Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books.
However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to great institutions like MIT or applied and got into extremely competitive investment banks didn't browse the internet very much, or relied on supplements and these books.
Similar to the ideas expressed in the submitted article, these people didn't spend time online reading blogs and Reddit, or blogging/self-promoting themselves. They generally were involved in a sport (track and field or squash), spent little time online, and spent a lot of time using a lot of paper studying.
They also were careful who they associated with as friends (they hung out with studious people). Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently.
Long story short: there is absolutely a culture of improvement that is primarily offline and less visible, because people either don't record it, or people do record it and it doesn't get upvoted or ranked highly on Google searches. Examples of recorded good advice appeared on HN recently, shared by computer scientist Donald Knuth who is also usually offline: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31482116
However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to great institutions like MIT or applied and got into extremely competitive investment banks didn't browse the internet very much, or relied on supplements and these books.
Similar to the ideas expressed in the submitted article, these people didn't spend time online reading blogs and Reddit, or blogging/self-promoting themselves. They generally were involved in a sport (track and field or squash), spent little time online, and spent a lot of time using a lot of paper studying.
They also were careful who they associated with as friends (they hung out with studious people). Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently.
Long story short: there is absolutely a culture of improvement that is primarily offline and less visible, because people either don't record it, or people do record it and it doesn't get upvoted or ranked highly on Google searches. Examples of recorded good advice appeared on HN recently, shared by computer scientist Donald Knuth who is also usually offline: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31482116