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.

I could spend hours at a chessboard and stand up from the experience on fire with insight about chess, basketball, the ocean, psychology, love, art.

The game was exhilarating and also spiritually calming. It centered me. Chess was my friend.

This type of learning experience was familiar to me from chess. My whole life I had studied techniques, principles, and theory until they were integrated into the unconscious.

From the outside Tai Chi and chess couldn’t be more different, but they began to converge in my mind. I started to translate my chess ideas into Tai Chi language, as if the two arts were linked by an essential connecting ground. Every day I noticed more and more similarities, until I began to feel as if I were studying chess when I was studying Tai Chi.

What I have realized is that what I am best at is not Tai Chi, and it is not chess—what I am best at is the art of learning.

Each loss was a lesson, each win a thrill. Every day pieces of the puzzle fell together.

Bruce and the park guys had taught me how to express myself through chess, and so my love for the game grew every day.

Children who associate success with hard work tend to have a “mastery-oriented response” to challenging situations, while children who see themselves as just plain “smart” or “dumb,” or “good” or “bad” at something, have a “learned helplessness orientation.”

The hermit crab is a colorful example of a creature that lives by this aspect of the growth process (albeit without our psychological baggage). As the crab gets bigger, it needs to find a more spacious shell. So the slow, lumbering creature goes on a quest for a new home. If an appropriate new shell is not found quickly, a terribly delicate moment of truth arises. A soft creature that is used to the protection of built-in armor must now go out into the world, exposed to predators in all its mushy vulnerability.

In my experience, successful people shoot for the stars, put their hearts on the line in every battle, and ultimately discover that the lessons learned from the pursuit of excellence mean much more than the immediate trophies and glory.

In the long run, painful losses may prove much more valuable than wins—those who are armed with a healthy attitude and are able to draw wisdom from every experience, “good” or “bad,” are the ones who make it down the road.

the idea of zugzwang (putting your opponent in a position where any move he makes will destroy his position).

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.

Because of my growth curve, my life was like that hermit crab who never fits into the same shell for more than a few days.

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.

The move Ian was about to play would have lost his queen and the game, but suddenly he remembered the lesson learned as a seven-year-old. He took a few deep breaths to clear his mind, came back to the moment, collected himself, and won a critical game in the National Championships.

studying the games of Tigran Petrosian and Anatoly Karpov, ex-world champions who seemed to breathe a different air. Instead of creating exciting dynamics in their positions, these guys competed like Anacondas, preempting every aggressive idea until opponents were paralyzed and gasping for life.

was no longer primarily refining the skill of playing chess, but was discovering myself through chess.

a student, I found these sessions to be resonant of Orwell’s prison scenes in 1984, where independently minded thinkers were ruthlessly broken down until all that was left was a shell of a person.

Who knows water like a man dying of thirst?

Dvoretsky wanted to break me—shock and awe—and Razuvaev wanted to bring out my natural shine. As it was, perhaps because of his own playing style, my full-time coach was drawn to Dvoretsky’s conclusions—and so from the age of sixteen a large part of my chess education involved distancing myself from my natural talents and integrating this Karpovian brand of chess. As a result, I lost my center of gravity as a competitor.

Also, from what I had read, the essence of Tai Chi Chuan as a martial art is not to clash with the opponent but to blend with his energy, yield to it, and overcome with softness. This was enigmatic and interesting, and maybe I’d be able to apply it to the rest of my life.

How can we incorporate these ideas into the real world? In certain competitive arenas—our working lives, for example—there are seldom weeks in which performance does not matter. Similarly, it is not so difficult to have a beginner’s mind and to be willing to invest in loss when you are truly a beginner, but it is much harder to maintain that humility and openness to learning when people are watching and expecting you to perform.

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.

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick.

The key was to recognize that the principles making one simple technique tick were the same fundamentals that fueled the whole expansive system of Tai Chi Chuan.

The secret behind this style of play is a profound internalization of the principles behind central domination. Michael Adams knows how to control the center without appearing to have anything to do with the center. He has made the circles so small, even Grandmasters cannot see them.

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.

Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

Whether speaking of a corporate negotiation, a legal battle, or even war itself, if the opponent is temporarily tied down qualitatively or energetically more than you are expending to tie it down, you have a large advantage. The key is to master the technical skills appropriate for applying this idea to your area of

If I want to be the best, I have to take risks others would avoid, always optimizing the learning potential of the moment and turning adversity to my advantage.

When aiming for the top, your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve. You should always come off an injury or a loss better than when you went down.

The chess position might be objectively even, but as the tension on the board mounted it felt as though a vise was slowly cinching down on my head, tighter, tighter, until I reached a bursting point and made some small concession like José backing up, a tiny imprecision that changed the character of the game, anything to release the pressure on my brain. Then they were all over me.

In every discipline, the ability to be clearheaded, present, cool under fire is much of what separates the best from the mediocre. In competition, the dynamic is often painfully transparent. If one player is serenely present while the other is being ripped apart by internal issues, the outcome is already clear. The prey is no longer objective, makes compounding mistakes, and the predator moves in for the kill.

The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in competition, in the boardroom, at the exam, the operating table, the big stage.

Presence must be like breathing.

once the act of recovery is in our blood, we’ll be able to access it under the most strained of circumstances, becoming masters of creating tiny havens for renewal, even where observers could not conceive of such a break.

Truth be told, this is what my entire approach to learning is based on—breaking down the artificial barriers between our diverse life experiences so all moments become enriched by a sense of interconnectedness.

As we get better and better at releasing tension and coming back with a full tank of gas in our everyday activities, both physical and mental, we will gain confidence in our abilities to move back and forth between concentration, adrenaline flow, physical exertion (any kind of stress), and relaxation.

learning how to relax under pressure is a key first step to

To walk a thorny road, we may cover its every inch with leather or we can make sandals.

have found that in the intricate endeavors of competition, learning, and performance, there is more than one solution to virtually every meaningful problem.

We are unique individuals who should put our own flair into everything we do.

For this reason, almost without exception, champions are specialists whose styles emerge from profound awareness of their unique strengths, and who are exceedingly skilled at guiding the battle in that direction.

But there would be no other fighter who could keep up with me strategically. To win in the Chung Hwa Cup, I would have to bring water to their fire. I wouldn’t be successful making the fights a test of speed and acrobatics. I would have to read opponents and shut them down, confront them with strategies and refinements they couldn’t imagine. To have any chance