Law Technology

Book Review: The Art of Learning

I just finished reading the Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. Josh was the young chess prodigy that was featured in the movie Waiting for Bobby Fischer. Well, Josh has gone from winning a number of National chess championships to moving to Tai Chi, a martial arts. He’s won a stack of National Championships in Tai-Chi and some World Championships in Taiwan.

Josh has written a book about his learning and performance styles that have taught him to excel. The thing that stuck out most in my mind is how aggressively he has looked at his weaknesses, or taken any time that he has been beat and rather than running away from it, ignoring it, or pretending it didn’t happen, he would turn straight into the weakness and turn it into a positive.

One example was that when he was playing chess, he didn’t do well with distractions. Most people don’t. Some of the ‘diry players’ would purposefully kick him under the table and then act innocent, hum a tune and the pretend nothing happen when monitors were around and so forth. So instead of trying to call them out on it, or jump up and down and complain, Josh realized that this was 1) taking him out of his game and 2) giving the poor sports a leg up. So he started training with distractions and found a way to get into a ‘soft zone’ and eliminate this ‘advantage’.

Good stuff about a highly talented person that is constantly measuring himself and finding ways to improve. This is one of the best books I’ve read not only this year, but ever.

Full post as published by South Carolina Trial Law Blog on July 28, 2008 (boomark / email).