Page 10 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

These questions became the central pr eoccupat ion in my life after I won my
first Push Hands National Champi ons hi p in November 2000. At the time I

was studying philosophy at Columbi a Uni versity and was especi ally dr awn to
Asian thought. I discovered some interesting foundat ions for my expe rienc e in
ancient Indian, Chinese, Tibetan, and Greek texts—U pan ishad ic essence, Taoist
receptivity, Neo-Confucian principle, Buddhist nonduality, and the Platonic forms

all seemed to be a bizarre cross-cultur al trace of what I was searchi ng for.
Whenever I had an idea, I would test it against some brilliant pr ofessor who
usually disagreed with my conclusions . Academ ic minds tend to be impa tient
with abstract language—when I spo ke about intuition, one philosophy professor

rolled her eyes and told me the term had no meani ng. The need for pr ecision
forced me to think about these ideas more concr etely. I had to come to a de epe r
sense of concepts like essence, quality, principle, intuition, and wisdom in order to
understand my own experience, l et alone h ave any chance of communi cating i t.

As I struggled for a more precise grasp of my own learni ng process, I was
forced to retrace my steps and remember what had been int erna lized and
forgotten. In both my chess and martial arts lives, ther e is a metho d of study
that has been critical to my growth. I sometimes refer to it as the study of

numbers to leave numbers, or form to leave form. A basic example of this process,
which applies to any discipline, can easily be illus trated thr ough che ss: A che ss
student must initially become immersed in the fundam entals in orde r to ha ve
any potential to reach a high level of ski ll. He or she will learn the pr inc ipl es of

endgame, middlegame, and openi ng pl ay. Ini tially one or two critical the mes
will be considered at once, but over time the intui tion learns to int egr ate more
and more principles into a sense of fl w. Eventual ly the foundat ion is so de epl y
internalized that it is no longer cons cious ly cons ider ed, but is lived. Thi s

process continuously cycles along as deeper layers of the ar t are soaked i n.
Very strong chess players will rarely speak of the fundam entals, but the se
beacons are the building blocks of thei r mastery. Similarly, a great pi ani st or
violinist does not think about indi vidual notes, but hi ts them all perfectly in a

virtuoso performance. In fact, thinki ng abo ut a “C” whi le pl aying Beetho ven’s
5th Symphony could be a real hitch becau se the flow might be lost. The
problem is that if you want to write an ins truct ional ches s bo ok for be gi nne rs,
you have to dig up all the stuff that is bur ied in your unco ns cious —I ha d thi s

issue when I wrote my first book, Attacking Chess. In order to write for