Draw the rest of the owl...
I must have been living under a rock, but up until a few days ago, I had never heard of this meme, “draw the rest of the owl”.
A few days ago, I was watching a Youtube video called: “This Simple Productivity System Got Me Into Harvard and Yale.” The video was excellent and well-done, and laid out some high-level strategies for productivity. However, as I was watching the video, I couldn’t help but shake a certain throughout the entire video… “these suggestions are good, but they don’t really show how the Youtuber used them in practice to get into Harvard and Yale.” When watching Youtube videos, I often like to scan the comments to “take a temperature” on what people are thinking about the video. The comments for this video were almost entirely positive and complimentary, but there was one critical comment that really stood out to me:
There’s a bit of “rest of the owl” fallacy here, I think. This works if you’re allowed to take for granted the ability to determine importance in chaotic contexts, identify high leverage activities amongst many options, remain focused and motivated over long periods, and select realistic and achievable goals under conditions of uncertainty. But, it’s not unreasonable to think that having all those skills makes your productivity system a relatively minor factor in overall success. Many with those skills and capabilities would likely be successful despite less efficient systems.
I had never heard of this term, “rest of the owl,” so I quickly googled it and found this answer:
“Draw the rest of the owl” refers to a 2-step instruction for how to draw an owl. In step 1, a detailed head of an owl is already drawn. In step 2, you are simply instructed to draw the rest of the owl.
This meme is often used to highlight the gap between providing basic instructions and the actual execution of the task. It’s often used as a critique about overly simplistic or insufficient instructions, tutorials or explanations, suggesting that the gap between understanding and execution is actually much larger than implied. In most cases, it indicated that more detailed instruction and even hand-holding might be required.
“Draw the rest of the owl” brilliantly puts to words a feeling I’ve experienced many times in the past, especially in middle school and high school math classes. Math was always an especially challenging subject for me and there were many times where I experienced these “draw the rest of the owl” gaps during the teacher’s instruction. It was these very painful experiences that helped me form an important principle that I use to this very day when instructing or teaching others: Don’t assume that your student understands everything. Guide them step-by-step.