No Train, No Gain

Often the biggest motivational hurdle is just starting the (physical or intellectual) workout.

As you exit school and enter the workforce, it’s nobody’s responsibility to continue developing your talent.

Higher-grade math unlocks specialized fields that students normally couldn't access until much later -- and on average, the faster you accelerate your learning, the sooner you get your career started, and the more you accomplish over the course of your career.

What it means for a problem to be sophisticated, not made trivial by foundational knowledge. When is the best time to learn coding, at an early age or after you have some university-level math under your belt? How I learned to write, organize, and debug big-ass SQL queries.

Skating around the rink will get you to a decent level of comfort in your basic skating skills, but being able to land jumps and spins will force a whole new level of robustness and fault-tolerance in those underlying skills. The same applies to knowledge in general.