The joys of being an absolute beginner - for life
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Highlights
- And yet, sometimes, the “habits of the expert”, as the Zen master Suzuki called it, can be an obstacle – particularly when new solutions are demanded. With all their experience, experts can come to see what they expect to see.
- This tendency for people to default to the familiar, even in the face of a more optimal novel solution, has been termed the Einstellung effect (after a German word that means “set”).
- Children, in a very real sense, have beginners’ minds, open to wider possibilities. They see the world with fresher eyes, are less burdened with preconception and past experience, and are less guided by what they know to be true.
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But even as our skills improve, and our knowledge and experience grow, what I hope to encourage is the preservation, or even cultivation, of that spirit of the novice: the naive optimism, the hypervigilant alertness that comes with novelty and insecurity, the willingness to look foolish, and the permission to ask obvious questions – the unencumbered beginner’s mind.
- “Before you make your move, look at the position as if you were a beginner.”
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What I know already gets in the way of what I want to learn.
- But I’ve become convinced that whenever something is touted as being good for children, it’s even better for adults, in part because we assume we no longer need all those benefits an activity is said to provide.
- Learning new skills also changes the way you think, or the way you see the world.
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Learning to sing changes the way you listen to music, while learning to draw is a striking tutorial on the human visual system. Learning to weld is a crash course in physics and metallurgy. You learn to surf and suddenly you find yourself interested in tide tables and storm systems and the hydrodynamics of waves. Your world got bigger because you did.