What I learned from Jesiz
Jesiz is a former professional League of Legends player. I don’t know Jesiz personally, but when I interacted with him last year through New World (the MMO), he seemed sharper than anyone I’d met, and I learned a lot. Surprisingly, lots of American New World players were dismissive of his ideas and knowledge.
Some of the insights I learned have stuck with me and remain at least a little novel, so I think they’re worth sharing because they could help someone else.
- When learning something new, you’ll get worse before you get better.
Put differently, when implementing a novel idea, one’s performance will usually decline before it improves. This happens, in part, due to thinking about things that used to be processed intuitively, which results in slower decisions and conflicted actions. It’s comorbid with confusion.
- Think about marginal value (a lot). Prioritize actions that compound quickly and cause snowballs. This usually involves helping your teammates “survive”, accomplish their goals, and move forward.
People overemphasize mechanics. Mechanics usually aren’t a compound force, but they can be a bottleneck or source of problems. Position and space, on the other hand, can create leverage and make things easier for your team.
- Most of what separates high performance entities from mediocre ones is what they choose to focus on vs. how hard they work, but entities that don’t work hard tend not to be well-focused either.
Numbers 1 and 3 were surprising to me. I previously assumed that performance dips happened because of natural fluctuations in form, mood, or energy. I’d also assumed that being focused meant you could work less hard, which turns out to be totally untrue.