Chew On

Cooking is a great example of “sources of joy” where some very simple processes are things people “can’t do”. Have you made mashed potatoes? Fried an egg? Made a pancake? 

Until you have done something, it can be intimidating. We all find very different things intimidating, because every living human is incompetent in some way. 

There are amazing meals that are not difficult to make. Even World Class chefs will do the same. If the ingredients are plentiful, then the price will be low. Price is not value. A high price simply indicates scarcity. 

Often we are monotongue in the same way as we are monolingual. We eat a constrained diet because we haven’t built up our food vocabulary. 

Soups are really easy. Stock and one vegetable will even do it, and let you build up your vocabulary with gentle pairings and exploration. 

I have a funny relationship with fruit for some reason. Something about the texture, but pop it in a (smooth) jam or a smoothy and I am good to go. 

You can gently unwind embedded behaviours with time and coaxing. Learning is about deep soaking. At school, we write the test and forget. Real learning is embodied through repetition. Where it becomes part of your taste buds and habits. 

Narrative Therapy is the idea of understanding your cornerstone events, drivers, and scripts that you repeat. Then being your own detached editor. Tweaking the words and stories the voices in your head chew on.

Hour by Hour

I approached my professional exams in a very structured way. I was told they took 100 hours, and that resonated with my experience as a ticked them off one by one. Hour by hour. Going from not understanding to sinking in. 

100 hours is fairly chunky. Two hours a week? Then it would take a year. Two hours seems reasonable for a valuable skill. 

The problem is the first 100 hours are often tough because you feel completely lost. We often think that people who are good in the first 100 hours, are going to be the ones who are chosen/good for the 10,000 hours. I don’t buy that. Quite often the generic learning skill set that is needed in the first 100 hours is very different. You need to get through the hard to find the joy. 

My first idea for a book/project was “First Hundred Hours”. To write about my experiences of constantly learning. Get used to, and good at, being bad in the first 100 hours. That was how I got into running. I asked some university friends for ideas. One said babysitting. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many takers – parents are often very territorial despite being overwhelmed. 

Another suggested a marathon. I had never run more than 10km. I wasn’t a runner. In other words, I had never seen if I was a runner. Another friend handed me the book, “Born to Run” which argues we are all runners. About 18 months later, I was standing on the starting line of the Comrade Marathon in Pietermaritzburg belting out a nervous pre-dawn Shosholoza and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.

Good at being bad - 300m from the finish when the gun went

Practice Falling

You need to practice falling to get good at getting back up. Over the new year, I had my first Ski lessons. At one point in the first two hours, I toppled over while at the back of a line of beginners. I had no idea how to get up. My 'big feet' made it hard. Like an upside down turtle of the non-ninja variety. Once shown the method, and with some decent tummy muscles, the big feet made it easier - just assisted situps. You need to know that. It is easy to forget how many 'first principle' lessons we learn, and then leave to our subconscious to deal with. The teacher was great. Each part of the lesson gave one new, small, thing to think about. With patience and calm, you can gradually learn new things until complicated processes become automatic.

In Your Head

I don't believe people are wired for specialisation. Good schools build people. But then we tend to specialise. I have always been more of a head person than a body person, but in my school days that didn't stop me. Each year, I would try out for stuff 'just in case' a new super power had blossomed. 'Yes last year, I was in the 7th team, but I am bigger this year'. Once we hit work, the danger is we pick one thing. We become that guy in the gym who only exercises his biceps. We stop being competent at life, because we are excellent at one tiny aspect. The irony of self-defining as a 'head person' is you can disconnect from the world you are thinking about.

What's in your head?

What Do You Do?

I am a writer. I study life and learning and write a daily blog as I go. I try make as much time for people as I can, so I can learn what is important to the people who are important to me. I am also trying to expand my bubble by developing relationships with people who are not 'almost the same as me'. I am challenging the idea of who I am by learning things outside my comfort zone. I am a micro-ambitious student of very achievable, very average goals. I want to help build community.

Savour Each Bite

Starting is the hardest part. Whether it is getting fit, eating properly, learning a language, fixing a broken relationship, or breaking down the barriers that trap the world in Global Apartheid and Privilege. I love Tim Minchin's commencement address in which he talks about Micro-ambition. He says that we should make our goals tiny and achievable. Take a bite. I love John McInroy's focus on helping people who are helping themselves, not through charity, but by seeing the fact that they are already helping themselves. Recognising resilience as it already exists. Understanding the bites they are already trying to take.

We live in two worlds. The one in our heads and dreams, and the one that we experience. Both are illusions created by the way we understand things. The experiences we have had. The emotions we understand and the emotions we don't. There are inputs for us to expand these emotions and experiences if we are open to them. Look. Listen. Taste. Feel. Think. Love.

Savour each bite with all the senses

If we open ourselves up to other people, then I firmly believe we can start the work of building our communities. Then we will be able to savour more fully each and every bite we take.

More Kews

I grew up amongst a few monsters. Their names were Carlton Ave, Dawncliffe Road, and Kew Avenue. The fact that Vista avenue was the choice is like a Republican choosing between Trump and Cruz. My excuse is that I moved age 13, but my block of choice was just 1.8km. Just over a mile. I could be done and dusted with any training I was doing before people knew I was gone. I knew that instead of Vista-Trevor-Carlton (loved that I had my own road nearby), I could brave Vista-Hillside-Cotswold-(Kew-)Carlton, but I left that up to my big brothers. You only added Kew if you were nuts. Even cars struggled with the climb. The hilly nature of Westville shrunk my world to about a 5km radius. The beaches of Durban were 14km away and became a rare visit.

Trevs, Trees and Hills

I often tried out for things. I would have been called a 'Try Hard'. I seldom really trained hard. With my body changing so much, I figured maybe I will have become good at something that I wasn't good at the year before. I would sometimes make the reserves of the B team for athletics. By pitching up for practice week after week, someone would fall out and I would get a chance to run in the team. Or jump. Or throw. Whatever team didn't have enough players.

About a year and a half ago, I read 'Born to Run' in which one of the main characters is Scott Jurek. He is like the Lance Armstrong of Ultramarathons without the money, and without the drugs. The interesting thing is that he wasn't ridiculously awesome at short distances. He just enjoyed it, and carried on doing it. His trick was that he didn't do a little less than those who were talented. He did a little more. The theory being that if you want to do well, just carry on running. People slowly drop out.

A friend of mine who is ridiculously spider-like on walls and has ranked highly in both South Africa and the world said he wasn't very good to start. He just carried on. Jurek's best marathon time is 2h38min. That isn't very quick. The world record is 2:02:57. Jurek just carried on running. My friend just carried on climbing.

I don't regard myself as even close to a natural athlete. I have always spent more time on reading and creative pursuits than exercise. I will admit to buying into the western separation of the body and the mind. This can lead to exercise feeling a little like a distraction from work or study. I now believe the opposite. That if you just treat your body as a transportation devise for your head (see Ken Robinson), your head won't work as well. So I am chipping away at the years of sitting at a desk slowly.

Today I ran my first half marathon in Las Vegas. In two weeks time, I will be attempting my first marathon, with my brother, in Stratford-upon-Avon (The Shakespeare Marathon). I really enjoyed seeing the range of people running, and the range of goals. The winner shot home in 1 hour and 10 minutes. More impressive to me are the people still coming home well after Jurek would have finished a marathon. Pushing on after 3 hours. Trying to catch the person in front of them. Just trying to run the next 100 metres before thinking about the following 100 metres. I tried to run while keeping my breathing ok. Feeling comfortable till I got to halfway. I then focused on the runner in front of me... using my breath as my pacemaker. If someone past me, I tried to pass two people. Chip. Chip. Chip. 

On the floor after my first half

My goal wasn't competitive. My time would still make me reserve for the B team, waiting for someone to drop out. But by taking on more hills, more Cotswolds, and with the help of my brother, more Kews, whether or not I regarded myself as an athlete at the start is irrelevant. I will be able to run further, with more comfort, and expand my world beyond a 1.8km block. 

Take the Kews life presents.

Productive Nibbles

I feel as, if not more, productive than when I was working. The only constraint I have on my day is to write a blog post. I also do about 30 minutes a day of searching for interesting people on Twitter to try and consciously break down my bubble. People I wouldn't normally hear from. The rest of the day comes free. I sometimes read. Sometimes walk. Sometimes run. Sometimes meet people. There is less of a grand plan than I was used to.

This is partly a response to Tim Minchin's idea of being 'Micro-ambitious'. An hour or two of writing a day adds up over the 20 months I have been doing it. By nibbling away, and adding space, I feel like I am able to get to better questions. One of my initial aims was to become a constant beginner. I don't like specialising. It forces me to choose in a world that is so complexly beautiful, any choice would be a lottery because of my large cloud of ignorance. By being a constant beginner, I can learn to get over the discomfort of feeling like an incompetent idiot. Perhaps enjoy the discomfort because it means I am learning. I can learn the humour and patience required to push through early barriers. I can always have lots of 'colleagues' struggling through similar issues to me. Comrades in arms who let me know I am not alone.

One of the things missing in some work is when we lose those one or two hours a day of being at the boundary of our skill and effort. Too little skill required creates boredom. Too much creates anxiety. If we are able to add flow, that point where we are doing something we love and it has our full concentration, then the engine really starts. Whether it is at the edge of going deep as as specialist, or wide as a beginner.

My flow has increasingly come from conversation with people. From listening to see how the way they see the world can enrich my view.

What are you doing when you are flowing? Do you do a little every day?

Parallel Joy

We run along parallel to many sources of joy, meaning and fulfilment if we define ourselves to narrowly. If we aren't able to overcome some of the barriers built of a lack of awareness or discomfort. If we aren't able to get to experience the other side. 

I tried some Capoeira classes last year. It was a wonderful experience that I definitely want to get more of. The teacher described the place where the beauty of Capoeira lies as a dance between the forces of gravity pushing down, and our strength pushing up. Each movement up goes down first. Each movement down starts by going up. There is a flow. When the forces equal each other, there is a lightness. Music. Poetry. 

I am training for the Comrades Marathon. At 89km long, there are going to be a lot of forces flowing through my body. It is famously difficult and yet famously open to everybody. You qualify by running a Marathon and entering before they hit the limit of 20,000 people. I grew up on the route. We used to cheer the leaders as they flew by. Bruce Fordyce and Frith van der Merwe were childhood heros. Fordyce winning every year for the first decade of my life, bar 1989. In 1989, van der Merwe obliterated the woman's record and finished 15th overall in a time of under 6 hours. Most people aren't uber athletes. Their cheers were a mixture of awe, sympathy, support and a transfer of any will power possible. They are parents, uncles, aunts, friends, colleagues and teachers who are waking up early or going for runs after work. Transforming their bodies. Slowly building up to finishing the race in under 12 hours. On the road almost twice as long as the legends.

Bruce Fordyce and Hosea Tjale (Comrades Marathon)

The Capoeira feels relevant as I slowly build up. I have been doing it very slowly. Following the advice that your breath is your best coach. If you aren't breathing comfortably, you are running to fast. As my muscles strengthen, and my joints get stronger, there are passages of running where that balance of gravity and my force seem to be in sync. When I am comfortably moving along. Breathing easily. Outside. Floating.

Wandering the routes around where I live, it feels like as my body slowly builds resilience, I am also growing into the area. Not quite like hoping on a train under the ground. I run past unusual shops. I recognise side streets. I discover alternative routes. Where I live becomes more a part of who I am, in the same way as I am becoming a runner.

Beyond some discomfort, lies a broader you. A stronger you. A you where the ups and downs of life find lightness of being.

Occupational Hazards

Most strengths have associated weaknesses if they are overused. We know this from it's opposite and the unfair interview question of 'what are your weaknesses?'. The normal response is trotting out things like 'I can be a bit of a perfectionist/ I can be a bit bossy when things need to get done/... My awesomeness often irritates people'. There are Occupational Hazards that can be be tough to avoid. If you are a lawyer trained to find holes in arguments, it can be difficult to switch that off when you are listening to your friends. If you are a psychologist, it can be difficult not to analyse the people close to you. If you are a doctor, it can be difficult to show empathy to someone with a few sniffs and a severe, debilitating case of man flu.

I have spent the last 15 months writing daily blog posts, and thinking about happiness and learning. One of the criticisms of the modern world is that we don't have time to think. I have time to think. We don't have time for our friends and family. I have time for friends and family. We don't notice things because our heads are absorbed by work worries. I have time to notice things.

By writing every day, looking for ideas has become a habit. Almost every conversation becomes a potential blog post. Almost every interaction becomes a dot that I might be able to connect to something else. The very human characteristic of trying to see patterns in everything becomes what I am almost always thinking about. The problem is you can end up like John Nash in a cabin in the backyard seeing patterns that aren't actually there. Some things are just random, unconnected, inconsistent, noise.

Connecting Dots for the sake of it

I regularly get asked what my biggest take home has been. Despite thinking simplifying things down to 100 words is a useful exercise, I don't think it is a great way of giving answers. It is a good way of getting new, more beautiful, questions. I don't think I have big take homes yet. I started out with the idea of '100 hour projects'. By self-experimenting on learning things that I had previously thought I wasn't good at, I could extract richness from areas of experiences I had ruled out. I could write about barriers to learning. Instead of 10,000 hours and becoming World Class, wouldn't it be great to just get over the first hurdles that often stop us before we start. I thought 'First 100 hours' was catchy. I even bought first100hrs.com. Then I discovered Josh Kaufman's 'The First 20 hours'. Between that and Tim Ferris' 'The 4-hour work week', I wasn't sure I could add anything particularly useful.

My approach shifted to simply creating space in my day, and in my head. And seeing what happened. My goals narrowed from the other interview question 'Where do you see yourself in 5 years time', to how can I just have a great day. I heard Tim Minchin's talk on micro-ambition and it resonated with me. I had always had very long term plans. I wanted to learn to write. I decided to day that. By writing.

One thing that happened with the space is that I don't think it is about getting answers. It may not even be about seeing patterns. One of the most powerful stories of the last year came from two sources, both connected to two extended family members I hadn't spent much time with. One is my cousin Charles who is a chronic pain psychologist. He helps people to stop trying to fix things. By accepting that pain is chronic, they are able to make mental space to look beyond the pain. The pain just is. But it isn't more. The other part of the story came from Morfar (literally mother's father. My cousin's wife's Dad*). Morfar had experienced chronic pain throughout his life because of gallstones and has the Swedish record for the most removed over a lifetime. He is a very positive, very friendly man who has learned to cope.

So I don't think the point is to figure out some secret to happiness. Or to spot a pattern that may lead to an insight that will change peoples lives. I think the point is to accept things. To value people. To do the best you can. The world is rich with connections that matter.

Already.

*The Swedes are very literal in their names. The Stockholm 'cousin' I was visiting's Father is my Grandfather's cousin. Introducing me to the Vikings was awkward.

Time Rich

When stuff happens often, we get to know a lot about it. The 'Law of Large Numbers' means it will become very predictable, not for the individual, but on average. The best example is death. Permit me a bad joke about actuaries. A normal actuary can tell you how many people are going to die next year, a Sicilian actuary can give you their names.

Everyone dies and the big ticket factors that predict when this is going to happen are well known. Your gender, age, income level and smoker status are the main ones used by insurance companies. Normally there will also be different predictions in different countries. The probabilities change slowly and in reasonably predictable trends.

Most of our news and stories come from Outliers. An Outlier is someone who is so different from the average, their individual experience can actually shift the average. Warren Buffett is an Outlier. Roger Federer is an Outlier. The experience of these individuals is so far removed from the normal person that it is very difficult for us to learn lessons from what they achieved. Knowing what combination of factors led to results, good or bad, is hard to tell when someone is a unique snowflake. 

It would be better if news and stories were about very average events and trends. 

Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book 'Outliers' where he popularised the idea of putting in 10,000 hours in order to become world class at something. Matthew Syed wrote further on the issue, putting more emphasis on the power of purposeful practice. Daniel Goleman zooms in on the science of attention. Gladwell sometimes gets 'debunked' by people saying he is arguing that anyone can just put in 10,000 hours and be world class. Not so. He does talk about purposeful practice and focus, but the thrust of his argument is that effort and hours in are a bigger contributor than we let on. It is trying to break down ideas of talent where we think you should be good at something early on, or you never will be. He argued that you don't find world class people who haven't 'put in their 10,000 hours'. You also don't find people who aren't world class, but have 'put in their 10,000 hours'. Most people give up earlier than that. There are people who just go through the motions (e.g. driving), but automatic pilot hours don't count.

This idea is almost impossible to test. Dan McLaughlin is trying to test it. He quit his job in April 2010 and is almost 6,000 hours into purposefully practicing Golf (having had zero previous experience). Succeed or fail, he is just one guy. He will still be an outlier. We will still not know much about the drivers of extreme success or failure unless there were lots of Dan McLaughlins who gave it a go.

We know lots of people who succeed in things started early, often very early. Some will say you need to put your 10,000 hours in before the age of 10. We quite simply do not know that. There are not enough people who put the hours in after that for us to test the idea. Those who believe the 'before 10' idea may be tempted to become Tiger Parents, driving their kids (perhaps vicariously) to attempt success. Amy Chua tried, and wrote a controversial book about the difficulty of doing this in a liberal society.

My own view is that the before 10 thing is wrong. I think if we could test it, Goleman-Syed-Gladwell would be proven correct that we aren't even scratching at the surface of what we could achieve if purposeful practice were a bigger part of our everyday lives. I don't think the 'world class' benchmark is necessary. For ourselves, there are all sorts of things we write off far too quickly because we haven't achieved them as easily as we would like. We could test what could be achieved with putting in 100 hours of purposeful practice. Then our story wouldn't be driven by the outliers. Outliers make us think it's too late. It's never too late to lead a richer, more fulfilling life.

One example is languages. We claim kids learn languages more easily than adults, but we really don't know that. We have 7 billion people (kids and older) who have learnt, or are dedicatedly learning, a mother tongue. You learn a mother tongue patiently, over a number of years, with lots of love and support. We really don't know how adults would respond with the same focussed attention. The same deep, focussed immersion in the culture, song, stories, and relationships built around a language.

The biggest advantage kids have is they aren't busy. Kids are time rich. Time is priceless.

Get Cracking

My buddy John McInroy is clearly rather hard core. He and Robert Le Brun walked/ran just short of 60km a day over the course of the month of May to the start of the Comrades Marathon (c. 1700km). Then ran the 89km race from Durban to Pietermartizburg. The point of their efforts was not to be hard core. They are passionate about helping people to help themselves, and are raising money for that cause. About 5 years ago, John started the Unogwaja Challenge to kick start this effort. Every year since then a group from around the world have cycled from Cape Town. This year, John and Robert wanted to get off their bikes so they could walk alongside South Africans who lived along the route.

John & Robert

I am not a runner or a cyclist. I used to ride my bike to school many moons ago. The farthest I have run is 14km. But then I stopped working and started writing a blog about learning and happiness. One of my ideas on learning is that we define too quickly who we are. In part we define ourselves by what we can't do. But this isn't really that close to the truth. We define ourselves by what we can't do immediately. Often the skills needed to learn a skill right in the beginning are very different from the skills needed at a later stage.

My favourite example is a musical instrument. In the beginning it is a case of learning to co-ordinate your fingers. Building the muscles. Learning to read the music. Learning how the instrument works. Training your ear. Doing drills. It is dry, humbling, academic, and in the beginning not even very musical. It is hard work. I tried to learn the piano when I was 18 and kept it up for a bit until my university studies started getting a little overwhelming. Piano didn't feel like a break, so it got put to the side.

At a later stage however, playing a musical instrument becomes much more about an emotional connection with the music and the audience. The creative side. If someone who has great rapport with an audience and a wealth of emotional experiences to convey hasn't got through the first bit, how will they know? Being good at something isn't the same at being good at starting to learn something.

I think there are a lot of things where we simply haven't got through the first bit. You struggled with converting illogical number words into logical numbers in our head, and decided you weren't good at math. You didn't have a granny or grandpa showing you how to cook, and so decided you weren't a cook. You made a few clumsy mistakes on a home improvement task which someone did quickly, and decided you weren't handy. Whatever it is, I think we often think we can't do something when the truth is we haven't tried. Properly.

I have always wanted to run the Comrades, but have never been an uber athlete. John convinced me to give the 2016 Unogwaja Challenge a go. It is less than a year to go now so I need to get cracking. 

I returned the challenge. Despite all his heroics (he even played hockey for the national team), he claims he can't swim. I claim he hasn't tried. Sometimes you have to go back to basics. You have to learn from first principles. Even things we think should come naturally. A friend of mine says his Mom laughed at him when he said he was getting running coaching, as he needed to learn to run properly. She said this was like learning to breathe.

Exactly! Most of us don't breathe properly. Take the very deepest breath possible. Did you just you your chest? Well then you weren't breathing properly. You need to learn to use your belly. Another friend of mine is relearning to swim using the 'Total Immersion' technique despite being an above average swimmer already. Sometimes to get to the next step, you first have to step back. But if you are starting, learning to do it properly to begin with is the way forward.

I reckon getting John to do the Midmar Mile is a fair counter challenge to the epic adventure he has got me started on over the next year. He likes to emphasize that the long walk was just the start. He dreams of getting everyone passionate about moving forward, together.  Time for us to get cracking.

Fry An Egg

The idea driving free markets is that by specialising on things where we have a comparative advantage, and trading, everyone does better. The goal for an individual (or a city, or a country) should be to find something you are good at, you love doing, and that the market values (i.e. you get paid enough). If you don't love it, do something else. If you aren't paid enough, do something else. If you aren't good at it, do something else. With enough flexibility and willingness to learn, the theory goes that we should all eventually 'find our calling'.

Education revolves around this system of 'finding what you are good at' and specialising. So if you can free up time by outsourcing things you find boring or you are bad at, it is worth it. By paying someone to clean your home, the time you would have spent doing it can be used for the thing you are good at. Ditto for cooking, home maintenance, managing your finances, child care, gardening, or whatever you don't like doing, aren't good at, or doesn't pay well enough to justify.

This is seductive and is definitely an argument I have used previously to justify getting help once a week to iron. If it takes me forever to iron a shirt, and I can pay someone to smash all my shirts and make my flat sparkle in a couple of hours, it is money well spent. It is a particularly seductive argument if you live in a country where there is high unemployment. A great example is petrol attendants and car guards in South Africa. We don't need to sit in the car while someone else puts petrol in, but it provides a job. Having a job provides a sense that the money has been earned. This provides a sense of well being.

Something about this doesn't sit right with me. Intentionally creating work for work's sake is a bridge to nowhere. The 'Broken Window Theory' suggests that breaking a window is a good thing because it provides work for someone to fix the window. They then buy something with what they got and there is a chain effect of additional activity that wouldn't have happened otherwise. That is just a coordination problem. A broken window is just a broken window. We can do better.

A Broken Window in my old London Flat

What specialisation also does is make you embarrassingly incompetent at things you just haven't applied your mind to, but that are really simple. As simple as putting your own petrol in your car. I once called a plumber to come 'install my washing machine'. He arrived, attached a pipe to the water supply, twisted it and was done. Perhaps one minute later, I was handing over the cash. This wasn't an example of efficiency through comparative advantage. This was an example of defining myself so narrowly as a 'non-handy' guy that I deserved to hang my head in shame.

I agree that a portion of our day should be focused on getting very good at something. We can't be the best at everything. But for some things we don't need to be. Some things are just about basic life competence. Why is it for example that standard schooling doesn't include learning to cook a few basic meals? Why doesn't it include some domestic education like simple household chores. Many people genuinely don't know how to clean a house. People who do find this very amusing since it is easy, but this is the curse of knowledge. Once you know something is easy, you forget how intimidating it was before you knew. 

Outsourcing the intimidating can become a habit. It can also stop you from experiencing some of the simple pleasures in life. A home cooked meal. A clean house. A washing machine that gets attached to the wall without handing over a silly amount of money. It also means that once you retire as a Chief Executive Officer of a global company employing thousands of people, you know how to fry an egg.

Yellow Brick Road

Although I am going to apply to be part of the Unogwaja 2016 team, both my running and cycling experience are very limited. The farthest I have run is 14km and my cycling is limited to riding to and from high school almost two decades ago. That clearly has to change, and fast. The power couple I went to New Zealand to see get married are of a different order. I spent my last weekend at Lake Rotoiti with Mr and Mrs Spartacus as well as Mrs Spartacus' equally energetic sister and her boyfriend, and Mr Spartacus' oil rig working brother. There wasn't a lot of sitting around (although we did fit in some time in the deep earth heated hot pools).

Between sailing, mountain biking, kite surfing, horse riding and any other challenge thrown at them, a weekend with the Spartacuses will get your blood flowing. One of our activities was my first trail ride. I grabbed a mountain bike from Planet Bike and my debut was the 'yellow brick road' in the Whakarewarewa Forest. It is incredibly beautiful, but I have to admit that a lot of my focus was simply on not falling off. You never forget how to ride a bike, but this felt very much like my first Capoeira class - a lesson in handling incompetence. When I got to the tricky bits, my instincts were often to take my feet off. This is not the right thing to do and doesn't help at all. You look like a monkey. It was suggested that if I have to take a foot off, take the inside one off to keep slightly more control. That way I would only look like half a monkey.

The other bit of advice was to stand up on the pedals and keep them level when going down through the more technical bits. It is quite frustrating when you hear the advice. You know it. Then you don't do it. It would be wonderful if someone could tell you the seemingly simple instructions and then you follow them. But that is not how it works. You have to go through the monkey stage to get to the other side. Some people take to things more naturally than others, but I am not sure that is a good indicator of whether you will be good or not later on.

The other bit that is a challenge when you go out with people who know what they are doing is a feeling that you are holding them back from having fun. Fortunately with this trail riding, they could take alternate, more advanced paths, that ended in the same place. When you are running, for example, you can beat yourself up a little if you feel your buddy has to run much slower than they would like. That's why it is so great to have a training buddy at a similar level where you can push each other. I managed to have sufficient flashes of competence to keep up.

One of the bits that took a fair amount of strain was my fingers from gripping on the brakes too hard. It seems a common thread with most activities that a big part of learning comes in learning to relax. For whatever reason, we seem to tense up excessively when we are uncertain.

It really was a lot of fun though. The forest was a feast for the eyes. There were even story book mushrooms. Big red ones with white spots. When I head back to New Zealand at some stage, I hope to have more juice in my legs and I can show Mr and Mrs Spartacus that the yellow brick road they started me on has lead to some courage and heart. Maybe I can convince the group of them to join in the Comrades next year, or a leg or two of the on foot Unogwaja journey. Mr Spartacus certainly seemed keen.

Intimate Reward

Some things take time. Kids learn slowly. The little emperors are notoriously fussy eaters and take time even to fall in love with the tastes of their mother tongue. Unless we want to live a monotongue life, we need to venture out. We need to train our buds to love the taste of learning.

I am pushing on with my piano learning. I have managed about an hour a day for the last 4 or 5 months. I can now almost play two popular songs so that they sound reasonably musical. I am loving it. Getting passed that first 100 hours so you can taste the juice is a start. That doesn't change the need to put in a proper commitment if you want to keep enjoying it. Flow is a wonderful thing. Flow is something we experience when we are pushing ourselves just outside our comfort zone. Not too far, but just enough so that we are not too stressed to learn. You can over complicate the idea of meditation. Meditation is just the practise of focus and concentration. When you are doing something you love and in that exciting phase of discovery, it is almost impossible for you to think about anything else. The great thing is that flow comes at different stages and in different things for different people. This variety of flow is the engine that drives the world forward.

It isn't all pretty. Flow is paired neatly with purposeful practise. Purposeful practise is the deliberate, regular, conscious attempt to learn. It can be draining. You may need to break it down into small chunks. Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea of putting in 10,000 hours in order to become world class at something. He was not arguing that these hours could be on automatic pilot. Matthew Syed wrote a book that was a little more explicit about the importance of practise, and what that means. Practise isn't just mindless repetition of the same mistakes. If you can work in a little time every day to edge yourself forward, in a considered fashion, with a purpose in mind - flow will be your reward. Like the handicap system in golf, flow doesn't require you to be world class. Instead it adjusts to your level and incentivizes progress more than any bonus cheque ever could. It is a deeply personal reward system that knows you intimately.

It doesn't need to be hours and hours either. Ask yourself the same thing kids get asked when they get home. 'What did you learn today?'. One thing every day can be enough. Little things add up.

Intention

Last night, Ponciano told our Capoeira class the story of 'The Tiger who killed a Wife'. The husband was so distressed, he grabbed his bow and arrow and went deep into the jungle to find the tiger. When he saw it, he stilled himself and fixed his gaze on the target. He pulled back the arrow and released all the pain and anguish at his loss at the tiger. The arrow sunk deep. He went across to the tiger and found that it was in fact a stone. A stone shaped like the one who had stolen his world. The arrow had not broken, instead it had sunk deep into the stone because his intention was so intense.

Like Eric Mead in the TED clip below, I have always been fascinated by the Placebo Effect. As a scientifically minded person, you want to strip out the story and make it replicable and testable. You can certainly do that, but it removes a whole lot of the good stuff. For some people something is only interesting if it can be proved wrong. If you can't say it in a way that has the possibility of it be shown to be false, it can be beautiful, but not 'interesting' in a scientific way. By its very nature, belief and intention are not replicable. You have to buy into stories. Through dance, art, poetry, music, writing we can feel beauty and we can do incredible things. I believe much of this is actually because we allow ourselves to drop our negative beliefs. The beliefs we have that say we can't do certain things. I described one of the first times this really sunk home for me in 'faking it'. Hypnosis can be seen as faking or it can be seen as simply a very deep state of relaxation where you become very open to suggestion. Real limits then act as your boundaries rather than the limits you create in your head.

Ponciano's story of intention is relevant for me. If you are able to focus your intention on something, it can be a form of hypnosis. A form of meditation. If you can relax out of any self created concern, you can become incredibly powerful relative to your doubt-ridden self. In my 5th class of Capoeira there are still a lot of real limits. I have to do lots of strength work. I have to teach my body the rhythms. I have to learn the forms before I can forget about them and just play. I thought the Tiger story was beautiful though, and diving into stories helps you learn.

My Capoeira adventure:

1. First Class - You have to start somewhere
2. Deep End - Learn a little, and enjoy
3. Shattered - This impact is bliss for your body
4. Left from Right, Arm from Leg - Training your body to have an awareness of where it is

Left from Right, Arm from Leg

The early stages of learning something can leave you completely disorientated. I had glimpses of 'ooo, I think I just got that' in class four of my Capoeira experience, but a lot of the time I was trying to remind myself whether a limb was left or right, or whether it was an arm or a leg. Every now and then we paired up with another Capoerista (someone who plays Capoeria) and practiced a few moves. Sometimes I was paired with someone relatively advanced, and the were all very patient. On one occasion I was paired with someone at my level. The two of us had the same wide eyed attentiveness I see in my niece and nephew when they are a tad confused but very keen. We would slowly go through the required routine, realise we were in a knot, laugh, and start again. Sometimes we would get it and think boom. Then try again, and it was gone.

I had been out of action for a few days with a cold, but was feeling good. I wasn't as lost this time. Perhaps it was because the Thursday night class is focussed on beginners and there was a guest teacher. There is a Dance Workshop on Sunday and a friend of the teacher (Ponciano Almeida) is here to join him for some demonstrations. They learnt together as little chaps in Brazil. Years and years of practice mean when they play everything flows. They aren't focussed on the mechanics. They can however slow things right down and demonstrate each bit in a fully conscious way.

When you are focussed on the mechanics, there are too many things to think about - so one limb can end up somewhere you didn't tell it to go. I would be focussed on trying to copy the teacher as I twist around and would realise that I was facing exactly the wrong way. A sense of humour is helpful. You are training your body to have an awareness of where it is without your help. I know from yoga that half of the challenge with inverted postures is this body awareness and balance. When you are in a head stand, you actually have a more solid base than you do when you are standing. Your elbows are bigger than your feet. Everything just feels weird because it is upside down. 

Perhaps this relates a little to Rugby. If your fitness isn't there, it is difficult to concentrate on the game or be in the right place at the right time.  When everything connects, the best players seem to have a sense of where the ball is going before it even gets there. Like Zinzan Brooke or Gary Teichmann who were there when they were needed to tackle, but when the ball was kicked downfield they also magically appeared.

Not magic, they also had to start somewhere.

Zinzan the Magic Man

Related Posts:
1) First Class - you have to start somewhere.
2) Deep End - learn a little, and enjoy.
3) Shattered - 'This impact is bliss for your body'.

I have started learning Capoeira at The Dance Attic in Fulham as one of my First 100 hour projects. Let me know if you would like to do one too, and share the experience.

Shattered

'This impact is bliss for your body. Right now it is ow, ow, ow, but in a month or two it will be woo, woo, woo. You are not made of sugar or crystal. You will not melt. You will not break. It can be both humbling and very powerful. You will struggle but then you will have moments where you have control you didn't know was possible. This is not arrogance. This is part of the practice.'

- Ponciano Almeida

Not Sugar. Not Crystal. Won't Melt. Won't Break.

Last night I went to my third Capoeira class. I felt shattered. It wasn't much longer than an hour, but I was clock watching from about half an hour in. This is not a brutal gym like experience where you have someone shouting at you to push harder. The movements are subtle and beautiful, but you are really using your whole body. The teacher is half floating, musical in his lightness. Like gravity doesn't apply to him. If I was taking it personally, it would be like someone taunting me about how easy it is. For me, the sweat started early as I tried to listen to instruction, conquer the mounting fatigue, and to remember to breathe and enjoy the class. I arrived at that point where your body gives up after one push up, and then the count continued to ten, and then switched arms (one arm push ups!!!). The push ups were part of half dance, half martial arts moves. There is a story involved. I think life tastes better with stories. Being able to witness other students at the boundary of the battle between strength and gravity - a spectrum between a donkey (me) and a poet (the teacher) - gave me some indication of a path worth following.

Afterwards as I was walking home, I was thinking about scales for the piano. There are plenty of scales I could do for Capoeira. Push-ups, sit-ups, planks, yoga - it all becomes a part of training to be able to play Capoeira. Just like the piano. When the drills become second nature and the expression becomes the focus. Like a kid moaning about learning at school when they don't see the point of what they are doing, part of the motivation for something comes from having a 'why'. The why may be an end goal, but it may also be a how. Capoeria seems like a wonderful way to keep fit and get the body moving because it weaves in a story, where training is a dance.

Taste Buds

Taste evolves. One of the ways we like to describe ourselves is by our likes and dislikes - but those aren't static. For the first 34 years of my life I didn't drink coffee. I didn't like the taste and had been told it wasn't good for you so didn't really feel the need to tweak my buds. Then coffee houses started to become the new pubs. Instead of meeting down the pub for a pint, we started meeting people for a coffee. When you don't drink coffee, your options are fairly limited. There are only so many occasions you can order hot chocolate with a poker face. Like whiskey and wine, there is also the attraction of the story behind the coffee. Where the beans come from. Exploring the different flavours. I think life is a little better when coloured by stories. So I pulled my taste buds into line and am now a coffee fan.  

Adventurous people like to talk about a willingness to try things once. You never know if you will like it. Sometimes it actually takes more than that. You have to train your taste buds. I can think of plenty of other things that I used to really dislike and then they became favourites. The idea of a Spinach and Ricotta pizza certainly didn't appeal to the younger me and is now something I will devour. In trying to shift my diet toward more plant based stuff, I am trying to add stuff rather than give stuff up. The idea being to find really tasty food I look forward to making. Scott Jurek talked about his Minnesota Winter Chili as being the thing that convinced him that eating plants didn't mean having to give up on taste. His book, 'Eat & Run' has a recipe at the end of each chapter and I decided this would be the first one I attempted and it is ridiculously yummy. I hesitate to say it is easy too, because the first time you do anything is never easy. Even going to the shop to get the ingredients is confusing. Then you don't know for sure if you are doing things right or if you are going to have to throw mountains of food out. Easy isn't easy till it is.

I think we should question first tastes and preferences when other people get a lot of joy from something. South Africans love it when people don't like biltong. It means more for them. One of the Brazilian equivalents I tasted last night is Brigadeiro. Friend Marianna and Roberto brought some over nervously saying that lots of non-Brazilians don't like these balls of delight (cooked condensed milk) which means more for them. Perhaps my taste buds had been trained by Koeksisters which are dough deep fried in syrup, but I wasn't a neigh-sayer. Yum.

I think the idea of Acquired Taste extends to learning which is why I am experimenting with the 'First 100 hour' concept. When you start learning a musical instrument, e.g. the piano, you have to build up physical fitness and strength in your fingers. It is physical, technical and academic. You have to learn to read music. You have to train your ear. You have to teach your hands to move independently. You have to do scales which are the equivalent of pushups and situps and can feel like a drag. For a creative, emotional person you can imagine them being keen but then being turned off by the initial slog. Josh Waitzkin talks of 'Numbers to leave numbers, form to leave form' when talking of chess and martial arts in terms of learning the groundwork till it becomes so entrenched that other stuff matters. That is the good stuff. The problem if you give things up because you are bad at the initial stages is that the initial stages may not be the thing that matters. The initial stages may just be an obstacle. The great musicians are the ones who tap into something else when the technical stuff disappears. When the mist lifts and they get in the zone tapping into their creativity. If we only ever do the things that taste good initially, we may miss out on the juice of life.

Don't always trust your taste buds. They are very very sneaky.