Profound Awareness
As part of our effort and process to build adaptive technology education at World Tech, we reached out to Josh Waitzkin´s team.
Josh is an American chess player, martial arts competitor, and author. As a child, he was recognized as a prodigy, and won the U.S. Junior Chess championship in 1993 and 1994. The movie Searching for Bobby Fischer is based on his early life. You can learn more about him here.
I came across Josh´s work a few years ago but until last month I decide to re-read The Art of Learning, his book about the journey to reach optimal performance. In the book, Josh lays down his technique to trigger emotional and mental states for better performance, while developing profound self-awareness and enhancing each student´s or competitor´s unique traits.
But as with all skills, the most sophisticated techniques tend to have their foundation in the simples of principles.
To reach mastery, whether at sports, entrepreneurship, trading or others, Waitzkin suggests to build on different stages, focusing on the internalization of techniques, principles and theories into the subconscious.
- Condensed technique
- Enhanced perception
Relationship to education and human development: Soft Zone. I.
In education, we focus on outcomes a lot. SAT scores, grades, titles…process is undervalued and yet it is the process that leads to the results. In sports, if you want to get better, you stress on your weaknesses (which is something you usually don´t expose when applying for a job or talking about your performance results). Good athletes know where they are falling short and where they can beat their opponents. This process is called the Soft Zone by Waitzkin: the listening, the sitting down and bringing yourself to the moment. In performance psychology, the concept of flow, blissful engagement, pure presence, is often associated at peak performance. But how do you get there? First you learn to flow with whatever comes — the beginner´s mindset is implied as you must remove all friction from personal biases to egocentric viewpoints. Then you use whatever comes to your advantage: you learn to become completely self-sufficient and create your own earthquakes so you eventually don´t need external stimulus.
I believe that one of the most critical factors in the transition to becoming a conscious high performer is the degree to which your relationship to your pursuit stays in harmony with your unique disposition.
Waitzkin mentions both Dvoresky and Razuvaev, the pillars of the Russian school of chess. While Razuvaev favors a nurturing development of talent, Dvoresky is known for creating one-size-fits-all training programs. These different teaching styles have created world class chess champions and yet Waitzkin favors the approach where you bring your talent naturally, without breaking it. As you study and get immersed into the practice, you learn to let go. You practice letting go and losing, and that is when creativity comes in: you study form to leave form. You synchronize desires, there is no fight, there is nothing to fight.
The goal is not winning, it is simply being: Beginner´s mindset. II
If you want your learning curve to be steeper, ironically, you must try not to try too hard. You must flow. You are soft and receptive, you clean all interference, you make emptiness your fullness.
Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process.
Once you are clear about principles and theories, you reach the moment when psychology begins to transcend techniques. You also start to consciously look at less, not more.
You let the unsconcious flow while the conscious leads and follows, sorting out details, putting things in order, making precise mathematical calculations.
Triggers to reach different states
Through that enhanced perception and profound awareness, you learn to understand what triggers you positively and negatively to reach your different states. You can develop routines accordingly and with incremental growth and practice, reach your outcomes (through process). You become better and outcomes help you keep score.
How do we bring presence to our machine learning-powered software?
