Unchain Your Brain Part 5: Learning Traps

Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4— Part 5

Intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.

— Albert Einstein

The main point about reading, collaboration, and experimentation is not that these are simply three ways to learn, but rather they represent an integrated approach to learning where all three facets of the framework must be present. In order for expertise to fully develop, the effort must be sustained for 10,000 hours. Attempting to attain expertise without any one of the three components or not sustaining the effort for the necessary duration is a recipe for stagnation. Awareness of the traps makes them easy to avoid, so let’s take a look at each one in turn:

1. Reinventing the lightning rod trap
To learn without reading would be like reinventing the lightning rod. People talk about reinventing the wheel, but that’s a tired cliché that tells us nothing. Who invented the first wheel? How long did it take to make the conceptual break-through in that person’s life? Did it take days? Months? Years? We don’t know. The lightning rod is different because its invention is famous enough to give the analogy substance. And, of course, I’ll jump at any opportunity to talk about Ben Franklin. We know that Franklin began his immersion into science after he retired from his printing business at the age of 42. From the time he first delved into the subject of electricity it took Franklin about 10 years to have the conceptual breakthrough that allowed him to invent the lightning rod. You, however, can have a better conceptual understanding of lightning rods than Ben Franklin by taking five minutes to read the lightning rod entry on Wikipeida. So before you venture out on a new learning endeavor, figure out what is already known. You just may save 10 years of your time.

Another example can be found in the discipline I study – art. Today artists can learn anatomy from books and sculptures. Imagine learning anatomy in Leonardo da Vinci’s day when no books were available on the subject. Of his efforts he said:

I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other members, and removing the very minutest particles of the flesh by which these veins are surrounded, without causing them to bleed, excepting the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins. And as one single body would not last so long, since it was necessary to proceed with several bodies by degrees, until I came to an end and had a complete knowledge; this I repeated twice, to learn the differences.

The smell must have been lovely. It’s much easier (and less disgusting) to learn anatomy today with the many books on the subject. It’s important to note that da Vinci did this only because he had to. There were no books on the subject. Where anatomy was uncharted territory that required experimentation, the subject of perspective was a product of the Renaissance that da Vinci had access to. His approach to perspective shows his attitude to this subject and, I think, his approach to learning in general:

Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without a rudder or compass and who never can be certain whither he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.

Pick whatever analogy works best for you: Don’t reinvent the wheel; don’t reinvent the lightning rod; or don’t dissect human corpses to learn anatomy. With a written history that started around the 4th millennium BC, there is an easier way. It would be foolish not to learn as much as possible from those who have come before us.

2. Paralysis of analysis trap
This is an easy trap to fall into because taking action can be daunting. Fear of failure is the primary reason this trap exists.

I must confess that I am guilty of this in my study of watercolor painting. I love watercolor, but it intimidates me. I have always yearned to be a watercolorist, so I have bought book after book thinking, “this will be the one that will tell me the secret I need to know.” The problem wasn’t my knowledge though. My problem is that I did far too much reading and not enough painting.

I can tell you all about color theory, about complementary colors, analogous color schemes, transparent colors, opaque colors. I can explain what a flat wash is compared to a gradated wash. I can talk a good game because I’ve read extensively. What I can’t do is paint very well with the medium.

Solving the problem will not require that I overcome my fear of failure in the traditional sense. In other words, it doesn’t mean that I must accept the possibility that failure might occur, or that with enough effort I will not fail; instead I will have to tacitly accept failure an integral part of the process. I’ll discuss this more later.

3. Vacuum Trap
No one is in possession of all truth. In each of us, not only do we have our own biases, and prejudices, but we are all subject to the limits of the experiences, assumptions and facts upon which we ascribe our understanding of “truth” to. Our understandings of “truth” are different from one another, and in their own unique ways, flawed. Among strong, free thinking collaborators, good ideas are more likely to be survive while bad ideas are more likely to be discarded. Collaboration, in effect, is idea Darwinism.

To illustrate the point, consider the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1789. As much as I admire Benjamin Franklin, not all of his ideas were great ones, and during the Constitutional Convention many of his proposals were ignored. Among his rejected ideas, was Franklin’s preference for a unicameral legislative branch. The idea of a bicameral legislative branch, with its House of Representatives and Senate, was not proposed by Franklin; however, once he understood it, he championed it, and was instrumental in getting the other delegates to adopt it into the Constitution. The best idea won, and as a result, the Constitution of the United States was ratified and became a successful and enduring document.

A system built on collaboration tends to work better compared to other systems. This is why capitalism works so well. It is also why, I believe, the non-degreed achievers have been able to succeed in America where in other places they may not have. The opportunity to contribute in America has been more open than in previous systems built on aristocracies, dictatorships or other government systems that limit the number and diversity of ideas of its people. Diversity of ideas is essential. After all, if you only collaborate with people who think like you, you might as well not collaborate with anyone at all.

In America, we’re wired for capitalism, which at its heart is a bottom up economic system of collaboration that reacts to need. Since America has only 5% of the population but is responsible about 50% of the innovation in the world (according to Bill Gates) innovations on the horizon will likely benefit us more than the rest of the world. This has been historically true from the invention of the light bulb, to advances in the aerospace industry, the automotive industry, the entertainment industry, the computer technology industry, and for that matter, modern democracy itself.

4. Not enough time trap
10,000 hours over a 5 to 10 year period is a lot of time to dedicate to anything. Yet to become an expert it must be done. The problem, I think, is that when we embark on a completely new skill, early success is elusive. This can be very discouraging, especially to those scripted to believe that either you have talent or you don’t. The remedy for this is to have faith in the process. If it helps, think of Vincent Van Gogh.

Van Gogh decided to become an artist when he was 27. Even though he had been around art as an art dealer, he had never done any serious study of the subject himself. After he decided to become an artist, he poured himself into it. A record of his journey is remarkably well preserved in his letters to his brother Theo. For about the first two years of his studies, as he was trying to master basic drawing skills, Van Gogh’s descriptions of his attempts revealed his frustration. The following are excerpts from his letters to his brother that illustrate his thoughts as he started his studies. Note the early lack of success and frustration he encountered:

August 1880
I would very much like to have done the drawing in question better than I have done.

September 7, 1880
For some time I have been scribbling drawings without making much progress, but recently it seems to me that it has been getting better, and I have good hopes that it will get better still.

September 24, 1880
So you see I am madly at work, but for the moment it is not producing any very satisfactory results. But I hope that these thorns will produce white blossoms in their day, and that this apparently sterile struggle is nothing but the labor of giving birth. First the pain, but afterwards the joy.

12-15 October 1881
Nature always starts by resisting the artist, but if you take her really seriously, you will not let yourself be upset by this resistance; on the contrary, it is an extra stimulus to conquer her, and at heart nature and a true artist are in tune with each other . . .And having wrestled and battled with nature for some time, she starts to be a little more cooperative and submissive. Not that I have reached that stage, no one is further from it than I believe myself to be, but I am beginning to make headway.

18 November 1881
To my regret there is still something hard and severe in my drawings.

12-16 January 1882
Mauve tells me that I will spoil at least some ten drawings before I learn how to wield a brush well. But beyond that point is a better future, so I carry on working with as much sang-froid as I can gather together and will not let myself be put off, even by mistakes.

It goes without saying that one can’t master the technique in a day.

14-18 March, 1882
I am decidedly no landscape painter.

15-27 April 1882
Tersteeg tells me: “Things were not going well with you before, and you failed, and now exactly the same is happening again.” Stop—no, it is quite different from before, and this argument is actually a fallacy.

. . . It is just because I have a draftman’s fist that I cannot keep away from drawing, and I ask you, from the day I first started to draw, have I ever doubted, or hesitated, or faltered? I think you know very well that I have soldiered on, and of course, the battle has gradually become hotter.

June 1882
Art is jealous and demands all our time and all our strength, and then when we dedicate these to it, it leaves rather a bitter taste to be taken for some kind of impractical person and I don’t know what else.

Well, we just have to try to battle on.

31 July 1882
Of the drawings I will show you now, I think only this: that they, I hope, will prove to you that I am not just staying at the same level, but progressing in a reasonable direction.

9 September 1882
I am doing my very best to make every effort, because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.

18 September 1882
It is with drawing more or less as with writing. When you learn to write as a child, you have a feeling that it is quite impossible that you will ever understand it, and it seems a miracle when you see the schoolmaster writing so fast. Nevertheless you get the hang of it in time. And I really believe that this is the way to learn to draw, that it will become just as easy as writing something down, and you need to have the proportions in your head and learn to see them in such a way that you can reproduce something you see at will, in a larger or smaller size.

After about the first two years, Van Gogh’s frustration with the learning process disappeared from his correspondence. He seemed to find great joy in the creative process after that. Even when he was frustrated with the learning process, he retained his faith in it. He had faith that he would eventually overcome the obstacles and be able to paint great things. In his life, he did over 1100 drawings and about 900 paintings. During the last 70 days of his life, he painted 70 canvases. He was even starting to gain critical acclaim for his work. His most famous paintings were created during the 9th and 10th year of his artistic odyssey. Even Van Gogh couldn’t find a shortcut to expertise.

Like Vincent Van Gogh, you must have faith in the learning process and anchor your studies to it long enough for it to bear fruit. In doing so, you can turn a small seed of aptitude into expertise that others may describe as genius. Do not be discouraged by a lack of progress early on, which is all but inevitable. Read, experiment and collaborate for 10,000 hours. If you avoid the traps you will unchain your brain.

Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4— Part 5