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Key insights from
Beginners: The Joy and Transformative
Power of Lifelong Learning
By
Tom Vanderbilt
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What you’ll learn
After taking his young daughter to chess tournaments,
journalist Tom Vanderbilt decided to take up the game himself. Competing
against (and losing to) eight-year-olds is not an enjoyable experience for
most adults, but for Vanderbilt it was an exhilarating foray into the world
of “beginnerdom.” Beginners is an ode to learning new things, to
old dogs learning new tricks, to extricating ourselves from our
comfortable, deeply grooved patterns so we can embrace those moments of
looking like a clueless fool, and rediscovering the joy of discovery
itself.
Read on for key insights from Beginners.
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1. Becoming a
first-time parent is the ultimate beginner experience.
Wherever your small pockets of knowledge about life may
reside, most can be sorted into buckets of declarative knowledge
and procedural knowledge. When you possess declarative knowledge,
you know about a thing. It’s the kind of knowledge that serves you well on
Jeopardy or other trivia games if you have enough of it. Then there’s
procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge is the more practical, hands-on,
how-to kind. If you have declarative knowledge, you can explain it; if you
have procedural knowledge, you can do it.
There are few realms of life in which that distinction
becomes more poignant than childrearing. If you have never had a kid
before, you probably know less than you think about raising one. Sure, you
have read a few books and heard some friends describe their transition to
parenthood, but not even the most rigorous theoretical introduction
prepares you for holding a hungry, crying human in your arms—one whom every
neurotransmitter in your body is convincing you to love—and wondering how
best to keep this thing alive. In the words of a Yale philosophy professor,
the adventure of childrearing is “epistemically unique.” That’s a
sophisticated way of saying, “Prepare to have no idea what you are doing.”
As a new parent, you are entering beginnership in a brand
new way. You weigh decisions about strollers, car seats, formula, and baby
foods. Is it too soon to start thinking about a college fund? You find
yourself comparing notes with strangers about what has worked and what has not.
There is the anxious uncertainty of not knowing the different kinds of
cries, or wondering if your home truly is “baby-proofed.”
And then, as your child gets older, you are initiated into
the role of teacher as well. It has been so long since you learned to throw
a ball or ride a bike that your own learning process feels too hazy to
recall. How do you teach your child without resorting to, “Just do it.”
Declarative knowledge helps here, but repackaging explanations for a
five-year-old is yet another dimension of being a novice parent-teacher.
Whatever your child gravitates to, watching your child learn and explore
(and even joining them in that learning process) might also be a wake-up
call that you have stopped learning.
If you do a quick search about learning with your child, you
will find numerous books and articles that assume you’re focused on the
child’s learning and only the child’s learning. But what if mom or dad
wants to participate in the learning process along with the child? There is
much less literature on that. Of course there are some parents who stifle
their children’s growth by crowding their existential space, but more often
than not, parents are so busy encouraging their children to try new things
and explore that parents forget to continue learning themselves. They stick
to comfortable routines and do their best not to venture beyond the realm
of familiarity.
There are a lot of perks to continued learning. One is that
you run a lower risk of falling into the “symbolic self completion” trap,
the theory that some parents unconsciously nudge (or force) their children
to complete what they themselves failed to achieve as youngsters. By
looking for opportunities to learn new things as an adult, parents take
pressure off their kids, and avoid becoming the proverbial old dog with no
new tricks.
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2. Learn from
infants—they are beginners par excellence.
The Infant Action Lab is a branch of New York University’s
Center for Neural Science. The Lab is designed with all the thoughtfulness
of a top-of-the-line daycare; only the place is teeming with researchers
interested in discovering the secrets of motor skill acquisition. How does
a baby learn to crawl? to walk? to walk well? What motivates the series of
transformations?
On average, young toddlers traverse the equivalent of eight
football fields daily, spend almost a third of every hour learning to move,
and fall 19 times an hour for their trouble. They are constantly exploring,
and log more daily steps (about 14,000) than the average adult. Infants
pick themselves up without the slightest perturbation, and this serves them
well.
There is tremendous flexibility to the causal connections
infants form; cause and effect are not nearly “fixed” in the infant’s mind.
One baby at the Infant Action Lab fell down some stairs during an
experiment and had to be taken to the emergency room. Within days, that
same baby was back at the lab, boldly crawling down daunting slopes.
Such pertinacious behavior might seem like a distinct disadvantage in life,
but it allows infants to continue “learning to learn” without getting
stymied by bumps and scrapes along the way. The world is constantly
changing for infants, and each day has plenty of challenges. Unlike adults,
infants don’t berate themselves for yesterday’s mistakes.
In the estimation of the Infant Action Lab’s director, Karen
Adolph, the worst thing infants can internalize is, “Stop trying.” Babies
fall all the time. That’s just what they do. They spend so much time
attempting new feats that their doggedness serves them well.
As we get older, we fall less, but the cost of falling
becomes more severe. Bones become brittle and take longer to heal.
Interestingly, adult parkour classes for seniors teach adults how to fall
in a way that will minimize injury. What is true literally is also true in
the more metaphorical sense of making mistakes. Unlike infants (which we
once were, lest we forget) who get up and keep going without a second
thought no matter how many times they fall, many adults make avoiding
mistakes our all-consuming obsession. We need to retrieve and channel the
younger, less-inhibited self that is unafraid to fall down and simply gets
up when the falls do come.
Infants are the best kinds of learners. They are adaptive,
flexible, and masters of learning how to learn. They explore situations
without feeling daunted and gradually learn to adjust themselves to all
kinds of scenarios and landscapes. Making mistakes simply does not faze or
deter them. Among many other things, infants teach us that, “If you don’t
learn to fail, you will fail to learn.”
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3. Unless you’re a
churchgoer, you probably haven’t sung with other people since the last
birthday party you attended.
Singing is a remarkable phenomenon in humanity. A cynical
view might try to reduce it to a series of pitch alterations, and yet
singing possesses a primal allure that, according to some evolutionary
biologists, ranks up there with our desire for food and sex.
Not only is singing enjoyable and capable of scratching some
primal itch, recent research continues to uncover its surprising health benefits:
It improves our immunity, stimulates oxytocin production, and activates the
vagal nerve complex, which, when online, tells our body that
fight-or-flight is not necessary. Heart rate drops to at-peace levels, and
breathing becomes less shallow and frantic. Some studies even suggest that
singing diminishes depression.
Music is tied to healthy development as well. Infants seem
to be obsessed with their mom’s singing even more than speech, and dad’s
singing goes a long way, too. When you serenade your infant, you are
basically bathing your baby’s brain (and your own) in love- and
bond-strengthening hormones like oxytocin and serotonin. When children are
very young, their parents sing lullabies and even communicate in more
singsong ways. As kids grow up that engaged pitch variation tapers off and
communication dwindles to an auditory bare bones of monotonicity. Talking
and singing become starkly divided activities and the latter we might stop
doing entirely. With or without an infant present, singing can induce a
gentle, warm euphoria in a singer, regardless of whether or not they can
carry a tune, which begs the question: Why don’t we sing more often than we
do?
The sad truth is that this life- and relationship-enhancing
activity is in remission. If you are not a churchgoer and don’t sing
in a choir, you probably haven't sung with other people in a long time.
Humanity has never had more ready access to more music than
we presently do, but there is also less singing than ever. And what happens
when people listen to more music than they make together? One natural
outcome is that no one knows lyrics—not unless they are singing with the
recording. Even a wildly popular number like Journey’s “Don’t Stop
Believing” has most people humming and mumbling by verse two.
There are a number of connections between the rise of access
to professional recording artists and our own singing. A preponderance of
top class vocals has heightened our awareness of what good singing sounds
like, and we hesitate to add our own voice to the mix. Is there a singing
insecurity epidemic plaguing the nation?
Singing could also simply be declining with church
attendance, where congregants worship together weekly. But in church
contexts, too, congregants defer to the “experts.” The experience of
singing is an increasingly private endeavor, something attempted in the
seclusion of the car or the shower. For some, singing has become shrouded
in shame.
Part of the shame lies in the unrealistic categories we
have. When we tell ourselves and others we cannot sing, what we mean is we
don’t have perfect pitch and will never tour as a vocalist. We also presume
that the voice we have right now is an enduring, static feature of who we
are, like a chronic medical condition that we can’t do anything about.
Research does reveal there are many in the tone-deaf masses,
precious few in the upper echelons of vocal performance, and very few in
between. But here too, relying on recorded music could be impeding pitch
precision. Without the buffer of instruments or the recorded song in the
background, the voice just sounds more thin and vulnerable. Listening to a
recording of oneself singing drives this home. When we listen to ourselves
recorded, we tend to cringe because it sounds even thinner without the
sound-enriching experience of hearing our sounds resonating in our own
body. Singing with a recording covers over a multitude of tonal sins.
If you sing by yourself in front of a crowd or voice coach,
you put on display your incapacity to match pitch. For most people, it is a
vulnerable experience. But letting go of the pressure to be pitch perfect
allows you to enjoy singing in a new way. And as any voice coach can tell
you, anyone can improve as a singer. The most destructive forces are mental
limits people place on themselves that end up reinforcing physical limits.
In other words, if you are convinced you can’t sing you will close yourself
off to improving that skill, and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy,
even though experts in the field see potential in your voice that you might
be missing.
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4. Don’t let the
drive for accomplishment and “being the best” hamstring your eagerness to
try (and enjoy) new activities.
The surf and sea have always possessed a mythopoetic
splendor, especially for those (like the author) who grew up landlocked.
For anyone who wants to surf, one faces the vulnerability that comes from
not knowing what you are doing, and the added layer of vulnerability
imposed by cynical surfer communities with a reputation for being
ruthlessly critical of midlife beginners. One pro surfer remarked that
surfers are “more cocky and judgmental than any group of people in the
world.”
The beginner's environment is a wonderful opportunity to let
go of self-consciousness. The saying rings true that “beginners focus on
themselves.” As ability improves, your field of vision expands beyond “you”
and what is immediately in front of you. Surfers observe the same principle:
“If you look down, you will go down.”
Sports psychologist Gabriele Wulf seconds these intuitions,
arguing that when people focus on themselves rather than some external
target, performance plummets. In a meta-analysis of almost 200 studies of
performance (including everything from darts to golf to playing music),
Wulf found the same pattern: Self-preoccupation leads to "micro
chokes," those slight, jerky, over-analyzed movements that prevent
fluid execution.
According to Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus, brothers and
colleagues at the University of California, there are five stages to adult
skills acquisition. The stages the brothers identify are novice, advanced
beginner, amateur, proficient, and expert. What they found was that the
model runs along a U-Shape, where things get harder before they get easier.
So novices might be elated to have popped up on their boards
and surfed their first wave (and rightly so!), but for the novice, most of
the territory of surfing remains to be explored. It will take perseverance
to ride the “U” and end up on the other end of proficient or expert.
Surf instructors observed the same five stages in adults
that the Dreyfus brothers identified. One surf coach described the
difference between coaching kids and coaching adults as the difference
between dispelling irrational fears (“I’m going to get eaten by a
megalodon”) and dispelling rational fears (“What if I sprain or pull
something?”). Additionally, kids come for lessons looking for fun while
adults can be so driven by goals and achievement that they not only ruin
any chance of having fun, but their driven dispositions prevent them from
progressing. His impression is that women are better beginners than men,
who are more likely to want to be great immediately and end up getting in
their own way. Ironically, they trap themselves in the novice state they
are so anxious to leave behind.
Even with the openness needed to let go and learn, surfing
is still just tough. It takes time to learn, and a lot of time to do it
very well. “Focus on process, not product” is a helpful mantra for learning
to surf or any other venture into the unknown.
Consider how the word “mediocre” implies “deeply
unimpressive and lackluster” to the success-oriented. But “mediocre”
derives from the Latin for “half-way to the top.” That’s not bad,
especially if you are attempting something you have never tried before.
Mediocre means you are no longer at the bottom. If it's not part of your
job, not a burning passion, or not something you have the opportunity to pursue
regularly, then mediocrity is a thing of beauty in its own right. Who wrote
the rule that it is not worth attempting something new unless you
eventually can become an expert in it? It is one we unconsciously abide by,
but embracing mediocrity in nonessential beginner domains can open up an
array of opportunities you never considered trying. If you are mediocre at
something, that still means you’re not half bad, and more importantly, you
can enjoy the partial ascent for what it is.
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5. By dedicating
just a little time to practice a skill, you can distinguish yourself from
the vast majority of people who have never tried it at all.
You have probably watched someone perform a skill with such
grace that they make it look easy, and then said to yourself, “I could
never do that.” True, you may never master that skill yourself, but it is
also true that it takes only a little effort and dedication to become
proficient in a skill that very few people possess. Perhaps there are
skills you yourself did not possess a year or two earlier, but somehow,
mysteriously, they became reflexive.
Juggling is an interesting skill because it teaches us a
great deal about the process of learning. It is no coincidence that
researchers at MIT and other top institutes have found juggling
fascinating. It is easy to contain within a lab and observe, people want to
practice it and improve at it once they have begun trying, and, just as
significantly, it is fun.
Most experts are unable to convey their expertise to the
novice. Teaching skills is entirely different than being able to
demonstrate those skills. In other words, having Lebron James at your
child’s basketball camp would be a memorable moment, but it would not help
your child play better. With basketball, juggling, or any other skill, DIYs
have their place, and it can be very helpful watching others perform the
skill you are hoping to learn, but there is no substitute for someone
observing and critiquing your action and process of change.
When we possess a skill we run on autopilot because it saves
mental bandwidth. The brain makes endless mini decisions very well when
conscious-but-slower parts of the brain don’t clog up the natural flow
state. So, lest we be too hard on professionals, it is worth remembering
the feeling of losing your knack for executing a skill as soon as you are
pressed to explain it. Even with a task you have known almost all your
life, like walking, once someone asks you how you walk, your gait will
shift to something unnatural and mechanically inefficient. That headspace
of overthinking is common for novices who are moving their bodies and using
their minds in unfamiliar ways. They live in that head space of stressed
overthinking.
When teaching someone to juggle, an instructor will
typically have one start with scarves. It slows things down, allows the
beginner to focus on proper body mechanics without the stress of dropping
balls and breaking flow. It also offers the added perk of small, early
wins, a consistent theme throughout the learning research. The trick with
expertise is, as one learning expert puts it, “getting people to learn to
move without knowing they are learning.”
A common misconception about juggling is that the idea is to
keep your eye on the balls and track their movement, but the idea is to refine
the body mechanics so that the tosses are consistent and the balls follow
predictable parabolic arcs, so predictable that one only needs to be
peripherally aware of the balls themselves. A good juggler pays attention
more to what is called “the apex,” the highest point the balls reach in the
pattern.
As one improves in a skill, time and motion start to slow
down. In juggling, perception of time and motion change drastically. At
first, everything is fast, the balls are falling too quickly and the body’s
movement is spastic. Eventually, the balls are virtually floating. The
general rule of thumb is that the more things you try to pay attention to,
the faster time moves. For the novice, everything seems fast and out of
control because he is trying to keep track of everything. But proficiency
allows one to let go of the motor reactions and thoughts that don’t help
accomplish the task. Eventually we learn to hone in on what is most
crucial.
Another challenge we face when learning new skills is that a
wide range of motions is available to us, but we don’t know yet which
mechanics serve us best in a skill. If you tried juggling without prior
experience, your arms would flail, your head would spastically pivot back
and forth tracking balls, and your torso would contort every which way as
you attempted to catch everything flying around (because you would believe
that tracking balls matters more than creating a consistent pattern).
Overtime, the muscle groups needed to perform a skill get on
the same page and the ones not needed learn to stay at rest. That beginner
stiffness begins to thaw.
The ideal scenario for the learner is "virtuous cycle
of skill improvement": The more you learn something, the more you like
it. The more you like it, the more you practice it. The more you practice
it, the more you improve. As you get older, it becomes more and more
crucial to engage in this process of learning.
This is not a case for giving up, but for devoting even more
time to learning. The old dog can still learn new tricks, and in fact he
needs to. The more adults learn how to learn, the more adaptable their
brains become. In effect, older adults begin to operate like younger
adults, in terms of their ability to learn. So however young or old you
are, never stop learning, and never lose your willingness to put yourself
in the position of a beginner.
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Endnotes
These insights are
just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Beginners
here. And since we get a commission on
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