Nuture
“Scientists who study the mechanics of curiosity are finding that it is, at its core, a kind of probability algorithm—our brain’s continuous calculation of which path or action is likely to gain us the most knowledge in the least amount of time. Like the links on a Wikipedia page, curiosity builds upon itself, every question leading to the next. And as with a journey down the Wikipedia wormhole, where you start dictates where you might end up. That’s the funny thing about curiosity: It’s less about what you don’t know than about what you already do.” — Curiosity Depends on What you Already Know
Nuturing is a lifelong process. Most often thought of in childhood nurturing creates the maintenance and nourishment of critical lessons of life are learned and assumptions are made that define the individual’s concept of self, family, and the beginnings of their broader worldview. Attention is ideally given above all to the nurturing of a happy, interactive, confident child through the lessons that occur naturally during work and play in the family setting.
It continues through young adulthood and throughout life in creativity, curiosity, and the refinement of a being a worthy citizen, friend, partner, or mate.
You are a product of your environment, but your environment is a product of your choices. [Accountability - Environment - Vision]
Nurture creativity (possibly move to Creation?)
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Start with a weak imitation of something you like
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Identify what makes your imitation weak
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Iterate and refine the imitation until it is original
It’s interesting how often we feel like we know something and yet when pressed realize just how shallow our understanding is. Everything has layers of depth and is a potential rabbit hole for exploration. In fact, it’s much easy to just stop at an answer that seems to make sense. Thinking hard takes effort and pursue everything that you don’t quite get will produce an endless, and rapidly proliferating, series of rabbit holes.
When you first start learning something, your skill level rises rapidly as you learn the basic skills. As you learn more, you begin to understand the nuances, exceptions, and occasional conflicts within those skills. As you integrate these subtleties, your skill level drops, because you start to misuse skills you were using correctly beforehand. Eventually, once you finish integrating your newly learned skills, your skill level rapidly rises. The cycle repeats as you learn a new thing and subsequently the nuances of that new thing.
The reasonable advice is to find a style that works for you, and work on refining it. But all too quickly “refining my style” becomes “do what’s comfortable and easy”. I managed to dial back my natural instinct to stick with what was delivering wins. Instead, I dedicated myself to the skills that caused losses and taking those losses in stride, recognizing that they would help me work on my weaknesses.
Prioritize improving over winning.
Find the ‘vehicle’ for your curiosity
Books on skills development - Peak (emphasis mine): This is a fundamental truth about any sort of practice: if you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve. The amateur pianist who took half a dozen years of lessons when he was a teenager but who for the past thirty years has been playing the same set of songs in exactly the same way over and over again may have accumulated ten thousand hours of “practice” during that time, but he is no better at playing the piano than he was thirty years ago. Indeed, he’s probably worse.
- But what exactly is X? What is it? (h/t Laura Deming’s post)
- Why must X be true? Why does this have to be the case? What is the single, fundamental reason?
- Do I really believe that this is true, deep down? Would I bet a large amount of money on it with a friend?
“It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a brain. It is not even the distribution of knowledge. It is the interconnectedness.” — Howard Bloom
Three stages of thinking:
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Too simplistic (it’s easy).
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Too complicated (it’s hard).
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Simple (it’s simple but not easy).
We tend to avoid the hard work necessary to make it simple.
Per Vonnegut’s telling however, it can be incredibly freeing to shed the expectation of mastery. Creating for the sake of creation, writing for the sake of writing, and trying for the sake of trying, is all invaluable grist for the spiritual mill.
Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance.