PNTV: The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin (#344)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another episode of Philosopher's Notes. TV. Today we've got another great book, the Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. The Art of Learning Subtitle An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance Josh Waitzkin is a fascinating guy. If you've ever heard of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, you've heard of him. He's the little child chess prodigy in that movie, which was based on a book that his father wrote about his experiences becoming one of the best young chess players in the country. A national champion for I don't know how many years. Great, great chess player. And then he got a little burned out and then he became a world class and world champion, but martial artist in the martial form of Tai chi. This book, the Art of Learning, is all about how he mastered both of those arts. Frankly, I think another title could be the Art of Mastery because this book is really about how do we master ourselves and our craft and it's a great insight on how to do that. Phenomenal book. As always, we've got a philosopher's note with a bunch of my favorite big ideas. And as always, we've got five big ideas here. Let's have fun taking a quick look. So our first idea is we need to understand two different learning theories. So Josh kicks the book off with a look at our orientations toward how we can learn. So he leans into Carol Dweck's research and says we can have a fixed mindset, an entity mindset, where we think we either have it or we don't, or we can have an incremental mindset. And as I often mention, when you read a book, when I read a book, I can kind of see different words or phrases that are used. Often this word incrementally, if it wasn't the most often referred to theme, it was one of the most often referred to themes. Incrementally. Josh tells us we move from novice to master incrementally, one little improvement every single day. We aggregate and compound those improvements and what do we get? We move from novice to master. So we need to embrace the growth mindset, Carol Dweck style. Because the simple fact is if you don't think you can improve your skills, you won't even put the effort in. Whether you think you can or you think you can't. You're right. There's a lot of wit or a lot of wisdom to that wit. You need to be willing to Embrace an incremental mindset. And that is our first big idea. So check in and see what is it that you want to be great at? Do you think you can actually become great if you're willing to incrementally improve your skill set? Fantastic. If you don't, well, you're not even going to look at any of this other stuff because you're so fixed in the idea that you either have it or you don't. Incrementally, that's what it's about. The second big idea is what's your goal? Josh has a great line. He says there's a big difference between people who want to be decent at what they do or they want to be good at what they do and those people that want to be great at what they do, and then the people that want to be among the best at what they do. Right. So what's your goal? And then he also doesn't say it, but his clear personal goal was to be the very best, the absolute best at what he does. Big difference between being decent at something versus wanting to be good or great or among the best or the absolute best. So let's start there. When you imagine yourself in your life, do you want to be a decent version of yourself? A pretty good version of yourself, A great version of yourself, among the best that you could possibly be kind of in that upper threshold? Or the absolute best that you want to be? Because if all you want to be is decent at life or being yourself or mastering your craft, Josh tells us we have a very high margin for error. You can have a bad day or get laid off or whatever and then spend two or three months on the couch. Okay, you get very low standards. You can meet them very easily. But if you have high standards, you need to step your game way up. And again, the art of learning, the art of mastery requires high standards. One of the things I talk about, actually, I don't talk about it in the note, but I talk about it in a couple of our classes. I rarely go online, but I went online to go check out what Josh is up to now. He wrote this book a while ago. I'm clicking around his website and I see that he offers one on one consulting services. He's currently booked up, but he's got this little application you can fill out. But he says very clearly, do not apply to work with me unless you're willing to act as if you've just entered a world champion training camp. A world champion training camp. Imagine your life as if you were In a world champion training camp, your standards are to be the best. A world champion. That brings up the energy, the intensity of who you are and how you're showing up in the world to an incredible degree. That's what's required if we want to master the art of mastery and learning. The third idea here is unique. You. So to go back to that idea, think about how your life would change if you just entered a world champion training camp. What immediately goes and what gets dialed up. Raise your standards, continue to keep your warmth and your self compassion, et cetera, high, but go out and step up. Third big idea is unique. You. So Josh talks about the fact that in his chess career, again, he was a kid who was ridiculously good playing in the parks of New York City, started winning all these tournaments, trained with some extraordinary teachers, and at a certain point in his adolescence, he had two different teachers and he needed to choose which one to go with. And one of them supported Josh's attacking style. He tended to be an attacking a bit reckless, but just played with a certain style that was intense and attacking. And he had a teacher that supported that. And then he had a teacher that wanted him to learn basically the exact opposite style, a super defensive style of some of the best chess players out there. But it was not his style. Long story a little shorter. He made what he believes, in retrospect, to not be the wisest decision, which is to go with the guy who basically taught him to go against his natural strengths. And in the process, he wound up losing the joy and the love he had for chess, became a little burned out, and wound up quitting chess. So he makes the point that we need to get clear on who we are. And there will be times we need to modify our kind of take, right, and be open to feedback and how we can optimize. But we want to keep the through line to be consistent with who we are, the unique expression of us. So for him, it was an attacking chest style. What is it for you? Who are you when you're expressing yourself most fully? We're going to do a PNTV soon on Peter Drucker's the Effective Executive, and he makes the exact same point. He says you need to make your strengths productive. Everybody has strengths and everybody has weaknesses. There are peaks and there are valleys, he says, and if you want to be mediocre, try to make yourself good at everything. It's not going to happen if you focus on your weaknesses, you're going to become mediocre. If you have character issues, he says you need to work on them. Otherwise, lean into your strengths so hard that you make your weaknesses irrelevant. Who are you at your best? Think about that. Lean into your unique skills. As Tom Rath says, one of the world's leading researchers on strengths, he says, double down on your strengths every single time. So what are you great at? What can you be great at? What do you enjoy doing? What are you naturally good at? Lean in. Be the unique you. The fourth thing here is to invest in loss. So when you step up your standards to be the best, you need to be comfortable with losing. You need to be comfortable with failure. You need to, in Josh's words, invest in loss. And he uses Michael Jordan as an example. He says that most people know that Michael Jordan has the most game winning shots ever. He's taken and made the most game winning shots in the history of the NBA. But what most people don't realize is that Johnson or Jordan also missed more game winning shots than anyone else in the history of the NBA. And he says, how do you think he felt on those nights where he missed the game winning shot and Those, you know, 15, 20,000 people left went home disappointed that Jordan missed the game winning shot? How do you think Jordan felt every night that he missed that game winning shot? He says he felt terrible, but he invested in that loss. He made living at that edge, being committed to being his best self, a way of life. He invested in that loss. He came back from every setback stronger. Josh makes the great point that every time he gets injured, he shows up the next day. And most people say, dude, take some time off. You got to relax, right? And he's back in there. One time he broke his hand and he was back in the gym and he needed to train with one hand. And in the process he invested in that loss. And he learned some moves that later in his career became super, super helpful that he wouldn't have learned if he didn't have that loss. So the idea is every time you face a setback, come back stronger. Antifragile style. The obstacle is the way invest in loss. Phil Stutz, my coach says we need to go from failure to failure to failure to failure to failure. He says, make failure your religion. You're willing to invest in the loss, get a little bit better each time, spiral up through it. Antifragile style. Our fifth big idea here is one of my favorites. Your best performance needs to become your new baseline. It's an extraordinary thing. So imagine that this is your normal way of going through life, right? This is your current baseline. Then you have this peak experience. You do something that's extraordinary. This is your best, right? Right. He says you need to figure out what you did to make that moment extraordinary. That day extraordinary. That move extraordinary for him as he was studying Tai Chi. And move your baseline up here so that your new baseline is your prior best. This idea is so incredibly inspiring to me. As I look at my own creative production. I think of what was my best day as it relates to whatever it is that I'm doing, whether it's creating a philosopher's note or one of these, or optimal living class or a plus one or whatever. What was my best? Right? And how do I make that best? My new baseline. So think about you at your best. What did you do? What did a masterpiece day look like? To use our language, what did you at your absolute best look like? Step back. Take the time to figure out what you did such that you can make that best, your new baseline. That's just who you are. Then guess what? That there's a new high that you can reach. But you can't do that unless you're actually analyzing it. Josh talks about the fact that he would videotape all of his sparring sessions and if he made a move that was something he'd never done before, he would try to break it down and see what did I do? Perhaps intuitively or fortuitously, that I can wire into just how I show up going forward. And the way he describes it is super inspiring. The but think about that. You at your best as your new baseline. As you invest in the times when you aren't your best, which is another big thing. When you're willing to play at this level, there are going to be times where you don't look very pretty. You need to invest in those times, come back stronger and stronger, double down on your strengths, understand who you are, be willing to lean into that unique version of you. And then what's your goal? Do you want to be decent? Do you want to be good? Do you want to be great? Do you want to be among the best? Or do you want to be the best possible version of you? It's a powerful thing. World Champion Training Camp the only way you can possibly get there is incrementally little step by baby, step by baby step, aggregating and compounding all those little gains. Novice to master. That is a quick look at this great book, the Art of Learning. Josh Waitzkin. Hope you enjoyed and have another awesome day. See ya. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me. Hi, this is Brian with some super exciting news. Optymyze is now absolutely free. All 600 philosopher's notes, the 50101 masterclasses, thousand optimize, plus ones free. 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