Unlearning and Embodying

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?

The Art of Learning

Finding Others

Find others whose paths resonate with yours. There are lots of people who are generous and willing to talk about the challenges that they have had. Listen to their stories. They are not going to be the same as yours. They are going to be giving younger versions of themselves advice. No one can know your context as well as you. But the more stories you listen to, the more capable you are going to be in various new situations. The more able to avoid mistakes other people have made. That is where the real juice is. Where we learn the most. Through mistakes. Trial and error. Success is less interesting, because success just means there weren't strong enough obstacles in the way. But we don't know why. Admitting that we don't know why is important. Our learning is path dependent. We know what we know, because of the information that has come up on our path. There is too much complexity for anyone to wrap their head around. Particularly if you do it alone. 

Small Steps

Three concepts I have been spending a lot of time mulling over are Wu-Wei, micro-ambition, and successive approximation. A vision of where you want to go isn’t particularly helpful if you can’t see a path to getting there. It just creates a continuous cycle of disappointment and discontent. Wu-Wei is action through inaction. It starts by really seeing things as they are. Micro-ambition reduces the steps we take to very small, very achievable, nudges. Small enough to undo once we understand the unintended consequences if we have a strong feedback loop. Successive approximation allows a degree of pragmatism as we move towards where we want to be, while accepting where we are. Change must recognise that the future will not be without its own challenges. Small change builds in resilience so that we can work creatively with the tools we have, without breaking. 

Change is Loopy