The Art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin

An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

I. The Foundation

1.  Innocent Moves

Waitzkin talks about his beginning of learning chess, both from street hustlers in the park as well as more traditional eduction from chess masters. Both in their own right taught him valuable lessons.

2.  Losing to Win

[bq] "Confidence is critical for a great competitor, but overconfidence is brittle."

Took long breaks every summer to go to the ocean with his family. At the time it often felt like it was a way to fall behind his competitors who would spend the summer studying chess and competing, but in the end he always came back with so much energy and new ideas that it was more than worth the "lost" time.

3.  Two Approaches to Learning

[bq] "The vast majority of motivated people, young and old, make terrible mistakes in their approach to learning."

Psychologists talk of "entity" and "incremental" theories of intelligence. Kids who believe in entity theory think they are good because of a natural ability/talent. If they lose/fail, their self-worth suffers tremendously.

Incremental/learning theorists believe they are good at something because they worked hard on it. If they lose, they know they simply need to work harder next time.

They have a much more "mastery-oriented process" and respond better to challenges. More likely to persevere instead of quitting. Also recover better from difficulty. Entity theorists easily get their ego crushed and think they are "dumb."

Parental/instructional style can have a huge influence on which theory a child subscribes to.

Entity theorists are often praised with comments like "You're so smart." when acing a test (and the opposite when failing), while learning theorists tend to get more process-oriented feedback (e.g. "Well done, you worked really hard to achieve this!").

Learn to associate effort with success, and see losing as an opportunity for growth, not as a crisis.

4.  Loving the Game

On how to celebrate a win:

[bq] "The key, in my opinion, is to recognize that the beauty of the roses lies in their transience. It is drifting away even as we inhale. We enjoy the win fully while taking a deep breath, then we exhale, note the lesson learned, and move on to the next adventure."

5.  The Soft Zone - "Lose Yourself"

Getting into creative flow states is the goal of every competitor, and top competitors can enter these almost at will.

Difference between hard and soft zone: In hard zone we are focused but tense, ready to snap from any external distraction. In the soft zone we are quietly (but intensely) focused while also relaxed and ready to flow with external changes.

[bq] "I realized that in top-rank competition I couldn't count on the world being silent, so my only option was to become at peace with the noise."

[bq] "Mental resilience is arguable the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously."

6.  The Downward Spiral

Hard but important lesson for every learner/competitor: Regaining presence/clarity of mind after a serious error.

Need to avoid having one mistake lead to a dangerous downward spiral.

[bq] "Musicians, actors, athletes, philosophers, scientists, writers understand that brilliant creations are often born of small errors."

Need to get comfortable with improvising, so if things go wrong we can improvise our way back to safety.

Something simple like a deep breath, splashing water on your face, or a quick sprint can help you snap out of a downward spiral.

7.  Changing Voice

The goal of practice is what Waitzkin calls "numbers to leave numbers" or "form to leave form," studying the formal aspects of something so much that they become completely instinctive, second nature.

[bq] "Once I recognized that deeply buried secrets in a competitor tend to surface under intense pressure, my study of chess became a form of psychoanalysis."

8.  Breaking Stallions

[bq] "A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child's playful obliviousness."

Even as we improve, need to stay true to our nature and "unique disposition."

If there is an aspect of a discipline that doesn't suit your nature/style, rather than learning it directly head-on, try learning it through aspects you like, or study people of the same nature as your own who managed to incorporate this other aspect.

Rather than getting broken down and rebuilt from the ground, keep your spirit and flow.

[bq] "We have to release our current ideas to soak in new material, but not so much that we lose touch with our unique natural talents."

II. My Second Art

9. Beginner's Mind

Waitzkin got more and more interested in the internal aspects of his chess game rather than competition, discovered Taoist thought, and eventually Tai Chi.

10. Investment in Loss

[bq] "Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process."

Need to be willing to give up our ego, to get  tossed around, and to lose, in order to make progress and learn.

The notions of "beginner's mind" and "investment in loss" are key to a learner's career.

There are periods in every learners progress where he is vulnerable. While trying to learn a new skill, might take a few losses. The key is to be aware of that and accept it. It's like a hermit crab: Can either stay forever in your protective shell and never grow, or make the risky move of leaving your shell behind in search for a new and bigger one. A phase of vulnerability allows growth.

11. Making Smaller Circles

[bq] "The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick."

But the problem is that our "attention-deficit culture" has devastating effects on this, seek breadth over depth.

Especially in martial arts have many "form collectors," people who want to learn as many fancy forms as fast as possible, but never focus on the fundamentals like body mechanic.

"Making Smaller Circles": E.g. when studying a martial arts technique, start with very big and slow movements, and practice for weeks or months until we are completely relaxed with it and the motion becomes a feeling rather than a conscious effort. Then gradually start making the movement smaller and smaller, condensing it without losing the feeling (or the potency).

[bq] "Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential."

12. Using Adversity

Often some external jolts (even something as severe as injury in the middle of a competition) can inspire profound moments of clarity.

[bq] "The importance of undulating between external and internal (or concrete and abstract, technical and intuitive) training applies to all disciplines, and unfortunately the internal tends to be neglected."

[bq] "One thing I have learned as a competitor is that there are clear distinctions between what it takes to be decent, what it takes to be good, what it takes to be great, and what it takes to be among the best. If your goal is to be mediocre, then you have a considerable margin for error. [...] If I want to be the best, I have to take risks others would avoid, always optimizing the learning potential of the moment and turning adversity to my advantage."

Even in adversity, e.g. an injury, top performers use this as an opportunity to discover new ways of performance that makes them even stronger once the adversity is over.

[bq] "You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process."

Once we understand this, we can use "the internal solution" and practice in this way without even facing any real external obstacles and the risks that come with them.

13. Slowing Down Time

[bq] "In my opinion, intuition is our most valuable compass in this world."

Once we learn more and more in a discipline, the question becomes how do we navigate and connect all this knowledge. And this is where intuition comes in.

Brain creates chunks of similar patterns that appear over and over in practice, as well as connections between these chunks.

[bq] "Soon enough, learning becomes unlearning."

As we get more familiar with a discipline we stop seeing individual pieces of it and instead see relations, possibilities, and bigger pictures.

[bq] "Much of what separates the great from the very good is deep presence, relaxation of the conscious mind, which allows the unconscious to flow unhindered."

The more chunks we have and the better connected they are, the more the unconscious mind can process without any direct effort. What takes a beginner lots of mental struggle, and time, just appears naturally in the mind of an exerpt.

The expert's conscious mind is freed up to think about much more subtle problems and variants, as if time had slowed down

14. The Illusion of the Mystical

Great competitors can rad and manipulate the emotions and psychology of their opponents, as well as their own.

Can use it to control an opponents intention, and in this way react to their move before they even start moving.

[bq] "At the opponents slightest move, I move first."

This "programming" of an opponent needs to be very subtle, otherwise they'll catch on and not fall for it.

In physical disciplines, if you can read/manipulate an opponent's footwork/weight distribution, you have a huge advantage.

This is not only useful in actual competition, but also in the broader sense, e.g. when trying to make a sale and the "opponent" is a buyer.

III. Bringing It All Together

15. The Power of Presence

[bq] "In every discipline, the ability to be clearheaded, present, cool under fire is much of what separates the best from the mediocre."

With the right presence and skill, can make a competitor lose his clearheadedness.

[bq] "Presence must be like breathing."

16. Searching for the Zone

Even if you can bring fierce intensity and concentration, you'll only be really successful if you can sustain this in a healthy way and not burn our from it straight away.

[bq] "In virtually every discipline, one of the most telling features of a dominant performer is the routine use of recovery periods."

[bq] "The better we are at recovering, the greater potential we have to endure and perform under stress."

Can use cardiovascular interval training, bursts of high intensity with relaxation in between, to train this.

[bq] "If you are interested in really improving  as a performer, I would suggest incorporating the rhythm of stress and recovery into all aspects of your life."

17. Building Your Trigger

[bq] "Fuelling up is much more important than last-minute cramming."

want to build a trigger that can consistently put you into a flow/peak state.

First identify some serene activity in your life that deeply relaxes you and makes you happy.

Then build a four or five step sequence of activities, e.g. eat a specific snack, meditate, stretch, listen to particular song, and end with the activity from step one.

Then repeat this routine ideally once a day for a while until it becomes natural and you link the routine to the final state of serenity and presence.

Then can replace the final activity with times where it really matters, like competition.

Finally, can work on condensing the long routine. Needs to be a slow/incremental process. But eventually can shorten this trigger to something you can do in just a few minutes.

[bq] "The ideal for any performer is flexibility."

18. Making Sandals

[bq] "To walk a thorny road, we may cover its every inch with leather or we can make sandals."

Anger is an extremely common emotion among competitors. Cab either let it break us, or use it as a fuel for even higher performance.

Instead of suppressing irritation, need to channel it. Denying it will just make it erupt at the worst possible moment. Much better to learn to use it.

Passion is part of everyone's personal creative process, so suppressing it will just hinder that process.

19. Bringing It All Together

Once you have internalized all the previous principles and become truly good at even the tinies skill, can use this feeling as a beacon to understand what "good" really feels like, and guide all other pursuits gradually towards it.

[bq] "Champions are specialists whose styles emerge from profound awareness of their unique strengths, and who are exceedingly skilled at guiding the battle in that direction."

20.  Taiwan

Talks about his experience winning two world championship titles in Tai Chi Push Hands in 2004.