The speaker argues that imitation is a fundamental learning tool not only for concrete skills like sports and music but also for abstract abilities such as communication and thinking. He shares his favorite Ben Franklin anecdote, where Franklin improves his writing by repeatedly reading, summarizing, reconstructing, and reshaping passages from the 1711 publication The Spectator. Franklin's method includes making short hints of each sentence, rewriting from memory, comparing with the original, converting prose to verse and back, and reorganizing hints to develop a stock of words, methodical thought, and stylistic improvement. The speaker reads the passage aloud, expressing enthusiasm for the practice of imitation and repetition as a pathway to mastery.
Chapters
When I play basketball, I try to imitate Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. When I play golf, I try to look at Tiger Woods' swing and try to imitate it. When I play guitar, I imitate Slash or Richie Sambora. For specific skills like these, it seems most people instinctively know We should imitate those who can do it well. But when it comes to more general skills like communicating or thinking, a lot of people seem to forget that the best way to learn and improve is also to imitate. My 4th favorite idea— favorite story that I love to read from Ben Franklin is a passage from his autobiography where he describes how he first discovered this pamphlet or publication called The Spectator. From 1711 and how much he loved it and how he used it to improve his communication skills. Here is the selected text from the autobiography where he talks about this. Reading this out loud brings me a lot of joy, and I hope it brings you a little bit listening to it. About this time I met with an odd volume of The Spectator. It was the 3rd. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length and as fully as it had been expressed before in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, a readiness in recollecting and using them. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse, and after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them. But I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer. Of which I was extremely ambitious. This was number 4 of my 5 favorite Ben Franklin stories.
