When you learn a technique, you’re learning one thing, when you’re learning a principle that embodies a technique, you might be learning a thousand things.

Train to be at peace in chaos. Because we “don’t want to be meditating in a flower garden. We want to be able to meditate and have a meditative state throughout our lives – in a hurricane, in a thunderstorm, when sharks are attacking you – any moment.” Steps to learn how to be a resilient performer.<ol><li>Be at peace with imperfection.</li><li>In your performance training, learn to use that imperfection to your advantage.</li><li>Learn to create little bumps to spur you along so that you are always inspired.</li></ol>

Go towards stress, tension and weaknesses

Recovery periods are as important as pushing yourself. Those who create periods of inactivity between pushing themselves are the ones that perform the best. <ul><li>If you’re at work and running out of mental stamina, take a break and come back renewed. </li><li>When you are learning, it is vital to understand that there are periods of learning and reflecting. </li><li>Plateaus are the periods in our learning process where it feels like we’re not improving. However, you have to learn to be comfortable with pushing through these periods as there is a huge spike in improvement on the other side.</li></ul>

Life works in oscillation

Quality is a process and an outcome. It's the process of learning to do or learn something exceptionally well. But it is the result that we enjoy. One should first master the fundamentals, which involves hours and hours of mindful practice:<ul><li>break the art or knowledge down into their respective components, </li><li>repeating each component until it's internalised, </li><li>then linking the components, </li><li>making adjustments, </li><li>and finally increasing the speed. </li></ul>

The principles of quality

There are four stages of learning<ol><li>Unconscious incompetence - “I don’t know how bad I am”</li><li>Conscious incompetence - “I am very bad at this.” (Most people stop here because they don’t put in the effort to go deeply enough.)</li><li>Conscious competence - “ I can do this if I focus.”</li><li>Unconscious competence - “I don’t remember the last details of driving my car.”</li></ol>

Learning phases

When you are learning new skills, most people go wide before going deep. However, it is better to prioritise depth before breadth. Delve into the details to understand what makes the macro work. Learning too wide is distracting, while focusing on depth helps you develop a feel for quality. If you have a few skills to learn, it's more effective to plunge deeply into one skill. That deep state of learning is necessary for the brain to remap effectively.

Depth always beats breadth

Lateral thinking - the ability to take a lesson from one thing and apply it to something else is the most important discipline anyone can cultivate. The goal in learning is unobstructed self-expression. The person teaching you is the person who knows you best, and that is you 20 years from now. So it’s helpful to visualise that person to understand your false constructs.

Thematic learning (lateral thinking)

Josh Waitskin is a modern-day polymath. He is an eight-time national chess champion, a two-time world champion in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands, the first Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, and author of The Art of Learning. Drawing from Josh’s experiences in chess and martial arts, this podcast discusses:<ul><li>learning by focusing on principles and deeply understanding the fundamentals</li><li>how to increase concentration and overcome distraction.</li></ul>

Learning from a modern-day polymath

To be elite, you have to express who you are through your art. You will work best when your relationship to your pursuit remains in harmony with your disposition. There will be times when you need to try new ideas and take in further information, but it’s essential to integrate this information in a way that does not violate who you are. When you feel obstructed, you’re trying to fit into a mould that doesn’t suit you.

Unobstructed self-expression

Most people want to avoid pain and discomfort, which makes them mediocre. However, you will have pain when you live at your stretch point. It can be physical or mental resistance.  When you aim for mastery, you must learn to embrace the pain and engage fully. Craving the pain and discomfort will help you to grow and excel. Setbacks will give you the resilience to succeed.

Embracing pain and failure

“[Quality] It’s such a beautiful, incredible principle. Most people think they can wait around for the big moments to turn it on. But if you don’t cultivate turning it on as a way of life in the little moments – and there are hundreds of more times little moments than big – then there’s no chance in the big moments.”

Josh Waitzkin was the international under-18 chess champion at age 18, only to quit chess at age 22 and pursue Tai-chi Push Hands, the martial application of Tai Chi. He became world champion in this martial art at age 28, and won the title several more times since then. As an accomplished competitor in two fields - one mental, one mostly physical - a book written by him about how he learns is obviously going to contain some interesting ideas. The main themes of what he writes about are two: learning by focusing on principles and deeply understanding the fundamentals; and how to increase concentration and overcome distraction. Interestingly, many of the things that Waitzkin writes in his own personal way square with a lot of findings of cognitive science, many of which we already talked about in other episodes of the podcast. Ideas such as the role of the subconscious, chunking, and expert blindness all appear in his writing, but he usually refers to these by other names. Two quotes from the book didn't make it into the recording, but are worth sharing, and so I will share them below. On losing: "There is something particularly painful about being beaten in a chess game. In the course of a battle, each player puts every ounce of his or her tactical, strategical, emotional, physical, and spiritual being into the struggle. The brain is pushed through terrible trials; we stretch every fibre of our mental capacity; the whole body aches from exhaustion after hours of rapt concentration. In the course of a dynamic chess fight, there will be shifts in momentum, near misses, narrow escapes, innovative creations, and precise refutations. When your position teeters on the brink of disaster, it feels like your life is on the line. When you win, you survive another day. When you lose, it is as if someone has torn out your heart and stepped on it. No exaggeration. Losing is brutal." On competition: "From one perspective the opponent is the enemy. On the other hand there is no one who knows you more intimately, no one who challenges you so profoundly or pushes you to excellence and growth so relentlessly." Enjoy the episode. Music by podcastthemes.com.

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Josh Waitzkin was the international under-18 chess champion at age 18, only to quit chess at age 22 and pursue Tai-chi Push Hands, the martial application of Tai Chi. He became world champion in this martial art at age 28, and won the title several more times since then. As an accomplished competitor in two fields - one mental, one mostly physical - a book written by him about how he learns is obviously going to contain some interesting ideas. The main themes of what he writes about are two: learning by focusing on principles and deeply understanding the fundamentals; and how to increase concentration and overcome distraction. Interestingly, many of the things that Waitzkin writes in his own personal way square with a lot of findings of cognitive science, many of which we already talked about in other episodes of the podcast. Ideas such as the role of the subconscious, chunking, and expert blindness all appear in his writing, but he usually refers to these by other names. Two quotes from the book didn't make it into the recording, but are worth sharing, and so I will share them below. On losing: "There is something particularly painful about being beaten in a chess game. In the course of a battle, each player puts every ounce of his or her tactical, strategical, emotional, physical, and spiritual being into the struggle. The brain is pushed through terrible trials; we stretch every fibre of our mental capacity; the whole body aches from exhaustion after hours of rapt concentration. In the course of a dynamic chess fight, there will be shifts in momentum, near misses, narrow escapes, innovative creations, and precise refutations. When your position teeters on the brink of disaster, it feels like your life is on the line. When you win, you survive another day. When you lose, it is as if someone has torn out your heart and stepped on it. No exaggeration. Losing is brutal." On competition: "From one perspective the opponent is the enemy. On the other hand there is no one who knows you more intimately, no one who challenges you so profoundly or pushes you to excellence and growth so relentlessly." Enjoy the episode. Music by podcastthemes.com.  

Education Bookcast is a podcast covering one education-related book or article per episode. Support: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/edubookcast.

JOSH WAITZKIN

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