Worldwide Success

In the article The Art of Learning we started a discussion about Josh Waitzkin, the child prodigy who by the age of 9 had already won his first national chess title, and then moved on to win seven additional national chess championships for various age groups and became and international chess master by the age of 16.  As if that wasn’t enough, at the age of 21 Josh changed disciplines and by the age of 27 had won two world championships in Push Hands, the martial art form of Tai Chi.

Josh attributes his remarkable success to having mastered the art of learning.  In his book, The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence, Josh explains in great detail every step and every insight of his learning process.  There is so much to be learned from Josh’s book that can be applied to success in any discipline that it is worth spending more time exploring the lessons captured by Josh’s own learning journey.  Let’s start by viewing this video in which Josh introduces himself and his book:

In order to write the book and provide us with the wonderful insights from his learning process Josh forced himself to retrace his steps and remember what he had internalized.  As Josh explains, much of what he learned has been so deeply internalized that it is no longer in his conscious mind, so he had to dig deep in his unconscious and break down his knowledge incrementally.  This is where the tremendous value of this book comes from.

In order to cover in depth the key success concepts from his book, we will split this article into two parts.  Let’s dive in and start reviewing some of these concepts:

The Approach to Learning

Josh refers to the work by Dr. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher in the field of developmental psychology to describe the difference between entity and incremental theories of intelligence.  Dr. Dweck’s work is explained in detail in the article How Mindset Influences Success.  In essence, entity theorists attribute their success or failure to an innate and unalterable level of ability.  They tend to say things like “I am smart at this”.  Incremental theorists on the other hand believe that success can be achieved through hard work.  They use language such as “I achieved this because I worked very hard at it”. 

Being an incremental theorist himself, Josh believes that the key to success is to embrace a long-term learning process and not live in a static, safe state of mediocrity.  In other words, in order to grow you must step of your comfort zone.  He draws an interesting analogy to the life of a hermit crab.  As the crab grows, it needs to step out of its protective shell in order to find a new, bigger shell.  In between shells, the crab gets exposed to the dangers of the outside world where it can be easily devoured by predators.  The learning phase in between shells is where the growth occurs.  According to Josh, someone stuck in entity theory is like a anorexic hermit crab who would rather starve itself rather than face the challenge of finding a new shell.  Here is how Josh puts it in his own words:

“In my experience, successful people shoot for the stars, put their hearts on the line in every battle, and ultimately discover that the lessons learned from the pursuit of excellence mean much more than the immediate trophies and glory.  In the long run, painful losses may prove much more valuable than wins - those who are armed with a healthy attitude and are able to draw wisdom from every experience, “good” or “bad”, are the ones who make it down the road.”

 

Pushing Yourself

Throughout the book Josh talks about the importance or pushing yourself to the next level and describes how good competitors rise to the level of the opposition.  He explains how in his entire career he and his father looked for competitors that were a little stronger than him, and how losing was part of his learning experience. However, he warns us of the importance of achieving balance:

“To my mind, the fields of learning and performance are an exploration of greyness – of the in-between.  There is the careful balance of pushing yourself relentlessly, but not so hard that you melt down.  Muscles and minds need to stretch to grow, but if stretched too thin, they will snap.”

Dealing with Loss

Dealing with loss is a very important aspect of the learning process.  Very early in life, children have to deal with the emotions of losing.   Some parents, in an effort to soothe the soul of the child who has just lost a game, mistakenly come to the rescue by saying the loss did not matter.  But the child knows better, so telling the child that losing does not matter is insulting their intelligence.

Josh emphasizes the important influence parents have on the learning and developmental growth of their children.  When a child wins, praise should be given to the effort.  The spotlight should be put on the process of getting to a winning state, not the glory of the win.  This is not to say that you shouldn’t celebrate wins.  Children and adults should fully enjoy the exhilarating experience of winning a difficult competitive pursuit.  However, it is important to learn from the experience and internalize what went right, rather than develop a big ego and simply assume that you won because you are good.

By the same token, when a child loses, parents should provide comfort to the child and acknowledge the emotional difficulties of dealing with the loss.  Sometimes a hug and a shoulder to cry on is all that the child needs at the moment immediately following the loss.  At a later time, it is important to trace back and understand what lead to the loss.  Was it lack of preparation?  Loss of concentration?  Overconfidence?  Intimidation?  According to Josh, all mistakes have a technical and a mental component, and this type of introspective thinking is not only a great leaning opportunity, it is also a very healthy coping mechanism.  Again, Josh hits it right on the nail:

“Growth comes at the point of resistance.  We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities.”

In part 2 of this article we will review other key success concepts from The Art of Learning.  Be sure to come back.

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