The Art of Learning — Josh Waitzkin
“If we have any hope of attaining excellence, let alone of showing what we’ve got under pressure, we have to be prepared by a lifestyle of reinforcement. Presence must be like breathing.”
Start — 9/11/16 Finish — 9/15/16
Notes:
· The incremental theory of learning (that with effort and diligence hard material can be grasped and progress made) is the only viable long-term alternative to the entity theory (that we only have innate, fixed levels of skill in particular areas)
o A mastery-oriented (effort over results) response to challenging situations is necessary for real progress over time
o This requires having a healthy attitude towards failure, and being able to draw wisdom from every experience — good or bad
o Short-term goals (in terms of wins/losses) can be useful developmental tools if they are balanced within a nurturing long-term philosophy
· The good competitor:
o Dictates the tone of the battle
o Rises to the level of the opposition
o Readily confronts difficult results
o Knows that glory has little to do with happiness or long-term success
· The Soft Zone — a state of mind in which you are simultaneously engaged or focused and at ease with incoming distractions and pressures
o When uncomfortable, the instinct should be not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it
o Need the presence of mind to avoid the ripple effect of compounding errors, which means not clinging to the emotional comfort zone of what was
· Investment in Loss — giving yourself to the learning process, letting yourself get pushed around without reverting back to old habits or relying on ego
o The aim is to minimize repeated errors as much as possible by having an eye for consistent psychological and technical themes of error
· Making smaller circles — plunging into the details of the micro in order to deduce the overarching themes or workings of the macro
o Doing things slowly before we can do them correctly with speed and in order to internalize a feeling of correct mechanics
o Then practice is condensed into smaller and smaller steps, so that with each refinement we internalize a skill more deeply and we can make use of the skill with either greater potency or in a greater range of scenarios
o Emphasis is on subtle internalization and refinement rather than the quantity of what is learned (depth over breadth)
· The Zone
o First step is to practice the ebb and flow of stress and recovery through some type of interval training… over time increasing the intensity/duration of the stress and condensing the rest periods
o Second step is to find a moment or activity that triggers a serene focus — build and internalize a routine that preludes that moment, then start doing that routine before you will be confronted with stress or work
o Third step is to be prepared for distractions and imperfection (both in our circumstances and mental state); negative emotions and reactions to circumstances have to be integrated into the process — accepted and then used as fuel
o From there, every inspired or creative moment that seems to come from your unconscious and is of a higher skill level must be broken down into new techniques and principles that can lay the foundation of the next level of your expertise; progress is building this pyramid of increasingly complex internalized principles and technicalities
Phrases/Quotes:
· It was a bizarre school for a child, a rough crowd of alcoholics, homeless geniuses, wealthy gamblers hooked on the game, junkies, eccentric artists — all diamonds in the rough, brilliant, beat men, lives in shambles, aflame with a passion for chess.
· Confidence is critical for a great competitor, but overconfidence is brittle. We are too smart for ourselves in such moments. We sense our mortality like a cancer beneath the bravado, and when things start to go out of control, there is little real resilience to fall back on.
· The key, in my opinion, is to recognize that the beauty of those 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, not the lesson learned, and move on to the next adventure.
· The path to artistic insight in one direction often involves deep study of another — the intuition makes uncanny connections that lead to a crystallization of fragmented notions.
· When aiming for the top, your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve.
· The secret is that everything is always on the line. The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in competition, in the boardroom, at the exam, the operating table, the big stage. If we have any hope of attaining excellence, let alone of showing what we’ve got under pressure, we have to be prepared by a lifestyle of reinforcement. Presence must be like breathing.
Thoughts:
This was a peculiar but entertaining book. It’s a bit of a cross-over between condensed memoir and self-help, although I can’t quite say Waitzkin did a great job of structuring the latter portion. This isn’t your typical “self-improvement” type book like The Power of Habit or The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, as the author’s advice is more interwoven into the narrative of his experiences during his time an international chess and Push Hands (the martial form of Tai Chi) competitor. Waitzkin was a chess prodigy as a child, and he recounts his learning process and how it changed over those influential years. He certainly glorifies the game of chess in increasingly creative and extravagant ways, sometimes almost to the point of being funny (which I’m sure was not his intention). Waitzkin explains how his learning process evolves as he transitions from chess player to Push Hands competitor, and he notes some very interesting overlaps between the two art forms that he could only have noticed once he had broken down both into their fundamental principles.
Waitzkin’s approach to “achieving optimal performance” isn’t particularly outlined well, explained in depth, or readily actionable. He uses a few coined phrases like the soft zone (a mental state in which you are at peace with incoming distractions and pressures) and investment in loss (being willing to give up your ego in order to make greater strides later), but they either come across as not very original or not readily usable. He also tends to throw around these certain phrases and explains them with an anecdote of something he did during a chess match, described with the necessary flourishes. I guess I kept waiting either for an aha moment or a point where he would lay out his overall approach in an organized manner. This isn’t to say there is nothing to learn here or that his life story isn’t fascinating, but the book was perhaps more personal narrative than I had anticipated.
Overall, this was an average read, given that it felt like it reached half its potential in each genre it mixed together. Neither full memoir nor structured self-improvement, The Art of Learning experiments with a hybrid type of narrative that blends philosophy and personal history. While unique in that sense, the book was a bit underwhelming in what it delivered.
