The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

by Josh Waitzkin

One has to investigate the principle in one thing or one event exhaustively . . . Things and the self are governed by the same principle. If you understand one, you understand the other, for the truth within and the truth without are identical. —Er Cheng Yishu, 11th centuryI

My whole life I had studied techniques, principles, and theory until they were integrated into the unconscious.

To fluency

Whenever I had an idea, I would test it against some brilliant professor who usually disagreed with my conclusions. Academic minds tend to be impatient with abstract language—when I spoke about intuition, one philosophy professor rolled her eyes and told me the term had no meaning. The need for precision forced me to think about these ideas more concretely.

The first step to fluency is defining, simply and explicitly.

The boating life has also been a wonderful training ground for performance psychology. Living on the water requires constant presence, and the release of control. A boat is always moving with the sea, lurching beneath your feet, and the only way to survive is to sink into rhythm with the waves and be ready for anything. I learned at sea that virtually all situations can be handled as long as presence of mind is maintained.

I responded to heartbreak with hard work. I was self-motivated and moved by a powerful resolve.

I spent many afternoons studying chess in my room, alone. Sometimes my dad tried to distract me, lure me away to play football or basketball, and I would have none of it. There was too much on the line. My parents worried that I had become too serious about chess, and my dad periodically told me that it was okay if I wanted to quit. They didn’t understand that quitting was not an option.

Two questions arise. First, what is the difference that allows some to fit into that narrow window to the top? And second, what is the point? If ambition spells probable disappointment, why pursue excellence? In my opinion, the answer to both questions lies in a well-thought-out approach that inspires resilience, the ability to make connections between diverse pursuits, and day-to-day enjoyment of the process.

The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.

Of course the real challenge is to stay in range of this long-term perspective when you are under fire and hurting in the middle of the war. This, maybe our biggest hurdle, is at the core of the art of learning.

Bruce began our study with a barren chessboard. We took on positions of reduced complexity and clear principles. Our first focus was king and pawn against king—just three pieces on the table. Over time, I gained an excellent intuitive feel for the power of the king and the subtlety of the pawn.

Simplest problem with the essence of the principles in question. Simplest problem you can understand. Stripping away complexity/complication.

Then we turned to rook endings, bishop endings, knight endings, spending hundreds of hours as I turned seven and eight years old, exploring the operating principles behind positions that I might never see again. This method of study gave me a feeling for the beautiful subtleties of each chess piece, because in relatively clear-cut positions I could focus on what was essential. I was also gradually internalizing a marvelous methodology of learning—the play between knowledge, intuition, and creativity. From both educational and technical perspectives, I learned from the foundation up.

The setbacks taught me how to succeed. And what kept me on my path was a love for learning that has its roots in my first chess lessons as a six-year-old boy.

Love process over outcome

A key ingredient to my success in those years was that my style on the chessboard was a direct expression of my personality.

One of the most critical strengths of a superior competitor in any discipline—whether we are speaking about sports, business negotiations, or even presidential debates—is the ability to dictate the tone of the battle.

My whole career, my father and I searched out opponents who were a little stronger than me, so even as I dominated the scholastic circuit, losing was part of my regular experience. I believe this was important for maintaining a healthy perspective on the game.

We enjoy the win fully while taking a deep breath, then we exhale, note the lesson learned, and move on to the next adventure.

Enjoy the win—reflect on the work.

Disappointment is a part of the road to greatness. When a few moments pass, in a quiet voice, she can ask Danny if he knows what happened in the game. Hopefully the language between parent and child will already be established so Danny knows his mom is asking about psychology, not chess moves (almost all mistakes have both technical and mental components—the chess lessons should be left for after the tournament, when Danny and his teacher study the games). Did he lose his concentration? Did he fall into a downward spiral and make a bunch of mistakes in a row? Was he overconfident? Impatient? Did he get psyched out by a trash talker? Was he tired?

Feel the loss because it mattered (if you’re apathetic, then maybe it’s not worth doing anymore). Reflect on your psychology in the moment—how you reacted or tilted. Later, reflect on the errors, forced or unforced.

In performance training, first we learn to flow with whatever comes. Then we learn to use whatever comes to our advantage. Finally, we learn to be completely self-sufficient and create our own earthquakes, so our mental process feeds itself explosive inspirations without the need for outside stimulus.

To adapt, you have to first avoid resisting.

if you are tense, with your fingers jammed in your ears and your whole body straining to fight off distraction, then you are in a Hard Zone that demands a cooperative world for you to function. Like a dry twig, you are brittle, ready to snap under pressure. The alternative is for you to be quietly, intensely focused, apparently relaxed with a serene look on your face, but inside all the mental juices are churning. You flow with whatever comes, integrating every ripple of life into your creative moment. This Soft Zone is resilient,

A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options—one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals.

Internal vs external—adapting by focusing on what you can control, what you can do in response that is productive.

I have come to believe that the solution to this type of situation does not lie in denying our emotions, but in learning to use them to our advantage.

When tilted—rather than resist, how can you notice it, flow with it, and then adapt?

Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. When injured, which happens frequently in the life of a martial artist, I try to avoid painkillers and to change the sensation of pain into a feeling that is not necessarily negative. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.

One idea I taught was the importance of regaining presence and clarity of mind after making a serious error. This is a hard lesson for all competitors and performers. The first mistake rarely proves disastrous, but the downward spiral of the second, third, and fourth error creates a devastating chain reaction.

After an error, regain composure as a first step. Don’t act—stop.

the distance between winning and losing is minute, and, moreover, that there are ways to steal wins from the maw of defeat. All great performers have learned this lesson. Top-rate actors often miss a line but improvise their way back on track.

How you react matters more than what you did—determines the end result more than the mistake itself.

beware of the downward spiral.

after making an error, it is so easy to cling to the emotional comfort zone of what was, but there is also that unsettling sense that things have changed for the worse. The clear thinker is suddenly at war with himself and flow is lost.

How we react matters more than the first mistake. The woman and the bike—a woman looks the wrong way, enters the steer, and almost gets hit by a bike. She yells at the cyclist, and, in her anger, doesn’t see the car about to hit her.

Instead of following my instincts, my coach urged me to ask myself, “What would Karpov do here?” But Karpov had cold blood and mine boiled. When he searched for tiny strategic advantages, I yearned for wild dynamics. As I tried to play in the style that pleased my coach, chess began to feel alien.

I think a life of ambition is like existing on a balance beam. As a child, there is no fear, no sense for the danger of falling. The beam feels wide and stable, and natural playfulness allows for creative leaps and fast learning. You can run around doing somersaults and flips, always testing yourself with a love for discovery and new challenges. If you happen to fall off—no problem, you just get back on. But then, as you get older, you become more aware of the risk of injury.

How often does our perception of the conditions affect our performance under those conditions—and how often is that perception (a) accurate and (b) helpful? Like Sivers says, aim for “not true but useful.” Whatever makes it more fun, do that.

A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness.

I believe that one of the most critical factors in the transition to becoming a conscious high performer is the degree to which your relationship to your pursuit stays in harmony with your unique disposition.

The path to artistic insight in one direction often involves deep study of another—the intuition makes uncanny connections that lead to a crystallization of fragmented notions.

It is Chen’s opinion that a large obstacle to a calm, healthy, present existence is the constant interruption of our natural breathing patterns. A thought or ringing phone or honking car interrupts an out-breath and so we stop and begin to inhale. Then we have another thought and stop before exhaling. The result is shallow breathing and deficient flushing of carbon dioxide from our systems, so our cells never have as much pure oxygen as they could.

The martial philosophy behind Push Hands, in the language of the Tai Chi Classics, is “to defeat a thousand pounds with four ounces.”

Principles of leverage—without resistance.

William Chen calls this investment in loss. Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process. In Push Hands it is letting yourself be pushed without reverting back to old habits—training yourself to be soft and receptive when your body doesn’t have any idea how to do it and wants to tighten up.

I have long believed that if a student of virtually any discipline could avoid ever repeating the same mistake twice—both technical and psychological—he or she would skyrocket to the top of their field. Of course such a feat is impossible—we are bound to repeat thematic errors, if only because many themes are elusive and difficult to pinpoint.

Mistakes are inevitable—but noticing them and avoiding them are two different things. Make the minor mistakes, while avoiding the big thematic ones by studying others. In ways, a mistake in chess or tai chi is a minor one. Make it early and learn the lesson to fluency. Play better next time. Avoid fundamental mistakes by learning what to do and to avoid to fluency before getting into anything else.

If a young athlete is expected to perform brilliantly in his first games within this new system, he will surely disappoint. He needs time to internalize the new skills before he will improve. The same can be said about a chess player adjusting to a new opening repertoire, a martial artist learning a new technique, or a golfer, for example Tiger Woods, taking apart his swing in order to make a long-term improvement.

Setting the right expectation in short term and allowing for failure safely while learning

it is essential to have a liberating incremental approach that allows for times when you are not in a peak performance state.

Periods of performance where the outcome doesn’t matter—if the outcome always matters, then you cannot get better.

Consider Michael Jordan. It is common knowledge that Jordan made more last-minute shots to win the game for his team than any other player in the history of the NBA. What is not so well known, is that Jordan also missed more last-minute shots to lose the game for his team than any other player in the history of the game. What made him the greatest was not perfection, but a willingness to put himself on the line as a way of life. Did he suffer all those nights when he sent twenty thousand Bulls fans home heartbroken? Of course. But he was willing to look bad on the road to basketball immortality.

As long as the loss of failure isn’t fatal, then it’s not as risky as you think it is to fail.

I believe this little anecdote has the potential to distinguish success from failure in the pursuit of excellence. The theme is depth over breadth. The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture.

The anecdote, “Piersig’s brick”—get past writer’s block by picking one small detail and describing it in depth rather than focusing on the broad strokes of the piece in front of you. The lesson: change the assignment. Learning is about fluency not breadth.

I focused on small movements, sometimes spending hours moving my hand out a few inches, then releasing it back, energizing outwards, connecting my feet to my fingertips with less and less obstruction. Practicing in this manner, I was able to sharpen my feeling for Tai Chi.

I explored endgame positions of reduced complexity—for example king and pawn against king, only three pieces on the board—in order to touch high-level principles such as the power of empty space, zugzwang (where any move of the opponent will destroy his position), tempo, or structural planning. Once I experienced these principles, I could apply them to complex positions because they were in my mental framework.

My understanding of this process, in the spirit of my numbers to leave numbers method of chess study, is to touch the essence (for example, highly refined and deeply internalized body mechanics or feeling) of a technique, and then to incrementally condense the external manifestation of the technique while keeping true to its essence. Over time expansiveness decreases while potency increases. I call this method “Making Smaller Circles.”

Simplifying to essence

First, I practice the motion over and over in slow motion. We have to be able to do something slowly before we can have any hope of doing it correctly with speed.

slowly repeating the movement until the correct body mechanics are in my skin.

My teacher William Chen sometimes teaches punching by telling students to pour a cup of tea. It’s a beautiful thing. Pouring tea creates the perfect punch, because people’s minds don’t get in the way.

I know what a properly delivered straight right feels like. Now I begin to slowly, incrementally, condense my movements while maintaining that feeling. Instead of a big wind-up in the hips, I coil a little less, and then I release the punch. While initially I may have thrown my straight from next to my ear, now I gradually inch my hand out, starting the punch from closer and closer to the target—and

The key is to take small steps, so the body can barely feel the condensing practice. Each little refinement is monitored by the feeling of the punch, which I gained from months or years of training with the large, traditional motion.

This concept of Making Smaller Circles has been a critical component of my learning process in chess and the martial arts. In both fields, players tend to get attached to fancy techniques and fail to recognize that subtle internalization and refinement is much more important than the quantity of what is learned.

Again, condensing the essentials into a few fundamental techniques, so tightly honed that they become potent

It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.

Mastery of the fundamentals to fluency.

Depth beats breadth any day of the week,