Poisoned by a Book There Is No Such Thing as That Art Has No Influence Upon Action

Art Carden is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Business at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Read total profile

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Josh Waitzkin has led a full life as a chess master and international martial arts champion, and as of this writing he isn't yet 35. The Art of Learning: An Inner Journeying to Optimal Functioning chronicles his journey from chess prodigy (and the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer) to world championship Tai Chi Chuan with important lessons identified and explained forth the fashion.

Marketing skilful Seth Godin has written and said that 1 should resolve to change 3 things as a result of reading a business organisation book; the reader will notice many lessons in Waitzkin'southward volume.  Waitzkin has a list of principles that appear throughout the book, but information technology isn't ever clear exactly what the principles are and how they tie together.  This doesn't really hurt the book'due south readability, though, and it is at all-time a minor inconvenience.  There are many lessons for the educator or leader, and as 1 who teaches college, was president of the chess club in middle school, and who started studying martial arts nigh two years ago, I found the book engaging, edifying, and instructive.

Waitzkin's chess career began among the hustlers of New York's Washington Square, and he learned how to concentrate amidst the noise and distractions this brings. This experience taught him the ins and outs of aggressive chess-playing every bit well as the importance of endurance from the chary players with whom he interacted.  He was discovered in Washington Square by chess teacher Bruce Pandolfini, who became his first coach and developed him from a biggy talent into 1 of the all-time young players in the earth.

The book presents Waitzkin's life as a study in contrasts; perchance this is intentional given Waitzkin's admitted fascination with eastern philosophy.  Amidst the most useful lessons business concern the aggression of the park chess players and immature prodigies who brought their queens into the action early on or who ready elaborate traps then pounced on opponents' mistakes.  These are excellent ways to rapidly dispatch weaker players, but it does not build endurance or skill.  He contrasts these approaches with the attention to detail that leads to genuine mastery over the long run.

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According to Waitzkin, an unfortunate reality in chess and martial arts—and perhaps by extension in education—is that people acquire many superficial and sometimes impressive tricks and techniques without developing a subtle, nuanced command of the fundamental principles.  Tricks and traps can impress (or vanquish) the credulous, but they are of limited usefulness confronting someone who really knows what he or she is doing. Strategies that rely on quick checkmates are probable to falter confronting players who can deflect attacks and go 1 into a long centre-game.  Keen inferior players with iv-move checkmates is superficially satisfying, but information technology does little to better one'south game.

He offers one child as an anecdote who won many games against junior opposition only who refused to embrace real challenges, settling for a long string of victories over clearly inferior players (pp. 36-37).  This reminds me of advice I got from a friend recently: e'er endeavor to make sure you're the dumbest person in the room so that yous're e'er learning.  Many of us, though, draw our self-worth from beingness big fish in small ponds.

Waitzkin'due south discussions cast chess as an intellectual boxing lucifer, and they are particularly apt given his discussion of martial arts later in the volume.  Those familiar with battle volition retrieve Muhammad Ali's strategy against George Foreman in the 1970s: Foreman was a heavy hitter, simply he had never been in a long tour earlier.  Ali won with his "rope-a-dope" strategy, patiently absorbing Foreman'southward blows and waiting for Foreman to exhaust himself.  His lesson from chess is apt (p. 34-36) equally he discusses promising immature players who focused more intensely on winning fast rather than developing their games.

Waitzkin builds on these stories and contributes to our understanding of learning in chapter 2 by discussing the "entity" and "incremental" approaches to learning. Entity theorists believe things are innate; thus, one can play chess or do karate or be an economist because he or she was born to do so.  Therefore, failure is securely personal.  By contrast, "incremental theorists" view losses every bit opportunities: "step by footstep, incrementally, the novice can become the master" (p. xxx).  They ascent to the occasion when presented with difficult material because their approach is oriented toward mastering something over time.  Entity theorists collapse nether force per unit area.  Waitzkin contrasts his approach, in which he spent a lot of time dealing with finish-game strategies
where both players had very few pieces.  By contrast, he said that many young students begin by learning a wide array of opening variations.  This damaged their games over the long run: "(m)any very talented kids expected to win without much resistance.  When the game was a struggle, they were emotionally unprepared."  For some of the states, pressure becomes a source of paralysis and mistakes are the beginning of a downwardly spiral (pp. sixty, 62).  Equally Waitzkin argues, nevertheless, a different arroyo is necessary if we are to reach our full potential.

A fatal flaw of the shock-and-awe, blitzkrieg approach to chess, martial arts, and ultimately anything that has to be learned is that everything can exist learned by rote.  Waitzkin derides martial arts practitioners who become "class collectors with fancy kicks and twirls that accept absolutely no martial value" (p. 117).  One might say the same thing about trouble sets.  This is not to combat fundamentals—Waitzkin's focus in Tai Chi was "to refine certain key principles" (p. 117)—but there is a profound difference between technical proficiency and true understanding. Knowing the moves is i affair, simply knowing how to determine what to practise next is quite another. Waitzkin's intense focus on refined fundamentals and processes meant that he remained potent in afterward circular while his opponents withered.  His arroyo to martial arts is summarized in this passage (p. 123):

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"I had condensed my trunk mechanics into a potent state, while almost of my opponents had large, elegant, and relatively impractical repertoires.  The fact is that when there is intense contest, those who succeed accept slightly more than honed skills than the rest.  Information technology is rarely a mysterious technique that drives united states of america to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill prepare.  Depth beats latitude any 24-hour interval of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential."

This is about much more than than smelling blood in the water.  In chapter 14, he discusses "the illusion of the mystical," whereby something is and so clearly internalized that almost imperceptibly modest movements are incredibly powerful as embodied in this quote from Wu Yu-hsiang, writing in the nineteenth century: "If the opponent does not move, and then I do not motion.  At the opponent'south slightest move, I move commencement."  A learning-centered view of intelligence means associating effort with success through a procedure of instruction and encouragement (p. 32).  In other words, genetics and raw talent can only go you so far before hard work has to pick up the slack (p. 37).

Another useful lesson concerns the use of arduousness (cf. pp. 132-33).  Waitzkin suggests using a problem in one area to adapt and strengthen other areas.  I have a personal instance to dorsum this upwardly.  I will ever regret quitting basketball in high school.  I remember my sophomore year—my last year playing—I bankrupt my thumb and, instead of focusing on cardiovascular conditioning and other aspects of my game (such as working with my left manus), I waited to recover earlier I got back to work.

Waitzkin offers another useful chapter entitled "slowing down time" in which he discusses ways to sharpen and harness intuition.  He discusses the process of "chunking," which is compartmentalizing problems into progressively larger problems until one does a complex ready of calculations tacitly, without having to think nigh it.  His technical instance from chess is particularly instructive in the footnote on folio 143.  A chess grandmaster has internalized much almost pieces and scenarios; the grandmaster tin process a much greater amount of information with less endeavor than an practiced.  Mastery is the procedure of turning the articulated into the intuitive.

In that location is much that will exist familiar to people who read books like this, such as the need to pace oneself, to set clearly defined goals, the need to relax, techniques for "getting in the zone," and so forth.  The anecdotes illustrate his points beautifully.  Over the course of the book, he lays out his methodology for "getting in the zone," another concept that people in operation-based occupations volition find useful.  He calls it "the soft zone" (chapter iii), and information technology consists of being flexible, malleable, and able to adjust to circumstances.  Martial artists and devotees of David Allen's Getting Things Washed might recognize this as having a "mind like water."  He contrasts this to "the hard zone," which "demands a cooperative world for yous to function.  Similar a dry twig, y'all are brittle, prepare to snap under pressure" (p. 54).  "The Soft Zone is resilient, like a flexible bract of grass that can move with and survive hurricane-strength winds" (p. 54).

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Another illustration refers to "making sandals" if one is confronted with a journeyacross a field of thorns (p. 55).  Neither bases "success on a submissive world or overpowering force, but on intelligent grooming and cultivated resilience" (p. 55). Much here will exist familiar to creative people:  you're trying to think, only that one song by that one band keeps blasting away in your head.  Waitzkin'due south "only option was to become at peace with the racket" (p. 56).  In the language of economics, the constraints are given; we don't get to cull them.

This is explored in greater detail in chapter 16.  He discusses the top performers, Michael Hashemite kingdom of jordan, Tiger Wood, and others who do not obsess over the last failure and who know how to relax when they demand to (p. 179).  The experience of NFL quarterback Jim Harbaugh is also useful as "the more he could let things go" while the defense was on the field, "the sharper he was in the next drive" (p. 179).  Waitzkin discusses farther things he learned while experimenting in human being performance, specially with respect to "cardiovascular interval training," which "can have a profound issue on your ability to quickly release tension and recover from mental exhaustion" (p. 181).  It is that last concept—to "recover from mental exhaustion"—that is probable what most academics need help with.

In that location is much here about pushing boundaries; however, one must earn the correct to practice and then: equally Waitzkin writes, "Jackson Pollock could depict like a camera, but instead he chose to splatter paint in a wild manner that pulsed with emotion"  (p. 85).  This is some other good lesson for academics, managers, and educators.  Waitzken emphasizes close attending to detail when receiving educational activity, particularly from his Tai Chi instructor William C.C. Chen.  Tai Chi is not about offering resistance or forcefulness, merely about the ability "to blend with (an opponent'southward) energy, yield to information technology, and overcome with softness" (p. 103).

The book is littered with stories of people who didn't reach their potential because they didn't seize opportunities to improve or because they refused to conform to conditions.  This lesson is emphasized in chapter 17, where he discusses "making sandals" when confronted with a thorny path, such every bit an underhanded competitor.  The book offers several principles by which we can become better educators, scholars, and managers.

Celebrating outcomes should exist secondary to celebrating the processes that produced those outcomes (pp. 45-47).  In that location is also a study in contrasts beginning on folio 185, and information technology is something I accept struggled to learn.  Waitzkin points to himself at tournaments existence able to relax between matches while some of his opponents were pressured to clarify their games in between.  This leads to extreme mental fatigue: "this tendency of competitors to frazzle themselves between rounds of tournaments is surprisingly widespread and very self-destructive" (p. 186).

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The Art of Learning has much to teach us regardless of our field.  I constitute it particularly relevant given my chosen profession and my decision to start studying martial arts when I started teaching.  The insights are numerous and applicable, and the fact that Waitzkin has used the principles he at present teaches to go a world-class competitor in ii very demanding competitive enterprises makes it that much easier to read.

I recommend this volume to anyone in a position of leadership or in a position that requires extensive learning and accommodation.  That is to say, I recommend this book to anybody.

More than About Learning

• 13 Ways to Develop Self-Directed Learning and Larn Faster
• How to Learn Fast and Remember More: 5 Effective Techniques
• How to Create an Effective Learning Process And Learn Smart

Featured photo credit: Jazmin Quaynor via unsplash.com

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/a-review-of-the-art-of-learning.html