The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

by Josh Waitzkin

As this book evolves, I will gradually lay out my current methodology for triggering such states of creative flow. Eventually, by systematically training oneself, a competitor can learn how to do this at will.

i wanna know more

If I heard a particularly catchy tune at home or on the way to a tournament, I would sometimes be haunted by it for days. This might sound trivial, but for me it was disastrous—there I’d be, eleven years old, facing down a wily old chess master, and the theme song from Ghostbusters would be hammering away in my brain. The more I tried to block out the distraction, the louder it would get in my head.

this happened to me in high school all the time. it was so bad that i wouldnt let myself listen to any music or watch anything for weeks before any big test.

A few times a week, while studying chess in my bedroom, I blasted music. Sometimes it was music I liked, sometimes music I didn’t like.

how he dealt with the noise problem

He explained that in the climactic moments of the struggle, when I had to buckle down and patiently work my way through the complications to find a precise solution, this boy would start to tap a chess piece on the side of the table, barely audible, but at a pace that entered and slightly quickened my mental process. This subtle tactic was highly effective and I later found out that it was an offspring of the Soviet study of hypnosis and mind control.

fascinating tidbit

While valuable chess ideas might have been exchanged, the psychological effect was much more critical. Opponents felt helpless and wronged—they took on the mentality of victim and so half the battle was already lost. More than once, I watched top young American players reduced to tears by this kid—but these dirty tactics were not reserved for local soil.

a kid would get up and speak in russian to his coach as a tactic

My whole life I have worked on this issue. 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 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.

i like to do this too

This was a muscle I built up by training myself to be at peace with the unclear and tumultuous—and most of the training was in everyday life. For example, since my teens, when I play cards, say gin rummy, I rarely arrange my hand. I leave the melds all over the place and do the organization in my head.

i love this idea

I’ve never been a neat guy by nature, and I furthered my messiness for years by consciously leaving my living area chaotic so I could practice organizing things mentally and being mellow in the madness.

I DO THIS although i cave very easily

One idea I taught was the importance of regaining presence and clarity of mind after making a serious error.

People speak about momentum as if it were an entity of its own, an unpredictable player on the field, and from my own competitive experience, I can vouch for it seeming that way. The key is to bring that player onto your team by riding the psychological wave when it is behind you, and snapping back into a fresh presence when your clarity of mind begins to be swept away.

Musicians, actors, athletes, philosophers, scientists, writers understand that brilliant creations are often born of small errors. Problems set in if the performer has a brittle dependence on the safety of absolute perfection or duplication. Then an error triggers fear, detachment, uncertainty, or confusion that muddies the decision-making process.

chapter on "the downward spiral"

I taught them that being present at critical moments of competitions can turn losses into wins, and I conveyed strategies for how to do this.

how to turn a potential downward spiral to your advantage: sometimes splashing cold water on your face or taking three deep breaths, sometimes leaving the hall and sprinting 50m

the chess player’s 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.

Downward spiral happens because your emotional state is linked to your previous success, and the first mistake hurts. You spiral if you don't recalibrate.

I have always visualized two lines moving parallel to one another in space. One line is time, the other is our perception of the moment. I showed my students these lines with my hands, moving through the air. When we are present to what is, we are right up front with the expansion of time, but when we make a mistake and get frozen in what was, a layer of detachment builds. Time goes on and we stop.

Visual: parallel lines

During these years I discovered a powerful new private relationship to chess. I worked on the game tirelessly, but was now moved less by ambition than by a yearning for self-discovery.

These moments, where the technical and psychological collide, are where I directed my study of the game. In the course of a nine-round chess tournament, I’d arrive at around four or five critical positions that I didn’t quite understand or in which I made an error.

New way to study chess as he grappled with young adulthood

Immediately after each of my games, I quickly entered the moves into my computer, noting my thought process and how I felt emotionally at various stages of the battle. Then after the tournament, armed with these fresh impressions, I went back to Vrholvje and studied the critical moments.

The process

Over time my blood started flowing, sweat came, I settled into the rhythm of analysis, soaked in countless patterns of evolving sophistication as I pored over what a computer would consider billions of variations. Like a runner in stride, my thinking became unhindered, free-flowing, faster and faster as I lost myself in the position.

How this type of study enraptures

I couldn’t explain this new knowledge with variations or words. It felt more elemental, like rippling water or a light breeze. My chess intuition had deepened. This was the study of numbers to leave numbers.I

in the pressure of tournaments, the tension in the mind mounts with the tension in the position, and an error on the board usually parallels a psychological collapse of sorts. Almost invariably, there was a consistent psychological strain to my errors in a given tournament, and what I began to notice is that my problems on the chessboard usually were manifesting themselves in my life outside of chess.

Interesting

In chess games, I would take some deep breaths and clear my mind when the character of the struggle shifted. In life, I worked on embracing change instead of fighting it. With awareness and action, in both life and chess my weakness was transformed into a strength.

Once I recognized that deeply buried secrets in a competitor tend to surface under intense pressure, my study of chess became a form of psychoanalysis. I unearthed my subtlest foibles through chess, and the link between my personal and artistic sides was undeniable.

The psychological theme could range from transitions to resilient concentration, fluidity of mind, control, leaps into the unknown, sitting with tension, the downward spiral, being at peace with discomfort, giving into fatigue, emotional turbulence, and invariably the chess move...

I also studied my opponents closely. Like myself, their psychological nuances in life manifested over the board. I would watch a rival tapping his feet impatiently while waiting for an elevator or carefully maneuvering around his peas on a dinner plate.

Observing his opponents and taking advantage of their weaknesses

If someone was a controlling person who liked to calculate everything out before acting, I would make the chess position chaotic, beyond calculation, so he would have to make that uncomfortable leap into the unknown. If an opponent was intuitive, fast, and hungering for abstract creations, I would make the position precise, so the only solution lay in patient, mind-numbing math.

Observing his opponents and taking advantage of their weaknesses

I saw the art as a movement closer and closer to an unattainable truth, as if I were traveling through a tunnel that continuously deepened and widened as I progressed. The more I knew about the game, the more I realized how much there was to know.

by numbers to leave numbers, or form to leave form, I am describing a process in which technical information is integrated into what feels like natural intelligence. Sometimes there will literally be numbers. Other times there will be principles, patterns, variations, techniques, ideas.

"Numbers to leave numbers" scope

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.

"A life of ambition is like existing on a balance beam"

While a child can make the beam a playground, high-stress performers often transform the beam into a tightrope. Any slip becomes a crisis. Suddenly you have everything to lose, the rope is swaying above a crater of fire, increasingly dramatic acrobatics are expected of you but the air feels thick with projectiles aimed to dislodge your balance.

Balance beam extended analogy

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

Getting back to a fun balance beam:

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.

There will inevitably be times when we need to try new ideas, release our current knowledge to take in new information—but it is critical to integrate this new information in a manner that does not violate who we are. By taking away our natural voice, we leave ourselves without a center of gravity to balance us as we navigate the countless obstacles along our way.

Your relationship to your pursuit must stay in harmony with your unique disposition

On one level, Razuvaev’s point was that the great attacking players all possess keen understanding of positional chess, and the way for someone like myself to study high-level positional chess is to study the way the great players of my nature have integrated this element of the art.

You learn to do things foreign to you by learning from others like you who learned to do that foreign thing

Razuvaev’s educational philosophy falls very much in line with Taoist teachers who might say “learn this from that” or “learn the hard from the soft.” In most everyday life experiences, there seems to be a tangible connection between opposites.

Excellent point

The human mind defines things in relation to one another—without light the notion of darkness would be unintelligible Along the same lines, I have found that if we feed the unconscious, it will discover connections between what may appear to be disparate realities.

Nonduality!!!!

The great Abstract Expressionist painters and sculptors, for example, came to their revolutionary ideas through precise realist training.

Cool fact

So you guide the horse toward doing what you want to do because he wants to do it. You synchronize desires, speak the same language. You don’t break the horse’s spirit.

Second approach to training a horse, which is not the "shock and awe" method

There is the careful balance of pushing yourself relentlessly, but not so hard that you melt down. Muscles and minds need to stretch to grow, but if stretched too thin, they will snap.

The balance needed in learning and performance

We have to release our current ideas to soak in new material, but not so much that we lose touch with our unique natural talents. Vibrant, creative idealism needs to be tempered by a practical, technical awareness.

I yearned to “blunt my sharpness,” to temper my ambitions and make a movement away from the material.I Laotse’s focus was inward, on the underlying essence as opposed to the external manifestations. The Tao Te Ching’s wisdom centers on releasing obstructions to our natural insight, seeing false constructs for what they are and leaving them behind.

This made sense to me aesthetically, as I was already involved with my study of numbers to leave numbers. My understanding of learning was about searching for the flow that lay at the heart of, and transcended, the technical. The resonance of these ideas was exciting for me, and turned out to be hugely important later in my life.

Chen’s ability to mimic physical structure down to the smallest detail was amazing. He read the body like a great chess player reads the board. A huge element of Tai Chi is releasing obstructions so the body and mind can flow smoothly together. If there is tension in one place, the mind stops there, and the fluidity is broken. Chen could always see where my mind was.

If I was ready, I would learn. It was amazing how many students would miss such rich moments because they were looking at themselves in the mirror or impatiently checking the time. It took full concentration to pick up each valuable lesson, so on many levels Tai Chi class was an exercise in awareness.

expansive (outward or upward) movements occur with an in-breath, so the body and mind wake up, energize into a shape. He gives the example of reaching out to shake the hand of someone you are fond of, waking up after a restful sleep, or agreeing with somebody’s idea.

Usually, such positive moments are associated with an in-breath—in the Tai Chi form, we “breathe into the fingertips.” Then, with the out-breath, the body releases, de-energizes, like the last exhalation before falling asleep.

hold your palms in front of you, forefingers a few inches apart, shoulders relaxed. Now breathe in while gently expanding your fingers, putting your mind on your middle fingers, forefingers, and thumbs. Your breath and min...

This inhalation is slow, gently pulling oxygen into your dan tien (a spot believed to be the energetic center—located two and a half inches below the navel) and then moving that energy from your dan tien to your ...

Release your fingers, let your mind fall asleep, relax your hip joints, let everything sag into soft, quiet awareness. Once exhalation is complete, you reenergize. Try that ...

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.