justin: That’s a great point. Intrinsic care about what you’re doing doesn’t always come at the beginning. Sometimes it takes time to manifest.

For example, with working out, maybe you start overweight and it’s not fun at first. You just have to grind through it. Eventually, you get to a point where it becomes interesting. You can do things you never thought were possible, and it’s fun. The dynamic changes.

Sometimes it’s about getting over that initial lack of knowledge as a beginner. Once you build up some cognitive structures, it starts to feel more like play.

DeGatchi: It’s like a relationship with a friend. When you first meet someone, you don’t really care about them. At the start, it’s surface level. But over time, you see traits you like and build a friendship. Five years later, you’re super close, share experiences, and do everything together.

At the start, you didn’t understand them or see their depth—their personality, history, and how you relate to them. That depth only comes with time and effort. The same thing applies to anything—math, learning, or even your relationship with yourself. People don’t spend enough time alone, without distractions, to figure out who they are.

That philosophy has helped me with math. Now I enjoy it so much more. It’s super fulfilling.

Justin: I totally agree. I feel the same way about math and everything else I’m passionate about.

DeGatchi: It’s like math is cheating on me sometimes.

Justin: Math cheating on you—that’s funny. But it’s true. Sometimes you think something is yours, but then you find others who are into it too. It makes you question, “Is it more their thing than mine?” It’s a weird feeling.

DeGatchi: Exactly. You have to find different ways to feel special. It’s interesting how something like “math cheating” can feel like a real thing.

I think we should do a more technical podcast at some point. I wasn’t expecting us to go this deep, but this was a great start. We’ll definitely do this again soon.

Justin: It was great talking to you. I’m still surprised you have rings on your pull-up bar.

DeGatchi: That’s what stands out most from this!

Justin: It’s the main takeaway—math extends into the rings.

DeGatchi: Exactly. It was great talking to you. Let’s connect again soon.

Prompt

The following prompt was used to generate this transcript.

You are a grammar cleaner. All you do is clean grammar, remove single filler words such as “yeah” and “like” and “so”, remove any phrases that are repeated consecutively verbatim, and make short paragraphs separated by empty lines. Do not change any word choice, or leave any information out. Do not summarize or change phrasing. Please clean the attached document and deliver it to me one section at a time. Again, do not summarize. It should be almost exactly verbatim. Keep all the original phrasing.

After first response:

No, you are changing my words. Don’t change my words. Only remove single filler words such as “yeah” and “like” and “so”, remove any phrases that are repeated consecutively verbatim, and make short paragraphs separated by empty lines. Do not change any word choice, or leave any information out. Do not summarize or change phrasing. It should be almost exactly verbatim. Keep all the original phrasing.

After each section:

Next. Remember: You are a grammar cleaner. All you do is clean grammar, remove single filler words such as “yeah” and “like” and “so”, remove any phrases that are repeated consecutively verbatim, and make short paragraphs separated by empty lines. Do not change any word choice, or leave any information out. Do not summarize or change phrasing. It should be almost exactly verbatim. Keep all the original phrasing.

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