#18 Practicing neglected skills – Reps hidden in plain sight

ByLukas
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In his book The Art of Learning (and his podcast episodes with Tim Ferris), Josh Waitzkin, former chess player and martial artist, introduces the concept of “hidden reps” when learning something new:

I think that where the really potent, low-hanging fruit hanging in plain sight lie are in the thematic, are in breaking down the learning process into the core principles or themes you want to work on and doing reps of those. Those are just invisible to people in plain sight.

Josh Waitzkin on the Tim Ferris Podcast: https://tim.blog/2020/03/14/josh-waitzkin-transcript-412/

In other words, find “neglected skills“: situations you don’t often find yourself in and where you haven’t developed a lot of trust and confidence in your abilities yet.

Then isolate and practice them until you develop confidence and trust for that particular neglected skill.

For example, when working on his chess game, instead of practicing the “openings” like everybody else, Josh would isolate the “end games”(the final part of a chess match) and practice only these.

Most people wouldn’t think of doing that; they would always start at the opening (that’s where a chess match starts, after all) and practice the end game only as an afterthought, deep into their practice session when they had already spent all their energy on the opening.

By cutting out the opening entirely during practice sessions, Josh got a lot more “hidden reps” with the end game than his competitors, which led to a big competitive advantage.

This might seem obvious, but in my experience, it’s really quite counterintuitive not to start at the beginning when practicing a skill.

For example, when learning a new guitar piece, it feels strange not to start at the beginning but to pick out a difficult part and practice that over and over again. It’s not impossible, and many teachers will tell you to isolate difficult parts, but my (and many other students’) first instinct would always be to start at the top, over and over again.

Which begs the question:

Where else are we “starting from the top” over and over again, instead of finding and isolating the neglected skills?

Neglected skills and hidden reps examples

Some examples of how I’m trying to integrate this principle into my life:

  1. By the end of a yoga session, my muscles are so fatigued there are certain poses and moves I just can’t execute anymore with proper technique. Over the long run, this leads to an imbalance; I get good at the poses that appear early on in the session, and neglect the ones later in the session.
    To counteract this, I sometimes do separate sessions where I isolate those “neglected moves”. Suddenly, they become much easier, and I learn to execute them with proper technique.
  2. I’ve been writing and journaling every day for almost 2 years now. Those reps have trained me to get over the bump of the empty page, open the floodgates, and generate many ideas and insights.
  3. Out of all that writing and journaling, I barely ever created anything “publish-worthy”. Now I’m writing a daily blog post, which trains me to take the ideas I’m generating anyway, and turn them into something I can publish.
  4. Instead of publishing one long post a week – or once every couple of years like some book authors – where I’d only rarely experience that feeling and fear of “putting something out there”, I decided to publish something every day, even if it’s very short. Daily short form posts give me seven times more publishing practice than one long weekly post.
    I’m 15 days in and already notice I’m developing much more trust in myself that I’m capable of publishing something every day and there’s always something to write about. Even when I decide on a different schedule in the future, I’ll have much more experience in putting content out regularly than someone with a lower-frequency schedule.

In sum

Neglected skills are everywhere. No matter what you’re trying to learn or achieve, creating the circumstances where you can identify and isolate them, then put in the hidden reps, will pay big dividends.

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    The Productivity Trap: Does productivity mean maximizing economic output?

    The instant association exercise revealed that my biggest problem with productivity is that I (and many others) often mix it up with “economic productivity.” In other words: maximizing economic output every day. Or less euphemistic: working 10-12 hours a day.

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    This is a typical productivity trap. It’s a monster that’s never satisfied, creates a lot of pressure and leads to burnout.

    A healthier way to achieve a lot

    Luckily, there are other and healthier ways to be focused and achieve a lot. I like how Nir Eyal frames it in his excellent book “Indistractable“:

    On any given day, your mission is to do the things you set out to do.

    Sounds simple, but it’s a massive mindset shift.

    To understand why, we need to take a look at the concepts of traction and distraction.

    The magic of traction and distraction

    At any given time in your day, if you’re doing what you set out to do, no matter if it’s work, play, going for a walk, or taking a nap, you’re gaining traction. In other words, you’re moving towards the goal you set.

    If you’re not doing what you set out to do, you’re getting distracted. You’re moving away from the goal you set.

    Simple, right?

    The only prerequisite is that you choose what you want to gain traction towards. You have to deliberately decide what you’re going to do, create, work on, or play with.

    Traction is inclusive of ALL your daily activities, work or not

    The nicest part about this approach to “productivity” is that it allows, includes, and even encourages what many people classify as as “non-productive downtime.”

    For example, you can consciously decide to write two hours a day. Then, if you end up actually writing during those two hours, you’re gaining traction towards that goal.

    But you can also consciously decide, in advance, to watch a 1-hour series afterward as a reward for your hard labor.

    And if during that time you set out to watch that series, you actually watch the series, guess what: you’re gaining traction towards that goal too!

    If you set out to meet with friends, or have a romantic date night… and you follow through… yep, now you’re gaining traction in that domain too.

    The same goes for spending time with your kids, and anything else you consciously decide to do in any given day.

    If you adopt this new traction mindset, everything I described has now become “productivity”.

    Traction increases integrity, self-trust and self-esteem

    Now, why is this important?

    Simple. if you consciously choose what you’re going to do, no matter if it’s work, play, relaxing,… and you then follow through…

    That shows integrity.

    You show yourself you can do what you set out to do. You keep your promises to yourself.

    And that increases your self-trust and self-esteem.

    That’s right: saying you’re going to watch an episode of your favorite series and then doing that (without feeling guilty) can increase your self-trust as much as saying you’re writing a blog post and following through!

    That might sound weird, but that’s how it works. It’s just a healthier way to look at your daily activities.

    Added benefit: the more self-trust and self-esteem, the less inner resistance you’ll feel to living the life you want to life. Read more about that here.

    2 Essential conditions to make Traction work

    Here’s what’s important to start taking advantage of the power of traction:

    • Consciously decide what you’re going to do on any given day: work, play everything. If you don’t, the habits you created unconsciously over the past years will take over and pull you toward activities you want to avoid.
    • Avoid overpromising things you’re going to accomplish in one day. If you overpromise and it’s impossible to fulfill that promise to yourself (or others), you lower your self-esteem. If you do this every day, you’ll end up losing all trust in yourself. You’ll develop a belief that you’re unproductive, lazy, not reliable. In reality, you’re making unrealistic promises to yourself.

    A better way to manage projects without overpromising: timeboxing

    With practice, you’ll get better at estimating the time needed to complete a project you can create a realistic calendar.

    But sometimes, it’s hard to predict how long a project will take.

    If that’s the case, I recommend “time boxing”: adding a set block of time to your calendar to work on a project.

    Once the time is up, you stop working on that project.

    It doesn’t matter how much you achieved. As long as you worked on the project during that time block, you’ve gained traction. (If you ended up doing something else or you got distracted halfway through, that’s a different story.)

    In the end, it’s all about being honest with yourself and finding uninterrupted blocks of time to work.

    Step-by-step plan to start gaining traction

    Here’s how I recommend you get started with traction, without overdoing it (remember, keeping your promises to yourself and your integrity is vital):

    1. Decide on 1-2 projects you want to spend your time on a given day (work, play, relaxing, friends,… anything)
    2. Find uninterrupted time in your calendar where you can do that thing. 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes… find what works in your current situation.
    3. Add it to your calendar. Make sure to think through any possible distractions that might come up (your phone, kids, meetings,…) and prevent them from pulling on your attention during your chosen time block.
    4. When the time comes, work on the project you set out to do.
    5. When time’s up, stop working, no matter how much you did.
    6. Afterwards, review. How did it go?
      Did you do what you set out to do? Did you get distracted by anything? Could you prevent these distractions from happening in the future? You might have to change your environment. Put away your phone. Choose a different time with fewer distractions.
      Did you overpromise to yourself? Were your expectations for what you could achieve in this time block unrealistic? Was the time block was too short or too long? If necessary, adapt the time blocks and lower your expectations for the next time to avoid disappointing yourself again…
      Keep in mind: repeatedly letting yourself down is bad for your integrity and self-esteem.
    7. The next day, plan another uninterrupted block of time, this time adapted based on your experiences with the first block.
    8. Keep trying and adapting.

    Practicing traction this way will help your self-esteem, integrity, your trust in yourself. You’ll also get more done in less time. Because this is a plan that works long-term. It builds discipline. It helps you create a life you like and feel good about in the long term.

    Final thoughts: replace the word, not the meaning.

    Whenever a word becomes cluttered with negative connotations, I give myself two choices.

    Either I train myself to redefine the meaning of the word and replace the negative connotation with something more positive. That’s the hard way.

    Here’s the easy way: I replace the word itself with a brand-new concept with no negative associations.

    Productivity becomes traction.

    Controlling becomes channeling. (Blog post coming soon).

    Failure becomes lesson.

    You get the idea.

    I suggest you take the easy way and replace your goal of productivity with traction.

    It’ll save you a lot of time and frustration.

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