HOW TO BECOME AN EXPERT

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HARD IS GOOD, EASY IS BAD

In my opinion, one of the most valid heuristics in life is: “hard is good, easy is bad” – great ‘entities’ are time honored; and becoming an expert is not an exception.

Benjamin Bloom, (one of the pioneers of the psychology of expert performance) carried out a retrospective study probing the childhoods of some expert performers in a wide range of field in the 80s. Surprisingly, his battery of researches indicated that there are no correlation between expert performance and IQ. What tends to correlate with expert performance is the amount of practice – not just mere practice but what is called “deliberate practice”

In the book, Moon walking with Einstein, Joshua Foer gave a great description of what it takes to be an expert (or to be great at something):

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3 stages in acquiring new skills:

Cognitive stage: Here, you are learning the techniques and “tricks”; so you will definitely make lots of mistakes.

Associative stage: Here, you kind of get a hold of the techniques; efficiency increases, with fewer mistakes.

Autonomous stage: You are in the flow. You get rid – for the most part – the conscious control associated with the prior stages. Joshua Foer called this the “OK plateau” “The point at which you decide you are OK with how good you are at something , turn on autopilot, and stop improving”

{For clarity: Think of when you started driving versus now (assuming you are good at it)}

Here is the key to becoming an expert: Stay off the autonomous stage.

How? Let's follow the prescriptions of expert performance psychologists:

 1, Take on deliberate task beyond your competence and comfort. (Focus on techniques)

2, Be goal oriented (laser focus)

3, Get a very robust feedback (which means you have to continuously monitor progress aggressively) And tweak actions based on feedbacks

Psychologists believe that 10,000 hours of this process leads to expertise.

The important point here is – when you are doing this, you get your ass stuck at the cognitive stage! (Which is literally, the art of practicing failing)

By default this is hard - it should be - but remember: Hard is good, Easy is bad.

This is almost like the "Law of gravity" for mastery, even the super-smart don't defy it.

Let me end with this apt quote from Macklemore “The greats weren't great because at birth they could paint, the greats were great because they paint a lot!"

FALLIBILITY OF YOUR RISK ASSESSMENT

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When it comes to risk assessment, it turns out that our rationality is often compromised – seriously.

This formula (attributed to Peter Sandman): Risk = Hazard + Outrage will expose most (if not all) of our risk irrationality.

Research prior the 80s (I think) found the correlation between the hazard of a risk and upsetting nature of the risk to be incredibly low, on average the correlation was about 0.2 and with a percentage of variance – 0.04 ... blah blah blah

In a more colloquial term, the conclusion was: the risk that kill people is very different from the risk that get them really perturbed.

In some other words: when outrage is high, even though hazard is low, we overestimate risk. Same way, when outrage is low, and hazard is high, we underestimate risk.

Few examples to clarify:   

If you have an option to donate to a charity that: a) Caters for cardiac patients or b) Caters for terrorism victims. I assume that there will be an overwhelming skew of funds directed to the terrorism victims. So the question is – why?

Let’s answer with a question. How will you feel when you hear the news of ‘someone’ who dies of heart disease versus a terrorist attack? Which one get you most upset? That’s the outrage factor in play.

The less the familiar, the more the outrage; likewise the more the familiar, the lower the outrage (The probability that someone dies of heart disease down your street is way too high, compare to that of terrorist attack. [With very few exceptions – the northeastern part of my home country will be a notorious exception]

It turns out cardiovascular disease is the top cause of death worldwide and the number of terrorism death victims terribly pales in comparison. (Just google)

I covered a United Nations Foundation event on clean cook stove last year summerat Washington DC as a science journalist, and I found out that “there are about 4.3 million deaths annually as a result of exposure to smoke from traditional cook stoves and open fire worldwide, which implies that a life would be claimed by cook stove smoke in 8 seconds. This mortality rate surpasses the death from malaria, HIV and tuberculosis combined” Isn’t that astounding!

On pure statistics ground, your money should go to a cardiac center or a clean cookstove non-profit. However, this argument might be faulted from a moralistic point of view, but never with numbers.

You feel more in control while driving, but in flight you are scared off (after all, you don’t even have an idea what the pilot looks like) The outrage is high, consequently perceived risk shoots up. Even though the data shows that more people die of car accidents than plane crashes.

Another question: do you really bother about global warming? or does global warming bothers you? Be brutally honest. My best guess is No(for both questions); why? Because outrage goes up when you think something bad is going to happen to you (I guess we are hardwired to be selfish); and when you think is going to happen now rather than later, it’s even worse. In the case of global warming, outrage is low even though hazard is high, so to ‘most of us’ there isn’t any risk.

This is generally called the perception gap: The distance between what the facts say and how much fear you feel. The bigger the gap the messier it could get.

To wrap this up I think your money should go to terrorism victims charities just as for cardiac patients (terrorist threat should be diminished), workout to prevent heart disease (at least do you best), be careful when you drive, remember the data on your next flight (Visualize a cool handsome (or beautiful) pilot if that helps) and yes Global warming is real! 

SMART OPTIMISM

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Let’s consider this epigram “prepared for failure, ready for success”

It could sound mundane but it’s an extremely powerful philosophy which most of us jettison while we plan. I will like to shorten the epigram as ‘Smart Optimism’

Going through life I have constantly be reminded of so many rules, one of which is – anticipate failure. This is, of course, the best way to abate disappointment when it comes.

The train of thought garners perfect sense only if you try to separate life and disappointment. Try it and tell me if you see anything else than an inevitable debacle!

So why not find a common ground? – Smart Optimism

If you agree on the inseparability of the duo, let’s take a quick trip back in time to hmmm..., say around 2,000 – 3000 BC and kindly consider these 3 scenarios

One, if you are going into a Lion’s den, and you had an option to pick an orderly. Who will you pick? If I were you, I will pick Samson! (or maybe David)

Two, if you are going into the forest to hunt, who will you pick? Esau?

Three, assume that the last night before your trip to the forest, you had epiphany: a lion descended on you, and coincidentally you had the clement opportunity to pick 2 orderlies the next morning

Who will you pick?

I had bet Samson will be by the left, Esau by your right.

In the end: What you know cannot really hurt you.