Author sets out to learn (but not master): chess, singing, surfing, drawing, making (wedding rings), and juggling
Advantages of being a beginner:
No expectations or imposter syndrome
Can usually see progress faster
More open-minded → see possibilities others with experience cannot
Younger brains (<20) → faster, more “intuitive” style of thinking, more reliant on intuition
Older people → other knowledge/experience can interfere with learning and memory retrieval
Fluid vs crystallized intelligence
Lessons from Infants
Infants learning to walk = ideal beginners— very high failure rate, yet little negative feedback; designed to not get hurt when falling… other lessons from infant learning?
Practice in many contexts → may be less successful, but learn more; explore variety of solutions
Fail often!
Skills rarely transfer (eg. from crawling to walking)
Learning can be nonlinear— can get worse before getting better
Operate at the edge of impossible— zone of proximal development → fastest learning
Take advantage of opportunities that arise; don’t stay too fixed on set goal
Learning to Sing
Very vulnerable to perform/sing in public— think about the last time you did so!
Why are so many of us poor/mediocre singers?
Kindergarten → 6th grade, people improve at singing, but regress by college-aged— likely because less “practice”
Development of musical self-consciousness, despite lack of correlation btw actual performance and self-perception → people identify as “musical” or not, affecting amount of engagement (assumed to be innate talent)
Can be therapeutic (both physical and mental)— singing activates more emotions than speaking, no one liking their own voice
Need to be physically relaxed to let lungs and larynx work optimally
Often learning consists of doing less, not more— trying too hard → tension, which inhibits vocal cords
Replacing old habits rather than simply not doing them → less likely to revert to old ones under pressure (ex. bending down when singing high notes)
Mimic the conditions of singing in the shower! Warm, relaxed, standing, energized
Virtues of Learning on the Fly
Chorus effect: disconnect of sound from its source when coming from many people together, resulting from combination of each individual deviating slightly from perfect pitch
Performing in groups can lead to social facilitation (doing “better”) or social loafing (doing worse)
Acts as social glue: choirs usually around 50 people, ideal size; faster bonding than other groups from synchrony of singing
Singing alone makes you feel good; singing in groups makes you feel even better— lowers cortisol, ups oxytocin
Choirs → ideal learning environment: many people to observe, immediate feedback, motivation to contribute
Unique skill to sing in choir than alone, though! Different focus
The Challenges of the Advanced Beginner (Surfing!)
Classic beginner mistake = looking at ourselves vs where we want to be going— surfing, biking
Across most skills, do better if focusing on external goal vs ourselves— in golf, thinking about the hole vs elbow; in music, overall sound vs hands
Initially, beginners adhere to context-free rules; to become advanced beginner, start incorporating context
Leads to U-shaped learning curve— learning gets harder after beginning; start to know what you don’t know, can overgeneralize rules
Goes to Simply Surf!
Third (of five) stage after beginner, advanced beginner, is competent → emotional and personal involvement in success or failure (not just a result of you knowing or not knowing something)
Can be okay with staying at this stage— if the skill (ex. surfing) is more an enthusiasm than a job, want to improve as long as it keeps being fun
How We Learn to Do Things (Juggling)
Juggling = often studied in science of learning— right difficulty, easy to measure
As we get better at a skill, become more efficient with use of muscles; not as much memorizing the physical motion as the mental patterns
Repetition without repetition → important to practice in different contexts, solving the problem again each time rather than mastering one solution
Motivation/desire to learn → learn more from observation (one of best ways to pick up a skill; necessary but not sufficient)
Also need someone watching you— getting both positive and negative feedback
Being a beginner, regardless of skill, age, and progress, leads to increase in neuroplasticity
Learning to Draw
Not a motor skill, but a thinking one: learning to draw what we actually see, rather than in categorical prototypes
Could be considered equal to reading in terms of things people should learn → gives us visual literacy in addition to verbal
To draw precision drawing, start with envelope to set up basic geometric proportions, add high and low points
Abstract everything— see curves as series of small lines