#549 This is your true competitor
When you’re focused on outsmarting the competition
The true competitor becomes your ego.
When you’re focused on outsmarting the competition
The true competitor becomes your ego.
When you write every day, you believe you can write every day.
When you don’t write every day, you believe you can’t every day.
And so it goes for running, working out, eating healthy, playing the guitar, or anything else you’re frustrated or satisfied with.
Beliefs follow actions.
Actions confirm beliefs.
So follow your actions to uncover your beliefs.
Then change your actions to change your beliefs.
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?
Some examples of how I’m trying to integrate this principle into my life:
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.
What about second-hand memories? Accounts of past events we didn’t experience ourselves, wars, volcano eruptions, scientific discoveries,…
For knowledge to accumulate, to stand on the shoulders of giants, we need to transmit such lessons too. Not just as data or accounts of the past – also as memories.
But transmitting second-hand memories require trust.
Can we rely on the interpretation of others?
Who do we allow to control the narrative?
Parents? Elders? Teachers? Governments and politicians?
YouTubers? Influencers? Bloggers? Twitter gurus?
AI models and chatbots?
Objective data doesn’t exist. Objective memories don’t exist either. So if we can’t trust second-hand memories anymore, collective memory and our whole learning model collapses.
No one is bad at sticking to habits.
Because everyone’s day-to-day life is stitched together with recurring activities anyway, whether you consciously choose to do them or not.
Maybe you brush your teeth every day – and that has become a non-negotiable.
Maybe you wash your hands before every meal – and that has become a non-negotiable.
Maybe you shower every morning right after waking up – and that has become a non-negotiable.
Maybe you write every day – and that has become a non-negotiable.
Maybe you practice yoga three times a week – and that has become a non-negotiable.
Maybe you spend 10 minutes daily catching up with family, friends, acquaintances, or relatives you haven’t seen in a while – and that has become a non-negotiable.
Habits are habits.
And that has an interesting consequence:
If you can do that, you can also do this.
A neurotransmitter that once helped us evolve and motivated us to go out and explore the world now has us glued to screens and plates filled with sugary food.
Dopamine tells us not just to eat, but to eat more.
Not just to read a useful article, but click more headlines.
Swipe through more videos and photos.
Watch more episodes on Netflix.
Yet, when I interrupt the dopamine reward loop and resist the need for more, I’m pulled back into the now, and strangely enough, I actually see more. Hear more. Feel more.
Sometimes, to get more, you need to moderate.
If you don’t make a conscious choice to do something new, the choice will be made for you: you’ll stick with the default behavior you were doing before.
Your job is to stick to your conscious choices for long enough so they can become the new default behavior.