Kyle Fitzgibbons's Blog, page 14

Key Concepts: Adaptation

In my most recent article examining the success factor of grit, I discussed several of the reasons the concept is important and a few of the issues I have with the current understanding of it. As a result of all the reading needed for that article, I sent a few questions to Angela Duckworth, who I mentioned is the main researcher responsible for promoting the concept. In her email reply, she mentioned David Meketon. That led me to watch two videos: one of Meketon presenting about grit at a community college and another suggested by YouTube of Duckworth explaining grit.

I was so riled up by a few of the comments in each video, that I came home and ranted to my wife for almost 30 minutes on the topic and eventually ended with me deciding to write this article on the importance of understanding adaptation for researchers, teachers, and students. It also inspired me to begin another new series that I’ll name “Key Concepts”. Understanding adaptation is, quite simply, the single most important concept I know and could share with others.

The video below discusses several concepts, from self-control, perseverance, grit, to optimism and passion. About halfway through the video above, Meketon states, “Here’s where the sweet spot really is. What it really takes is working at the edge of your ability. Let me describe that for you. You are trying to do something and it is as hard as anything. It’s right at the edge. That’s the sweet spot.

You’ve heard the old saying ‘no pain, no gain’. Well guess what? I have to break it to you, it’s true. If you’re not working at the edge of your ability. If you’re not working just a little harder than you can stand. If it is not unpleasant, you’re not working hard enough!

When you are saying, ‘This is hard! I’m frustrated. I don’t wanna do it.’ That’s where you’re supposed to be. That’s where we want you to be.”

Before discussing this quote, I want to share the second video and the comments from Duckworth that also provided the motivation for this article. In the beginning of the video Duckworth says, “Grit is really more about your stamina. How consistently you’re working in a certain direction than how hard you’re working in that direction. It is not about intensity.

We don’t look for bursts of unusual productivity or effort, but we really look for constancy of effort over time.”

Now let’s take a look at what adaptation is and how it occurs before analyzing these two sets of comments.

Adaptation

Adaptation is an extremely important concept related to biology and evolution, specifically fitness. In evolutionary science, fitness is the ability to survive and reproduce and generally speaking, the more adaptable an individual or species is, the better fitness it has. On a less grand scale, fitness in health and exercise science is often described as the ability to do a task.

In a nutshell, adaptation encompasses all the changes that occur following stress in order to better cope next time the stress occurs. If an individual undergoes a stressful workout, she adapts by becoming stronger. If a child is abandoned and never develops proper attachment to a parent, it often adapts by becoming less trustful and curious of others. As one can see, adaptations can be both helpful and harmful.

Learning is the main form of adaptation for the majority of people in regards to personal and professional success. When we are presented with difficult problems, we work on them until we adapt and figure out how to deal with them more easily next time.

Math is always a great example. How difficult was multiplication for you as a child? Probably very difficult when first presented to you. However, over time you adapted (learned) to this new stress in your life and now multiplication comes easily with no stress at all. The same occurred as you learned division, algebra, geometry, etc. That is thanks to the wonderful ability of your brain to adapt to new stresses (in this case math).

So how do we drive adaptation most effectively? Physical training has many well known answers to this question that can be transferred beautifully to other areas, such as intellectual, emotional, and professional development.

Effectiveness

Possibly the single most concise and easily understood explanation for driving effective adaptations I’ve seen comes from Alwyn Cosgrove. The full article is well worth the read as it takes only a minute or so, but here is the most important chunk:

“Effective, results-producing work is not dependent upon the total volume of work primarily.

It’s the same as effective, results-producing exercise:

Effectiveness first.
Intensity second.
Frequency Third.
Volume last.

Is your training effective? Are you focused and striving to do more work/lift more weight/do more reps in the session? Are you training regularly? (in all studies – frequency of exposure to a stimulus is a primary key to success).

Once you have effective and technically sound exercise, performed with appropriate intensity on a regular basis – then you can think about adding volume. Doing more work can’t replace effectiveness, intensity or consistency” (Are We Really Working Hard).

In order to understand intensity and volume better, Mike Tuchscherer has written extensively on their relationship to adaptation and training effect. “I’ve said many times before that Intensity is mostly what determines your training effect. Volume determines the magnitude of that training effect” (All About Volume). This corroborates Cosgrove’s idea that adding volume before deciding the correct intensity is wasted effort. Tuchscherer further states in a later article, “If you’re training with a purpose in mind – any purpose – and you don’t pay attention to your intensity, then there is a good chance that you will not achieve the effect that you’re after. What’s more is the better you understand the training effect that each intensity can produce, the more surgical you can be in your own training. And precise training is effective training” (All About Intensity).

Although both Cosgrove and Tuchscherer agree that intensity is a higher priority for in designing effective work, Tuchscherer does clarify, “This is something that you have to understand if you want to improve your strength, size, or fitness. The reason is because continued improvement often hinges on volume. The reason for this is that volume and not intensity is the main driver of stress in your workouts. Some stress can be derived from intensity, but to a great extent that comes from psychological arousal. But that’s a topic for another time” (You Are Not Overtrained).

Tuchscherer is making the point that doing a bunch of volume at 50% intensity won’t deliver the results you are after, but neither will one repetition at 80-100%. You must train with enough intensity to get progress (stronger, smarter, faster) and then add volume to ensure an actual stress occurs so your body or brain has a reason to adapt.

Back to the Videos

I know this has been a long ride. I introduced two videos, then talked about adaptation, and then went onto physical training. However, without the understanding that physical training can shed on adaptation, analysis of the videos won’t make much sense.

Meketon stresses that we have to be frustrated, have feelings of unpleasantness, and be working at our absolute edge. Looking at the information just given, this seems more correct than Duckworth’s assertion that grit isn’t about intensity. However, it goes too far.

We do not have to be constantly frustrated to make progress. We do need to pick the appropriate intensity, which will sometimes be unpleasant, but not necessarily frustratingly so. After all, stress by it’s very nature is something we aren’t adapted to, so it will be uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean we need to be in pain though. The more appropriate saying in training circles is often, “stimulate, don’t annihilate”.

Duckworth misses the point in the other direction, believing that grit can make you successful via volume and frequency without regard to intensity. If you just work a long time, you will be alright. This is absolutely false. You cannot progress without increasing the average intensity over time. This is known as progressive overload in physical training and is the main driving force for improvement. In education circles, most of these ideas are encapsulated by Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” or Krashen’s “i + 1”. We must build intensity to progress, and yes this means that work never gets easier, only the work we’ve already mastered will be easy.

Rather than adopting the view that a marathon like approach to grit will make you successful, it makes more sense to think of success as resulting from a series of sprints. This requires people to work intensely for a short time, rest, recover, adapt, and then work at higher intensity over and over again in an endless iteration. The iteration over a long time is what creates success and is “marathon-like” only in the sense that it lasts a long time, but not in the sense of going slowly without breaks.

This cycle has been understood in medicine and physical training circles for over a half century now. It’s time education and achievement researchers figure it out.

Stress. Rest. Adapt. Iterate. 

Further Reading and References

01 - What is grit?
All About Intensity
All About Volume
Are We Really Working Hard?
David Meketon from the University of Pennsylvania presenting GRIT
The Stress of Life
You Are Not Overtrained

Success Factors: Grit

I quickly realized after publishing my last article, that there was no way a single post would capture what I had to say on the topic of causal factors of success and the way I think about the topic in general. So I decided to make it into a recurring series and tackle one factor at a time. The first factor that was immediately mentioned to me by an old friend from Korea was grit. Naturally, I dove into past books I've read to refresh my knowledge and looked to the research to see what there was to learn about the topic.

Defining Grit

Grit is consistently defined by psychologist Angela Duckworth, the researcher largely responsible for bringing the word into everyday use, as “the tendency to pursue long-term challenging goals with perseverance and passion” (p. 3). She further states that, “Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina. Whereas disappointment or boredom signals to others that it is time to change trajectory and cut losses, the gritty individual stays the course” (p. 1-2).

The term is often conflated with self-control, a related, but significantly different concept. Duckworth explains, “Self-control entails aligning actions with any valued goal despite momentarily more-alluring alternatives; grit, in contrast, entails having and working assiduously toward a single challenging superordinate goal through thick and thin, on a timescale of years or even decades. Although both self-control and grit entail aligning actions with intentions, they operate in different ways and over different timescales” (p. 2). Essentially, self-control deals with the day-to-day distractions of everyday living in the modern world (i.e. Facebook at work, cake while on a diet, etc.), while grit is more concerned with a timeline of years, decades, or possibly even a lifetime.

Importance for students and teachers

Now that grit is understood and how it differentiates itself from self-control, it’s time to look at why it’s received so much attention. Basically, the Grit Scale - a questionnaire that self-assesses grit using eight or 12 questions, depending on the version - has been shown to be a remarkably accurate predictor of success in a variety of activities from the United States Military Academy at West Point to national spelling bees.

A few other interesting points about grit’s relevance are that it is:
higher among individuals with more education and age
mediated by deliberate practice
correlated with a growth mindset
correlated with infrequent career changes
a better predictor of success than intelligence in many pursuits, including first year teachers
As an example of the importance of grit, “consider two children learning to play the piano. Assume that both children are equally talented in music and, therefore, improve in skill at the same rate per unit effort. Assume further that these children are matched in the intensity of effort they expend toward musical training. Intensity in this case is described by the extent to which attention is fully engaged during practice time. Duration and direction of effort, on the other hand, are described by the number of accumulated hours devoted to musical study and, crucially, the decision to deepen expertise in piano rather than to explore alternative instruments. Our findings suggest that children matched on talent and capacity for hard work may nevertheless differ in grit. Thus, a prodigy who practices intensively yet moves from piano to the saxophone to voice will likely be surpassed by an equally gifted but grittier child” (p. 12).

Directly above, Duckworth explains that success is often constrained by the length of time devoted to the activity in question, rather than natural talent or work capacity over the short term. It is essential to understand that expertise and the deliberate practice required to reach an expert level often take years to accumulate. Whether you can work intensely for a couple of months on a particular interest is often not relevant to producing world class achievement or success. It takes grit or sustained effort over years.

Issues with the concept

While grit has been shown to be a valid predictor of success, it is usually classified as a stable personality trait and grouped within the framework of individual differences, even given that it does increase with age and education as mentioned above. A personality trait is by definition a natural or innate disposition towards certain behavior. Of course, our experiences tend to augment or curtail these traits, but it is still unclear to what extent this occurs with grit.

As Duckworth points out in the limitations section of her most cited article on grit, “A case could be made that the sum total of our research is to show that past behavior predicts future behavior. The strong version of this complaint would suggest there is no stable individual difference called grit. Rather, there is consistency of behavior across time, possibly reflecting consistency of situation (Mischel, 1968). Of course this claim questions such a thing as personality exists at all” (p. 13).

This brings me to my general rub with the idea. Even though it’s possible to measure this thing called “grit” does not mean that it necessarily exists. It could be that, “a third variable drove both success outcomes and responses to the Grit Scale” (p. 12).

As one explanation of how a third variable might drive success and responses to the Grit Scale, the now famous parents Laszlo and Klara Polgar were able to raise three daughters to become chess grand masters, the highest rank available in world chess. It seems hard to argue that these three young girls were passionate about chess when starting at the ages of four. They almost certainly would not have been perseverant, if not for their parents attempting to literally use them as experiments to show that deliberate practice over many years could achieve success in a field regardless of talent (p. 68-69).

Neither of the parents were strong chess players and there certainly is not evidence that chess is somehow genetically endowed. The parents did, however, study education and psychology professionally. In fact, if anyone had grit, it was the parents. Yet the grit of the parents, a individual personality trait, was “transferred” to the children. This seems to suggest that people can gain grit through proxy.

Of course, since they were family, the parents’ grit may have been passed down to the children genetically. However, there is enough research to show that people who engage in deliberate practice regardless of being coached by a parent or unrelated coach tend to succeed. Since deliberate practice is a mediating factor between grit and achievement, it seems more logical to stop there. Why reach beyond the importance of deliberate practice to some ephemeral quality deemed “grit”. In this case, we might even postulate that grit was a social trait, bouncing between husband and wife and fostered in the children, who also would have had each other to lean on as well.

Deliberate practice is known to be both teachable and learnable. Grit is some shapeless personality characteristic as of now. Grit also seems to be transferrable from coaches and other adults to second party individuals based on empirical observations like the one above with the Polgars, suggesting that it may not even exist as an independent factor from another third variable (perhaps social grit instead of individual grit, or simply the learned importance of deliberate practice) as discussed by Duckworth above. 


Until more research is done to solidify the concept and figure out if it is teachable, it seems like wasted energy focusing on it in educational circles and throwing it around as a new buzz word to rile up staff meetings. There are so many things research has already shown to be effective, focusing on those knowns provides more than enough explanatory power to get started.

Further Reading and References

A Primer on Positive PsychologyCan Perseverance Be Taught?Deliberate Practice Spells Success: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee
Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals
How Children Succeed
Self-Control and Grit: Related but Separable Determinants of Success
Talent Is Overrated
True Grit

Success Factors: Exposure, Personal Intelligence, Comparative Advantage

Intelligence is the dynamic interplay of engagement and abilities in pursuit of personal goals (p. 332).

I have been teaching for a few months now at an international K-12 school in Singapore. The students are all good kids from nice families with supportive, albeit often very busy, parents who travel frequently. Many are very bright and the majority have privileges that 99% of the world would die to have.

This new experience has made me reflect on what it is we as teachers, schools, and societies want from our students and what success even means. While reflecting on the causal factors of success, three ideas have constantly stood out as related and necessary:
Exposure to many and varied experiencesThe Theory of Personal IntelligenceGaining a comparative advantage
Of course, I do not think these are sufficient. Luck goes a long way to explaining any type of success in life, as does the nurturing of contentment and gratitude. However, leaving aside luck, which we have no control over and the idea of enlightened equanimity through some sort of ascetic meditation, the three ideas above seem to offer a strong explanation for much of a person's success.

Exposure to many and varied experiences

Being that we are embodied beings, experience is how we learn and adapt in the world. The mixture of our interaction with the environment and our genes is responsible for what we are good at and what we take an interest in. It is my belief that many people, myself included, simply never get the exposure needed to decide what opportunities in the world are deemed interesting or worthwhile to them.

As an example, I have developed a huge interest in health and well-being as I've gotten older and now often think it would be wonderful to be a medical doctor. However, this path never occurred to me as a child or student for a number of different reasons. Had I spent some time in and around hospitals, speaking with interesting practitioners, that interest most likely would have developed much earlier.

The main point is that students of all backgrounds need to spend time doing different activities, even ones they may not think will be interesting. Far too often, our youth get tracked into one sport or one activity that they seem to perform relatively good at and then stop exploring. This is awful and limits the field of vision that they can develop for the possibilities of their life. It is very difficult to imagine how your life as an actuary might be if you have never even heard of the profession.

The Theory of Personal Intelligence

Intelligence is a rather controversial field of research. Is there such a thing as g - general intelligence?How about multiple intelligences? How many? Is is fixed at birth? Developed over your lifetime? When it comes to intelligence, I strongly agree with Scott Barry Kaufmann, author of the book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, and what he has labeled the Theory of Personal Intelligence.

In the nineteenth century, it was possible to start playing chess at seventeen and still become a grand master. Among players born in the twentieth century, though, no one who started playing after the age of fourteen became a grand master. By the end of the twentieth century, Ericsson found, those who went on to become chess masters had started playing chess at an average age of ten and a half, and the typical grand master had started playing at seven (p. 132).

Notice this definition of intelligence does not have the side effect of labeling students as innately gifted or not. It simply looks at congruence; are people acting in a manner that is congruent with their stated goals?

This ties-in right on the heels of the first point of exposure to a variety of experiences. As stated above, it seems foolish to stop exploring once you have found one thing you're relatively good at it. However, taking the definition to heart also means pursuing those things you have deemed interesting and applying your full engagement and abilities to the goal.

This means following up with anything that sparks an interest and finding out exactly what is needed to break into the field. For example, learning what actuaries are from a trip to an insurance company could lead you to investigate what is needed to become one (hint: about ten years of strenuous math exams you self-study for while working a full-time job).

Knowing what you're up against can drastically improve your odds by increasing your motivation. I have found that I am never motivated when goals are vague and the end point is not clear. By being engaged in the interest, I am able to figure out exactly what needs to be done by learning where to start and what an end point looks like.

Gaining a comparative advantage

Once a student has intelligently pursued her interests by exploring different experiences and investigating what it takes to succeed, it's time to gain a comparative advantage. This is one of the most important terms within the field of economics and essentially means being relatively better at producing some product than your competitors (usually in reference to different countries engaging in international trade).

There is a lot to say about this idea. Suffice to say that as the concept relates to most service or knowledge fields (the end result of most highly educated fields), a comparative advantage is going to depend on gaining expertise in your chosen field. Expertise is popularly thought of as taking 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach thanks to the research of Anders Ericsson and pop-nonfiction writer Malcolm Gladwell. 

However, looking at a quote from How Children Succeed by Paul Tough, which discussed the average age a grand master started playing chess over the last century, quickly illustrates the fact that gaining expertise in a field is relative to how many hours your competitors have spent as well. 
The author then goes on to discuss how one chess player practiced fourteen hours a day growing up and that his likely total hours of practice had exceeded twenty-five thousand hours, absolutely shattering the "ten thousand hour rule".

This understanding is highly important, as dedication to a profession will likely entail thousands of hours spent studying it. Realizing those numbers early on is a huge advantage. If a typical teacher spends only a few thousand hours deliberately practicing her craft in graduate school and then goes on to teach via autopilot for 20 years, one could theoretically pass and gain a comparative advantage over her relatively quickly by devoting four or five thousand hours of deliberate practice in the field of teaching. Understanding what the requirements for your chosen field are makes the path easier to follow when things get difficult.

Conclusion and Implications

The three factors discussed here attempt to draw the conclusion that individual success in a professional and economic sense can be traced back to gaining a comparative advantage that is developed through intelligent behavior after having spent enough time to develop real interests and gain exposure to the variety of opportunities available to young people. 

If you have followed me so far, the implication of this actually goes much further than any musings on individual success. It implies that the basic structure of our schools and societies have missed how progress is made. Progress is often driven by our experts. Rarely are amateurs or dilettantes responsible for scientific breakthroughs or artistic masterpieces. This expertise and resultant progress can be leveraged to achieve whatever personal dreams of success a person might have - higher pay, less working hours, more vacation, etc. - as they are actually rare and valuable, i.e. scarce in the workforce and capable of demanding what they want.

This demands societal priorities. If the average grand master is now beginning to study chess and spend 25,000 hours practicing before reaching their early twenties, then in a very real sense, they are "more of an expert" than any medical doctor today. I would imagine this holds true for other fields like music and drama, where children are allowed to start early in their development. The competition is so high, that one must start while only three to seven years old in order to have any kind of advantage.

What would happen in our worlds of medicine, technology, and science if we had children gaining this kind of experience at a similarly young age. I can only imagine the breakthroughs that would result from a person who had already spent 20 years in medicine by the time most of us graduate from college.

I know there are plenty of ethical and legal issues with this conclusion. 

But. 

Let me end with asking what the vision of our future is when we take chess and violin more seriously than medicine and technology as fields of expertise?

On Student Success

I have been teaching for a few months now at an international K-12 school in Singapore. The students are all good kids from nice families with supportive, albeit often very busy, parents who travel frequently. Many are very bright and the majority have privileges that 99% of the world would die to have.

This new experience has made me reflect on what it is we as teachers, schools, and societies want from our students and what success even means. While reflecting on the causal factors of success, three ideas have constantly stood out as related and necessary:
Exposure to many and varied experiencesThe Theory of Personal IntelligenceGaining a comparative advantage
Of course, I do not think these are sufficient. Luck goes a long way to explaining any type of success in life, as does the nurturing of contentment and gratitude. However, leaving aside luck, which we have no control over and the idea of enlightened equanimity through some sort of ascetic meditation, the three ideas above seem to offer a strong explanation for much of a person's success.

Exposure to many and varied experiences

Being that we are embodied beings, experience is how we learn and adapt in the world. The mixture of our interaction with the environment and our genes is responsible for what we are good at and what we take an interest in. It is my belief that many people, myself included, simply never get the exposure needed to decide what opportunities in the world are deemed interesting or worthwhile to them.

As an example, I have developed a huge interest in health and well-being as I've gotten older and now often think it would be wonderful to be a medical doctor. However, this path never occurred to me as a child or student for a number of different reasons. Had I spent some time in and around hospitals, speaking with interesting practitioners, that interest most likely would have developed much earlier.

The main point is that students of all backgrounds need to spend time doing different activities, even ones they may not think will be interesting. Far too often, our youth get tracked into one sport or one activity that they seem to perform relatively good at and then stop exploring. This is awful and limits the field of vision that they can develop for the possibilities of their life. It is very difficult to imagine how your life as an actuary might be if you have never even heard of the profession.

The Theory of Personal Intelligence

Intelligence is a rather controversial field of research. Is there such a thing as g - general intelligence?How about multiple intelligences? How many? Is is fixed at birth? Developed over your lifetime? When it comes to intelligence, I strongly agree with Scott Barry Kaufmann, author of the book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, and what he has labeled the Theory of Personal Intelligence.

Intelligence is the dynamic interplay of engagement and abilities in pursuit of personal goals (p. 332).

Notice this definition of intelligence does not have the side effect of labeling students as innately gifted or not. It simply looks at congruence; are people acting in a manner that is congruent with their stated goals?

This ties-in right on the heels of the first point of exposure to a variety of experiences. As stated above, it seems foolish to stop exploring once you have found one thing you're relatively good at it. However, taking the definition to heart also means pursuing those things you have deemed interesting and applying your full engagement and abilities to the goal.

This means following up with anything that sparks an interest and finding out exactly what is needed to break into the field. For example, learning what actuaries are from a trip to an insurance company could lead you to investigate what is needed to become one (hint: about ten years of strenuous math exams you self-study for while working a full-time job).

Knowing what you're up against can drastically improve your odds by increasing your motivation. I have found that I am never motivated when goals are vague and the end point is not clear. By being engaged in the interest, I am able to figure out exactly what needs to be done by learning where to start and what an end point looks like.

Gaining a comparative advantage

Once a student has intelligently pursued her interests by exploring different experiences and investigating what it takes to succeed, it's time to gain a comparative advantage. This is one of the most important terms within the field of economics and essentially means being relatively better at producing some product than your competitors (usually in reference to different countries engaging in international trade).

There is a lot to say about this idea. Suffice to say that as the concept relates to most service or knowledge fields (the end result of most highly educated fields), a comparative advantage is going to depend on gaining expertise in your chosen field. Expertise is popularly thought of as taking 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach thanks to the research of Anders Ericsson and pop-nonfiction writer Malcolm Gladwell. 

However, looking at a quote from How Children Succeed by Paul Tough, which discussed the average age a grand master started playing chess over the last century, quickly illustrates the fact that gaining expertise in a field is relative to how many hours your competitors have spent as well. 

In the nineteenth century, it was possible to start playing chess at seventeen and still become a grand master. Among players born in the twentieth century, though, no one who started playing after the age of fourteen became a grand master. By the end of the twentieth century, Ericsson found, those who went on to become chess masters had started playing chess at an average age of ten and a half, and the typical grand master had started playing at seven (p. 132).

The author then goes on to discuss how one chess player practiced fourteen hours a day growing up and that his likely total hours of practice had exceeded twenty-five thousand hours, absolutely shattering the "ten thousand hour rule".

This understanding is highly important, as dedication to a profession will likely entail thousands of hours spent studying it. Realizing those numbers early on is a huge advantage. If a typical teacher spends only a few thousand hours deliberately practicing her craft in graduate school and then goes on to teach via autopilot for 20 years, one could theoretically pass and gain a comparative advantage over her relatively quickly by devoting four or five thousand hours of deliberate practice in the field of teaching. Understanding what the requirements for your chosen field are makes the path easier to follow when things get difficult.

Conclusion and Implications

The three factors discussed here attempt to draw the conclusion that individual success in a professional and economic sense can be traced back to gaining a comparative advantage that is developed through intelligent behavior after having spent enough time to develop real interests and gain exposure to the variety of opportunities available to young people. 

If you have followed me so far, the implication of this actually goes much further than any musings on individual success. It implies that the basic structure of our schools and societies have missed how progress is made. Progress is often driven by our experts. Rarely are amateurs or dilettantes responsible for scientific breakthroughs or artistic masterpieces. This expertise and resultant progress can be leveraged to achieve whatever personal dreams of success a person might have - higher pay, less working hours, more vacation, etc. - as they are actually rare and valuable, i.e. scarce in the workforce and capable of demanding what they want.

This demands societal priorities. If the average grand master is now beginning to study chess and spend 25,000 hours practicing before reaching their early twenties, then in a very real sense, they are "more of an expert" than any medical doctor today. I would imagine this holds true for other fields like music and drama, where children are allowed to start early in their development. The competition is so high, that one must start while only three to seven years old in order to have any kind of advantage.

What would happen in our worlds of medicine, technology, and science if we had children gaining this kind of experience at a similarly young age. I can only imagine the breakthroughs that would result from a person who had already spent 20 years in medicine by the time most of us graduate from college.

I know there are plenty of ethical and legal issues with this conclusion. 

But. 

Let me end with asking what the vision of our future is when we take chess and violin more seriously than medicine and technology as fields of expertise?

Essentials: What I Noticed While sick

Last week sucked.

I woke up at 2:00 am Tuesday morning with a severe pain in my stomach. Then it got worse. Then I went to the bathroom a couple of times. Then I vomited a few times. Then I went to urgent care around 5:30 pm. The nurse missed my IV line in my arm because I was dehydrated and she couldn't find it, so she had to jab me again in the hand. They sent me home a few hours later with anti-nausea pills. The problem with swallowing pills when you have nausea is that they come back up just as fast.

I tried to go to sleep Tuesday night, but my stomach pain hadn't gotten any better and they never did give me anything for the pain. Urgent care wouldn't open again until 8:00 am Wednesday morning, so when my family went to sleep Tuesday night, I just stayed up and rocked back and forth next to the toilet for seven hours until at 3:00 am I realized there was not a chance of me continuing to do that for five more hours.

I woke up my mom and then my wife, who drove me thirty minutes to a further urgent care that was open 24/7. This was when I started to cry because I was so tired. I hadn't eaten or slept since Monday. The nurse only had to stick me once, but he made it count by missing and simply routing around in my arm until he found the vein. They give me more IV fluids and this time they finally gave me pain killers and some x-rays. They sent me home six hours later with some pain pills and suppositories for the anti-nausea. 

Thursday was mostly me sticking suppositories up myself and trying to not vomit. It didn't work and I went back to urgent care. They gave me an ultrasound, CT scan, and dilaudid. Dilaudid is the most magical drug on earth when you're in pain. It makes everything stop hurting almost instantly. It also made my head feel like there was a magnet sucking it back down onto the table. It became really heavy. They gave me two more prescriptions for pain and anti-nausea and sent me home.

I didn't sleep Thursday night. I vomited again a couple of times before 6:00 am on Friday morning. The pain started getting worse again. Urgent care told me to go to the emergency room and be admitted instead. More IV's and more dilaudid. I stayed in the hospital from about 9:00 am Friday morning until about 1:00 pm Sunday afternoon. I finally ate again Sunday and got off pain killers and anti-nausea.

That week sucked.

What I Noticed

Even though I was in a great deal of pain throughout the week, the pain never bothered me the most. What I missed were a few things that I now realize to be essential for my own happiness and contentment. I feel like if I could have been in pain and still had these essentials, I wouldn't have experienced the same deep feeling of distress that I did.

These essentials were:
Sleep - The number one thing I missed all week was sleep. The frustration at being absolutely exhausted and not being able to sleep is what literally drove me to tears a few different occasions. By 48 hours without sleep and lots of pain, I was sobbing. I also missed my bed and being able to simply spread out horizontally with my legs extended without pain. Being able to stretch out is wonderful and being forced into the fetal position for a week is awful.Water - I really missed drinking water even though I was thirsty. My tongue was white, swollen, and by the end started to get sores on the side. It still is a bit swollen. Having a dry mouth and throat when you're so used to being able to fix it with some water from the kitchen sink is frustrating.Whole Food - I was never super hungry. I imagine my body was suppressing the hunger because of the pain and nausea. However, I still constantly wanted food. I thought about double doubles from In-n-out all week and how delicious they would be. I really believe eating good, whole food is mostly related to the next point.A Sense of Strength - This was probably the most frustrating aspect next to sleep. I felt like I was getting weaker the entire week this sickness lasted. I felt too weak to walk, run, jump, stand up straight, or even stretch out in my own bed. For those of you that know me, I enjoy lifting weights tremendously and have been working with an online coach for the last 28 weeks to meet some fairly lofty goals I have. This month would have seen me meeting several of those goals. Now, I am probably starting back close to week 1, but we will see later this week where I am at. This sense of losing so much progress was terrible.Outdoors - I was discharged in the afternoon and it was a beautiful day. It was sunny with blue skies and warm weather. I'm from San Diego and the first days of spring when the weather is like that makes everyone feel like it is actually summer. Especially when the temperature is up in the eighties. I felt like I had been living in the night time or rooms without windows for a week. The outdoors are extremely beautiful when you haven't seen them in a while.
Conclusion

So there is my recap of the last week. I missed a lot of work and a lot of other good things. I'm really happy there aren't any more needles or drugs in me. In a weird way, I feel like I have a lot of energy. Not really physical energy. I am still really fatigued and not quite feeling sharp at all. Nevertheless, I do feel like I have a different sort of energy that is just bubbling out. I know the things I want to get done and the things that mean the most to me at this time. From here, I will just continue to regain my strength and direct my renewed energy at those things that are most important. The things I find essential to being content.

Analyzing Motivation

In my most recent book on reading a over 100 books in a year, I discussed some ideas that helped me accomplish that task. Since publishing that short work, I've been thinking even more about inspiration, motivation, and their interdependence on each other.

I can honestly say that I don't believe in the traditional stance that psychology has taken by dividing motivation into two forms: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. On the same note, I don't subscribe to the language acquisition theories of integrative and instrumental motivation.

What this comes down to is an ever broadening application of complexity theory and understanding of adaptive systems. I believe it is impossible to separate the mind and body, the body and world, and now a person's internal motivation from the people, things, and world around them.

Personal Motivations

As a short example of what I mean, here is something similar to how I've described my motivation in the past whenever intrinsic/extrinsic motivation has been brought up.

"Hey Kyle, how bout you? You intrinsically or extrinsically motivated?"

"Uh, intrinsically? Well, both I guess, depends on how you mean it."

"Well do extrinsic factors motivate you?"

"Sure, I've got plenty of role models I look up to that I try to emulate and surpass. My dad has always been a major benchmark for me when setting goals. He was big and strong, so I want to be bigger and stronger. He read a lot of books, so I want to read more books. My twin got great grades in school, so I wanted to be smarter."

"So you just want to beat everything other people do around you?"

"Kind of, not really. I really hate not being as good at something as someone else. But, I also just want to be the best possible version of myself. Really, I don't care that much if I beat anyone, just that I figure out my own limitations. I always want to be better. Does it count as intrinsic still if I use others as milestones?"

Reflection

And there's the rub. How do you separate the inspiration from "other" from the motivation of "self". I don't believe you can. They seem to be completely interconnected in my view. Others inspire me and show me what is possible and through those social interactions I begin to feel intrinsic "self" motivation. I think, "I could do that." Then I go off and see if I can.

However, it doesn't end there. Once I am inspired/motivated to pursue a goal, I constantly wind up going back to others for renewed vigor and energy. For example, I am highly motivated to read and exercise regularly, but there are times when I feel like I've done everything I can. When this happens, I hit the internet and find examples of others who have done more. This sense of competition simultaneously with both myself and others keeps me going in many cases.

The Relevant Factors to My Motivations

Now, I'm going to elaborate on a number of factors that keep me personally motivated. Many of them involve both sides of the intrinsic/extrinsic coin. My motivation is always being adjusted by my own wants and desires and by what I see others doing and getting around me.

Data - Information is highly motivating to me. The more information I have about myself and others, the more energy I have to do or accomplish something. In this vein, tables of standards or classifications are highly motivating to me. For example, these strength standards for the squat have been a motivating force to me for years now. I have slowly worked my way from untrained to advanced and have an end goal of elite. Knowing my numbers and where I stand relative to others is very driving. I plan to create a similar table for "language development standards" here on this site for this very reason of providing motivation.Goals - This relates directly to number one above. Once I have information and data about anything, I am almost spontaneously driven to create goals. It happens almost of its own volition. For instance, when starting to think about learning a new language, I discovered that most general conversation utilizes about 5,000 words. That instantly becomes my goal. Learn the first 5,000 most common vocabulary words in a new language. Many high school graduates know roughly 15,000 to 20,000 words. Who can't imagine learning that over a number of years?Plan - After seeing the data and spontaneously setting a goal, a plan is formed. This can be self planned or laid out by a coach, teacher, or mentor. Whatever the case might be, it is usually helpful to see what people who have done before me have done. Seeking out the plan of people who have accomplished exactly what I want is not only helpful in accomplishing the goal, it provides more inspiration/motivation in the form of success stories.Tools - This varies from goal to goal. Some require little to no tools and others require many, many tools. Sometimes these tools are simple to get and free of charge, sometimes not. With enough dedication it usually isn't a problem.Time - This can also be bunched in with the plan, but I have always found it personally useful to make picking a time an emphasis. Once I have scheduled something onto my weekly routine that is part of achieving a goal, it is treated just like any other schedule item. I have not participated in several events because they conflict with my gym schedule. I treat it just like work or school though. It is non-negotiable. Usually my top two or three priorities will be treated this way, not every single little goal I have. Just the big ones.Execution - The first five steps are obviously all about internal decisions and mental activity. Execution is where action is actually taken towards accomplishment. It is a physical realization of steps one through five. In the end, my motto is almost always "completion beats perfection". I have found that even if my information, plan, tools, and timing are not perfect, actually taking action and completing something is what makes the difference. I can always adjust course later. Feedback - Speaking of adjusting course, feedback after execution is highly important for sustained motivation and improvement. Feedback can be external or internal for me. Sometimes it means reflecting on what I did and how to change it. Sometimes it means getting expert opinion. Expert feedback and interaction is also a great way to stay accountable. I have talked about accountability because I don't feel I need it in most cases. But when I do, the feedback step is where it fits. Either way, feedback gives me something to focus on that is new. Novelty is a very strong driving force for me, and I believe others as well.Iteration - This simply means that I repeat the whole process taking the feedback from step seven into consideration. After going through the entire process, it might mean I need to get more information in step one, different tools in step four, or simply execute differently. Not every piece of the process will change, but something will. Iteration is about repetition with change for improvement.
Conclusion

At the end of everything, I find that I can't separate and pinpoint my motivation from everything else that happens around me. It comes down to a mix of what I imagine to be genetic, environmental, experiential, and cultural factors. 

While this is a pretty long post, there is still an entire concept that I have only just begun to explore within the realm of motivation - identity. I am seeing motivation more and more as the result of figuring out my real identity and how it conflicts with my imagined identity. This is a topic I am still new to and won't go into detail on. Nevertheless, I am seeing most of what I do as a consequence of trying to close the gap between an ideal self and my real self. 

This unexplored area doesn't discount what I've written above, it only adds to the fact that motivation is not likely to be explained with one or two causal factors. It certainly isn't static, although it may be stable, and will continue to wax and wane for me depending on a multitude of contexts.

Key Concepts: Flow

This is a topic I was asked to write about and is not something I've read about recently, so it'll all be from memory of the handful of books I read on the topic well over a year ago and a quick consultation with Wikipedia to jog my memory on a few aspects.

What Flow Is

Flow is essentially defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a state of peak performance. Csikszentmihalyi is the researcher who has coined the term and done the most studies on the phenomena over the years. This temporary state of peak performance typically occurs when the level of challenge in an activity is just right, meaning it is not so difficult as to be impossible, but not so easy as to be boring or unengaging.

The name came from a number of interviews done by Csikszentmihalyi where athletes and musicians commonly referred to their best performances as being "in the zone, on fire, or flowing". He interviewed surfers, rock climbers, musicians, chess players, and a host of other high end performers and they all said similar things when attempting to describe the state. Flow is what he settled on calling it.

Wikipedia has a nice summary of six factors included in flow from Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi (2001):

intense and focused concentration on the present momentmerging of action and awarenessa loss of reflective self-consciousnessa sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activitya distortion of temporal experience, one's subjective experience of time is alteredexperience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
Those aspects can appear independently of each other, but only in combination do they constitute a so-called flow experience.

It's important to realize that this state is extremely beneficial to mental well being. It often leaves people feeling a sense of refreshment and revitalization. Entering flow regularly can be one factor in becoming a happier, more balanced individual.

From my own experiences with flow, I would say that numbers one through four above are the most important, with five and six being secondary. Some of these experiences will be explained next.

Personal Accounts of Flow

During any given week, I would say two activities are responsible for me entering flow on a highly predictable basis: weight lifting and reading.

Weight Lifting

Unless I am planning an easy day at the gym, I am almost guaranteed of a flow experience. This can be explained using seven conditions necessary for flow proposed by Schaffer (2013) :
Knowing what to do - I have a spreadsheet that details exactly what exercise, weight, reps, rest, and sets that I will be doing each day. I know exactly what I need to do.Knowing how to do it - I have either done the exercises thousands of times before, or have spent time watching videos on YouTube prior to the gym to make sure I know how to perform everything needed within a workout.Knowing how well you are doing - This is immediate. I either get the weight, reps, and sets finished, or I don't.Knowing where to go (if navigation is involved) - This is easy. The gym, the weight section, the squat rack, the bench press, the dumbbells. No brainer.High perceived challenges - The majority of my exercises are done @10, meaning I couldn't do one more rep if I wanted to. Each exercise terminates with me feeling I completed the exact amount of work I was capable of that day.High perceived skills - The majority of free weight exercises are skills and take time to develop. It is also not easy for most people to lift the amount of weight being used in many of my workouts (not arrogance, just a fact). This leaves me feeling satisfied with my accomplishments and sense of being capable.Freedom from distractions - I keep to myself, don't have conversations and many times wear headphones that block me off from the rest of the world. I hear nothing but my own thoughts and music. Actually, within any given exercise, I could swear there is no music playing at all. This is because of factors one and two mentioned above - intense focus and the merging of action and awareness. During an exercise there is no room at all for my brain to process anything other than the actions I am performing and all focus is given to my movement. I can hear my music in between exercises, but rarely ever notice it playing while actually doing a movement. This loss of attention is one of the most noticeable aspects of flow for me. Everything in the world other than the current moment will disappear for a few seconds if done correctly. This sense of being completely in the moment is one of the most rewarding sensations I have ever had.
Reading

Having discussed weight lifting in depth, I won't go over the same seven conditions step-by-step for reading. However, I will highlight the major differences. When weight lifting, the flow experience can go in and out. This is because during an exercise, the challenge and focus needed will be excruciatingly high as discussed in point seven just above, but between sets I can fall out of flow.

This back and forth does not often happen in reading and flow can be prolonged for a much longer continuous time frame. While I believe physical states of flow are stronger for me, such as weight lifting, running, difficult hiking, biking, or swimming, the mental act of reading does allow for all of the conditions to be met in certain cases.

For example, when I read a highly engaging textbook (oxymoron?) on a topic that I am deeply interested in, I will undoubtedly know what I am doing (learning), know how to do it (read), know how well I am doing it (understanding or not), have a high perceived challenge (full understanding of a graduate-level text), have high perceived skills (I am capable of reading, learning, understanding at the master's/doctoral level), and be free from distractions (alone in my room or alone in a sea of Starbucks customers and white noise). Again, all of these conditions come from the seven points above in the weight lifting section. Refer back to refresh your memory.

The last point on being free from distraction is often the most difficult part of finding flow with reading. The gym is easy. People generally leave you alone and headphones-in-ears is a clear "fuck off" signal to most people. However, reading is not the same. Many people assume that they have the right to interrupt a person who is reading and that it is easy for them to go right back to what they were doing. While this is the case for light reading, such as Facebook or many blogs, it is not the case at all for the type of reading necessary for finding flow. The difficulty level and amount of focus required to understand complex texts at the end of your ability makes being interrupted a much bigger deal. Interruption will knock you out of flow and it can take up to fifteen minutes to regain this state once being lost. 

Complex fiction is also good flow, I don't mean to give the impression that non-fiction textbooks are the only way.

Other Flow Applications

For me personally, the two examples above are the most common departure points for finding flow. However, there are tons of other ways to dig in and experience the wonderful almost ecstasy inducing feeling.

Some have already been mentioned throughout this post and along with others include: surfing, mountain climbing, music, chess, sports of all kinds, writing, meditation and even sex. Nevertheless, there is one area where flow has been highly undervalued to date.

Education and the classroom.

The classroom should be, in my opinion (backed by research and a graduate degree), a place where teachers push students to find a feeling of flow in whatever subject they are responsible for. If children do discover flow states in a class, there are much higher odds that they will want to repeat the activity. 

Flow in learning should come first, mandated curriculum should come second.

Now, I understand completely that most people cannot enter flow in an activity they are new at and that many classroom activities, exercises, or subjects are new. For instance, no one is likely to enter flow the first time they sit down to play the piano or attempt calculus. There are too many challenges and so that activity is often too difficult for their ability. Oftentimes, it takes gaining a certain level of competence before flow and a love for an activity can happen and develop. With that being said, I believe one hundred percent that teachers should seek to get their students into flow states during their classes as soon as possible and whenever possible.

Conclusion

This turned out to be longer than I planned. I hope you made it all the way through it. If you did, thanks for reading, if not, oh well. Finding activities that you value and allow for flow can be truly amazing. It has been for me. While most activities can potentially lead to flow and thus a state of well being and reward, not all activities are created equal in terms of their benefits.

Now that you (hopefully) understand what flow is and how to get it, I suggest you evaluate which activities can potentially lead to the most benefits for your life and invest heavily in trying to spend the most flow-time as you can in them. 

If you don't know or understand how you could potentially enter flow in an activity you value and think would be benefit you from doing so, contact me and I will help you do so. The feeling of entering flow is rather addicting (in a good way) and something I would wish for everyone.

References

Nakamura, J.; Csikszentmihalyi, M. (20 December 2001). "Flow Theory and Research". In C. R. Snyder Erik Wright, and Shane J. Lopez. Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press. pp. 195–206.ISBN 978-0-19-803094-2. Retrieved 20 November 2013.

Schaffer, Owen (2013),  Crafting Fun User Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow , Human Factors International

Flow

This is a topic I was asked to write about and is not something I've read about recently, so it'll all be from memory of the handful of books I read on the topic well over a year ago and a quick consultation with Wikipedia to jog my memory on a few aspects.

What Flow Is

Flow is essentially defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a state of peak performance. Csikszentmihalyi is the researcher who has coined the term and done the most studies on the phenomena over the years. This temporary state of peak performance typically occurs when the level of challenge in an activity is just right, meaning it is not so difficult as to be impossible, but not so easy as to be boring or unengaging.

The name came from a number of interviews done by Csikszentmihalyi where athletes and musicians commonly referred to their best performances as being "in the zone, on fire, or flowing". He interviewed surfers, rock climbers, musicians, chess players, and a host of other high end performers and they all said similar things when attempting to describe the state. Flow is what he settled on calling it.

Wikipedia has a nice summary of six factors included in flow from Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi (2001):

intense and focused concentration on the present momentmerging of action and awarenessa loss of reflective self-consciousnessa sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activitya distortion of temporal experience, one's subjective experience of time is alteredexperience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
Those aspects can appear independently of each other, but only in combination do they constitute a so-called flow experience.

It's important to realize that this state is extremely beneficial to mental well being. It often leaves people feeling a sense of refreshment and revitalization. Entering flow regularly can be one factor in becoming a happier, more balanced individual.

From my own experiences with flow, I would say that numbers one through four above are the most important, with five and six being secondary. Some of these experiences will be explained next.

Personal Accounts of Flow

During any given week, I would say two activities are responsible for me entering flow on a highly predictable basis: weight lifting and reading.

Weight Lifting

Unless I am planning an easy day at the gym, I am almost guaranteed of a flow experience. This can be explained using seven conditions necessary for flow proposed by Schaffer (2013) :
Knowing what to do - I have a spreadsheet that details exactly what exercise, weight, reps, rest, and sets that I will be doing each day. I know exactly what I need to do.Knowing how to do it - I have either done the exercises thousands of times before, or have spent time watching videos on YouTube prior to the gym to make sure I know how to perform everything needed within a workout.Knowing how well you are doing - This is immediate. I either get the weight, reps, and sets finished, or I don't.Knowing where to go (if navigation is involved) - This is easy. The gym, the weight section, the squat rack, the bench press, the dumbbells. No brainer.High perceived challenges - The majority of my exercises are done @10, meaning I couldn't do one more rep if I wanted to. Each exercise terminates with me feeling I completed the exact amount of work I was capable of that day.High perceived skills - The majority of free weight exercises are skills and take time to develop. It is also not easy for most people to lift the amount of weight being used in many of my workouts (not arrogance, just a fact). This leaves me feeling satisfied with my accomplishments and sense of being capable.Freedom from distractions - I keep to myself, don't have conversations and many times wear headphones that block me off from the rest of the world. I hear nothing but my own thoughts and music. Actually, within any given exercise, I could swear there is no music playing at all. This is because of factors one and two mentioned above - intense focus and the merging of action and awareness. During an exercise there is no room at all for my brain to process anything other than the actions I am performing and all focus is given to my movement. I can hear my music in between exercises, but rarely ever notice it playing while actually doing a movement. This loss of attention is one of the most noticeable aspects of flow for me. Everything in the world other than the current moment will disappear for a few seconds if done correctly. This sense of being completely in the moment is one of the most rewarding sensations I have ever had.
Reading

Having discussed weight lifting in depth, I won't go over the same seven conditions step-by-step for reading. However, I will highlight the major differences. When weight lifting, the flow experience can go in and out. This is because during an exercise, the challenge and focus needed will be excruciatingly high as discussed in point seven just above, but between sets I can fall out of flow.

This back and forth does not often happen in reading and flow can be prolonged for a much longer continuous time frame. While I believe physical states of flow are stronger for me, such as weight lifting, running, difficult hiking, biking, or swimming, the mental act of reading does allow for all of the conditions to be met in certain cases.

For example, when I read a highly engaging textbook (oxymoron?) on a topic that I am deeply interested in, I will undoubtedly know what I am doing (learning), know how to do it (read), know how well I am doing it (understanding or not), have a high perceived challenge (full understanding of a graduate-level text), have high perceived skills (I am capable of reading, learning, understanding at the master's/doctoral level), and be free from distractions (alone in my room or alone in a sea of Starbucks customers and white noise). Again, all of these conditions come from the seven points above in the weight lifting section. Refer back to refresh your memory.

The last point on being free from distraction is often the most difficult part of finding flow with reading. The gym is easy. People generally leave you alone and headphones-in-ears is a clear "fuck off" signal to most people. However, reading is not the same. Many people assume that they have the right to interrupt a person who is reading and that it is easy for them to go right back to what they were doing. While this is the case for light reading, such as Facebook or many blogs, it is not the case at all for the type of reading necessary for finding flow. The difficulty level and amount of focus required to understand complex texts at the end of your ability makes being interrupted a much bigger deal. Interruption will knock you out of flow and it can take up to fifteen minutes to regain this state once being lost. 

Complex fiction is also good flow, I don't mean to give the impression that non-fiction textbooks are the only way.

Other Flow Applications

For me personally, the two examples above are the most common departure points for finding flow. However, there are tons of other ways to dig in and experience the wonderful almost ecstasy inducing feeling.

Some have already been mentioned throughout this post and along with others include: surfing, mountain climbing, music, chess, sports of all kinds, writing, meditation and even sex. Nevertheless, there is one area where flow has been highly undervalued to date.

Education and the classroom.

The classroom should be, in my opinion (backed by research and a graduate degree), a place where teachers push students to find a feeling of flow in whatever subject they are responsible for. If children do discover flow states in a class, there are much higher odds that they will want to repeat the activity. 

Flow in learning should come first, mandated curriculum should come second.

Now, I understand completely that most people cannot enter flow in an activity they are new at and that many classroom activities, exercises, or subjects are new. For instance, no one is likely to enter flow the first time they sit down to play the piano or attempt calculus. There are too many challenges and so that activity is often too difficult for their ability. Oftentimes, it takes gaining a certain level of competence before flow and a love for an activity can happen and develop. With that being said, I believe one hundred percent that teachers should seek to get their students into flow states during their classes as soon as possible and whenever possible.

Conclusion

This turned out to be longer than I planned. I hope you made it all the way through it. If you did, thanks for reading, if not, oh well. Finding activities that you value and allow for flow can be truly amazing. It has been for me. While most activities can potentially lead to flow and thus a state of well being and reward, not all activities are created equal in terms of their benefits.

Now that you (hopefully) understand what flow is and how to get it, I suggest you evaluate which activities can potentially lead to the most benefits for your life and invest heavily in trying to spend the most flow-time as you can in them. 

If you don't know or understand how you could potentially enter flow in an activity you value and think would be benefit you from doing so, contact me and I will help you do so. The feeling of entering flow is rather addicting (in a good way) and something I would wish for everyone.

References

Nakamura, J.; Csikszentmihalyi, M. (20 December 2001). "Flow Theory and Research". In C. R. Snyder Erik Wright, and Shane J. Lopez. Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press. pp. 195–206.ISBN 978-0-19-803094-2. Retrieved 20 November 2013.

Schaffer, Owen (2013),  Crafting Fun User Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow , Human Factors International

Learning About One's Self

"Know thyself." - Inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

A lot of the learning I do is an attempt to follow the ancient advice given at Delphi that starts this post. It's not as though it is an overriding thought in my mind or that I keep it at the forefront. It just seems to work out that way, magically, on its own.

A couple of the people that have helped me in doing this are Tim Ferriss and James Altucher.

In an interview with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on living with and without goals, Tim Ferriss said that he believes in alternating between appreciation and achievement. He believes that a "good life" should entail both, not just one or the other. I agree with this completely. A life of achievement without appreciation seems hollow and a life of appreciation without achievement seems a waste of many people's drives, talents, and abilities to contribute to the world in a positive way.

However, even with my strong agreement, that still leaves the question, "What should be achieved?" Enter Altucher.

Altucher believes in achieving through what he calls the daily practice. The daily practice involves accomplishing four things each day. Becoming better physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Again, I have to agree, although these are still a bit vague for my liking. I love the idea, but think there is room enough to make the daily practice more specific to my personal beliefs and values.

My Daily Practice

Over the last couple weeks, I've been trying to figure out my priorities in terms of daily things I hope to accomplish. Perhaps I don't get all four each day and perhaps I do, but that's not the point. The process is the point.

In thinking over it, I have come up with my own list of four items as part of a daily practice; mine, however, are all actions instead of categories. They include:
Train - This is more than working out. This is having specific goals and specific reasons for going to the gym, track, or wherever else I happen to be going for a work out. Right now, I'm training with the intention of eventually squatting 500 pounds, bench pressing 400 pounds, and deadlifting 600 pounds. In the past, I trained for and completed a triathlon and two half marathons. I've also trained using CrossFit in the past, but I always had a goal. The larger goal for any and all of my training is to live a long life that is full of movement and activity. I never want to be alive, but unable to do any of the physical activity I love so much. Learn - This directly overlaps with the mental aspect of Altucher's daily practice. He believes in reading every day and writing down ten new ideas. I'm not particular about what I learn, but I do have an obsessive reading habit. I am always willing to learn from others instead of a book, but books happen to be easier to access in most cases. Usually, I direct my learning at my professional field or personal hobbies. Even though 95% of my time is directed at those two categories, I love learning completely new things and always try to connect new learning to other domains. Becoming domain independent in my learning is always the goal. I love to figure out what ideas transfer and transform other fields of expertise, again, especially my own professional field at this point.Contribute - I can connect this action to both the emotional and spiritual categories of Altucher's daily practice. I personally don't see a reason to learn and grow unless I can contribute in some way. Being a better me is really just an avenue to help others better themselves in the pursuit of their own personal goals. To me, becoming more knowledgeable is kind of like being the richest man in the world and not giving to charity. If you have a lot of knowledge and don't contribute to other's learning you aren't much different. Learn, grow, develop. Then, contribute. For me, this has manifested itself in teaching and writing. I try to get down as many of the things that have influenced me into writing or words for others to hear in the hopes that they can positively enhance others' lives as well. This has nothing to do with me thinking I'm smarter or more right than others. It's just about sharing what has impacted me in a positive way. Maybe it will do the same for others.Connect - Finally, connection is all about just getting together with people I care the most about and having meaningful conversation or actions. This is not as goal-oriented as the first three above. I have noticed more and more lately that my best days are the ones where I am able to go for a hike with close friends and talk the whole time or sit at a coffee shop and discuss whatever is going on in my life with a good friend. Even if I miss all of the first three actions I've just written about in a day, it is still a great day if I can meaningfully connect with a close friend or new acquaintance. To me, this becomes almost a perfect blend of appreciation and accomplishment. I am usually consciously aware of a deep feeling of appreciation while connecting and a feeling as though I am accomplishing something that many people don't take the time to do on a regular basis.
Conclusion

I have found that by really examining the choices, actions and things that I appreciate and accomplish I become more aware of myself and gain a richer understanding of myself. For instance, by just looking at the four actions above it is clear that I highly value physical strength and health, education and experience, sharing with others, and connecting with people in a deeper way than simply watching sitcoms or sports together.

These actions are ones I try to accomplish each day, but also ones that I try to appreciate that I am able to do each day as well. There may come a day where I can't squat heavy, read complex texts, write my thoughts or personally connect with others coherently, but I can certainly take advantage of all those things while I can and learn much more about myself and others in the process.

I am by no means saying everyone should do these four things each day. They work for me. I do think an attempt to find out what you value and appreciate can help anyone live a fuller life though. Whatever it is, figure it out and apply yourself. The weeks go by to quickly to be passive about them.

How I Learn Declarative Knowledge

I recently finished my master's degree in education. During the process, I got to meet a lot of interesting people and few of them are some of my best friends at this point. I was recently talking to one of them about learning new material and how I remembered everything.

Specifically, she was curious if I remembered everything that I read and whether the memories formed on the first read or if I needed to read things multiple times as she did. My answer was yes and no. It depends. Declarative knowledge, or the knowledge we generally get from textbooks, as opposed to procedural knowledge requires a certain process for me to become comfortable with. 

How Our Brains Work

Basically, I use a simple metaphor to understand how my brain works in terms of learning new information. I imagine a really overgrown jungle, bush, or forest area. Then, I imagine that I need to make a path through the overgrown vegetation. The first time that I hack my way through with a machete is going to be ugly. I'm going to barely make a dent in the plants and I'm probably going to be tired from all the hacking and maybe even a little beat up and bleeding from sharp and pointy thorns.

Needless to say, if I continue walking down the same path each day and hacking away at the same outgrowth, the path will get smoother and easier to traverse over time. Eventually it will become an easy walking trail with clean, wide paths that I can stroll down with little to no effort.

From all of the books I've read on how neuronal connections get made, this metaphor seems apt to me. The first time I read new information, the going is very slow and difficult. I may or may not understand everything, but it will definitely be difficult and I will definitely be exhausted mentally by the end. In contrast, the Nth time I've looked over information, the going is easy. I can skim right through a text and practically guess what is going to be said before I read it. This is analogous to the well beaten path in the metaphor above. The neuronal connections have all been laid down and they fire quickly and effortlessly.

My Process to Learn New Information

To me, learning new information simply requires lots of exposure via multiple voices, styles, and time points. This means that I do read the same thing multiple times, but rarely from the same source. I can count on one hand the number of books I've read more than once. And none of them involved my actual field of TESOL. 

For example, the first time I read a second language acquisition textbook, I would estimate that I understood perhaps fifty percent of the information. There were simply too many acronyms and technical words that I could not understand. In fact, the linguistic terminology in many cases is like reading another language. In fact, I consider learning any new body of information to be learning a new language. The first six months to a year in a new field is largely figuring out what the vocabulary means and who the important people are.

However, even reading just one more textbook on the subject of second language acquisition is going to get you eighty percent of the way there. This follows the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule. After two textbooks, I'm mostly learning nuances and filling in the gaps, but the general topography of the field is understood. This seems to be the case with any field I've been interested in, whether it's language, health, psychology, or philosophy. A couple textbooks will get acquainted enough with the field to have a discussion, albeit probably not a debate with any experts in the field.

The interesting thing about reading a handful of textbooks on the same subject is that you will learn there are some things you never did understand, even though you originally thought a topic made sense the first time. When you read a new textbook and the vocabulary is already known from the beginning, it gives you the opportunity to see the forest for the trees as it were and not be so microscopic in your focus when handling the jargon and decoding individual sentences. You can focus on the big picture and not get so caught up in minutia.

When It Comes to Memorizing

So the answer is a resounding, "NO!". I don't read the same thing multiple times to understand it. But, yes, I do read multiple sources on the exact same topic, which obviously have a ton of overlap. This is time consuming, but knowledge is the bottleneck for most expertise. Besides, as you get a better idea of what you're reading, your understanding actually gets better in a non-linear way. You will find yourself understanding more, the more you know.

The major benefit to reading many sources though is that there comes a point where you simply know the material. You haven't spent any time memorizing anything. You don't review certain chapters from certain books, or spend time making notes or flashcards. You simply finish a book and pick up a new one. After a while, you get the feeling that you've read everything in the book before, even though it's a brand new book. At this point, you've probably read enough on that particular topic to move on to something more specific. You don't have to read every textbook ever written on a topic to understand it. You will know when you know!

Taking second language acquisition as an example again, I felt like I was bored due to lack of novelty in the textbooks after about six of them. From there, I moved on to specific  areas of second language acquisition or TESOL. I found textbooks on teaching reading and writing specifically. Or teaching conversation. Or pronunciation. Assessment, fluency, linguistics, pedagogy. 

You get the idea.

Just move on when you're read to move on. You will know when that time comes. If it hasn't, then keep reading.

Conclusion

There you have it. My method for dealing with, learning, and getting a handle on new information (declarative knowledge). This isn't exactly the same way that I would go about learning a new skill like baseball or painting (procedural knowledge), but there would still be some time dedicated to knowledge acquisition with skills as well.

For information rich fields of knowledge simply:
Find five to six textbooks on the field in generalRead them once through, cover to cover, and move onPay attention to the important words and names as you goMove onto specific sub-fields once the general topography of the field is understoodRepeat steps one through three with sub-fields
There is nothing hard about this. It just takes time, discipline, and a genuine interest in the information. If you don't genuinely want to know the information, you won't have the patience to read through five to twenty books on the subject and if that is the case you probably have to wonder what you're doing with your time and why.