Josh Waitzkin talks about different stages of taking on what we know in “The Art of Learning”. The Tim Ferris approach, as described in "the 4-Hour Workweek", focuses on the initial stages where you can pick up skills incredibly fast with a set of hacks. You don’t need to know everything to get pretty good. You don’t need to understand the why, just the how. To get to the top 100 in the world is completely different from the journey from 10th in the world to being the best there is.
For the mastery Waitzkin focuses on, you get to the point where what nudges you forward is unlearning and embodying. In the fast initial stages, you pick up bad habits. Useful rules of thumb that mix in what works with things that don’t. Our sense of cause and effect reinforces hows that seem to work better than what we did before. Success stops us from learning. We only unpack failure. Then hubris and projected confidence kick in where people who are relatively good start defending themselves and their approach. Behaviours are deeply embedded, and letting go feels like stepping back from the success that has been hard-won.
How do you tweak without destroying everything? How do you work out the niggles in a system that works in ways you value, while being stuck in ways that hold you back?
