Category: Philosophy

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Patience

Violin-maker in Sforza Castle. Milan. Italy.
Violin-maker in Sforza Castle. Milan. Italy.

Last week, I was given similar advice by teachers in two seemingly unrelated disciplines: kendo and music.

In kendo, during keiko (free practice) with a fifth-dan sensei, I tried hard to take initiative and ended up attacking non-stop, without really controlling the pace of the match. Rather, the match went on neither my nor on my opponent’s terms – kind of like the match in my recent grading examination. It felt rushed and hectic, certainly not projecting the yondan-level of pace and control that I was aiming at. The advice I was given after the practice was that I should have slowed down and observed the opponent: this is practice; you should make an opening and let the opponent hit you. Even if you receive a strike, you should learn from it: “Oh, this is his speed. This is his distance.” Then, you can use this knowledge in your own oji-waza (counter-attacks).

During a violin lesson on the same day, I was learning to play with an accompaniment. My problem was that I was not holding the long notes sufficiently long and as was “running away” from the accompanist.

Basically, both in music and in kendo, I lacked patience. I anticipated what was coming up next and didn’t let the current event unfold to completion. I think this is a general problem, and I am not unique in making this mistake. My daily life is over-scheduled with activities, both work- and family-related, especially during the pre-holiday season, which for me also coincides with the end-of-the-academic-term rush to complete various teaching obligations. As I go through the day, my focus shifts from the task at hand to the next item on my calendar, and as a result, I shortchange the present moment awareness. I cut short the long note I am supposed to hold.

As usual, there are positive lessons to learn from any consistent mistake, including this one. First, the very fact that I can identify and analyze the issue means that I am already on the way to correcting it. The real problem is when I am not even aware of something being out of place. As Morpheus said to Neo in “The Matrix”, which is my all-time favourite movie:
— …It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
–What truth?
–That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.

Second, the good news is that even in the midst of a hectic, over-scheduled life there are moments when I not only can, but indeed, am expected to, to pause and enjoy the long notes.

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Being non-reactive

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The keiko portion of my yondan (4th dan) kendo exam didn’t feel right as soon I finished it. This is the “match” portion of the test, were the judges observe your sparring with an opponent, who is attempting the same-level grading. No score is kept, and you have 1 minute and 20 seconds to demonstrate your “best kendo”. Because of being nervous, I went into a shiai (competition) mode too much, and exchanged way too many strikes with my opponent, mostly rather sloppily executed. I ended up failing the exam, so my intuition was correct.

While the exam is still fresh in my memory, I thought I would try to analyze the possible ways of dealing with the urge to attack. I do realize, that thinking about kendo is not a substitute for practice, but some analysis in addition to keiko must be better than mindlessly going through the motions.

Here is a piece of advice I received from a 5th dan sensei. At the yondan level, it is important to show the judges that you are in control of the match. On one hand, this means demonstrating ‘sen’ attitude – being in the attacking mode, exerting pressure on the opponent. On the other hand, your attacks should not be forced, to borrow the term from chess. For example, if your opponent faints an attack and moves the tip of his/her (I actually had a female opponent during my previous grading, so it definitely can be ‘her’) shinai upward, and you react by flinching and immediately jerking your shinai in the same direction, the judges will mark their report cards with an “X” against your name, and you will fail the exam. Your purely instinctive reaction shows that you are easily swayed by the opponent and are not in control of the match. It’s a tricky balance: to show attacking spirit, but attack only on your own terms.

So, what to do if the opponent attacks too often, and you want to impose a more deliberate pace to the match? The way I see it, there are basically two options: ignore the attack or counter-attack.

Ignoring doesn’t mean doing nothing. There are several ways of deflating the opponent’s attack without counter-attacking. One way is to hold a firm kamae and let the opponent impale himself on your shinai (assuming he doesn’t use uchi-zeme to knock your shinai out of the way before going for men). I have seen this done by senior sensei many times during keiko with junior kendoka. It seems a bit arrogant to me to do so, as if the opponent is offering something (a chance to exchange hits in this case), but I am refusing to accept it. Perhaps, this is a manifestation of the evolutionary-developed sense of obligation to accept gifts from strangers and to reciprocate with gifts of our own. Robert Chialdini describes this effect in detail in his book “Influence”. This instinctive reaction to accept favours and to pay back is what makes tourists vulnerable to scams (say, being offered colourful threads as “souvenirs from Africa”) on central streets of major European cities.

Perhaps, this is the way to act at the exam, though – confidently on the verge of arrogance in order to show that you are capable of sticking to your way of fighting regardless of the opponent is throwing at you.

Another course of action in the face of opponent’s attack is, of course, a defence immediately followed by a counter-attack. An important point her is that defence by itself won’t do. There is a saying in kendo: “bogyo no tame no bogyo nashi” – no defence for the sake of defence. The key is, however, not to fall into simply reacting to the opponent’s motions, but to lead him – to actually cause him to attack you (by applying seme) at the moment chosen by you.

So the balance between controlling the match and not reacting to a barrage of attacks is a tricky one. In NAVY SEAL terminology, you need to be both aggressive and situationally aware. Easier said than done.

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The underlying concept applies in all aspects of life, of course, beyond martial arts. As a professional photographer, for example, there is a difference between not missing creative opportunities and compulsively reacting to every request or job offer that comes your way. It is important to always be working on your craft, but sometimes detecting pitches and proposals. Chasing gigs that do not help develop your own style shows your immaturity as an artist – that you are not yet a ‘yondan’. And this is fine, by the way, because there are plenty of opportunities for practice at your current level. And, except for rare occasions, nobody is judging anyway.

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Micro-progress

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Before starting the treadmill for my lunch-break run, I put on my stylish black-and-red wireless headphones. If I forget to to charge them the day before or put them in the wrong bag it throws a major wrench into my workout. I listen to podcasts during my runs. This means that I am not completely focused on improving my running performance. If I were to follow the deliberate practice concepts, I would not want to be distracted by the soundtrack, but concentrate on my technique all the time – being aware of my stride length, pace and ground contact point relative to my center of gravity. Instead, I am half-way there – I follow a training program generated by the Runkeeper app, which keeps challenging me in terms of the distance and pace, but I do listen to non-running related stuff to distract me from the pain of the workout.

On my last run, I listened to an interview with Frank Shamrock, who made some insightful comments about warrior mindset. Although he talked in the context from which the term actually evolved – martial arts, many of the associated tactics became well-known in other fields, like business, sports and healthcare. A significant part of the warrior mindset is striving for self-improvement on a daily basis.

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The ubiquitous concept of kaizen is usually taken to mean “continuous improvement”. Also, in business context it is often understood to involve all aspects of a company’s operation and all of its personnel. Although the Japanese word “kaizen” itself does not include any notions of continuity or all-inclusiveness (it literally means “improvement”), the continuity of practice and improvement is key in martial arts. This is at least part of the reason why there is a default disdain towards “hobbyist kendo” and the view of many high-level Japanese sensei that foreign kendoka have no appreciation for daily practice.

The improvements don’t have to be large. In fact they can be microscopic in the grand scheme of things, and they don’t have to happen in all areas of performance at once, but there needs to be some improvement every day.

Personally, I distinguish between progress in quantity and quality of work. This applies to any field, not just kendo in my case. For example, when I work on post-processing images from a large photoshoot, simply reducing the number of photos in the pipeline is not sufficiently satisfactory for me as a measure of progress. I try to develop new processing techniques and make mental notes about composition and camera settings for future shoots. This way, working on the particular shoot has the benefit of leaving me with improved skills, even in the worst case scenario, say, if the images themselves would never be looked at by the clients ever again.

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Favourite failure

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Failure is an important measure of progress. My violin teacher says I need to throw caution to the wind every so often and play as fluid and as fast as I can, ramping up the speed until something fails, either intonation or bow pressure or one of the other thousand or so technical elements that apparently can mess up the final result. When something does fail, it is important to notice what it is and then start practicing that specific element at a slow and deliberate speed.

There is another type of failure, one that you are not looking for intentionally as part of deliberate practice. It’s the failure that you are trying to avoid, but that happens despite your intentions. There is an argument that even this kind of failure is often good for you in retrospect.

Tim Ferriss has a question that he asks all his podcast guests and that is prominently featured in his new book “Tribe of Mentors”: “What is your favourite failure and what did you learn from it?” I find it insightful to see how the interviewees process what appears to be a failure into something they view as a valuable lesson. More than the specific examples, what fascinates me is how resilient these people are. And, of course, the lessons learned from failures are illustrations of what Steve Jobs famously said: you can connect the dots only looking back.

Extracting useful lessons from failures is hard in general. I can say, though, that the main thing I learned from failing yondan kendo grading this past Saturday was realizing that life goes on after that almost completely unchanged. I can still talk about kendo with friends on the ferry on our way back from Vancouver to Victoria, I can go to see the Nutcracker ballet with my family the following day, I can have a cup of coffee and hot chocolate with my daughter after school at our favourite cafe,.. And, even more significantly, I can do all these things regardless of whether or not I go to grading next year or ever again. So next time, if there is a next time, there is no need to worry… as I keep saying to myself every time.

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Chasing novelty

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My daughter wakes up and goes straight for her new toys, which we bought the day before. It’s set of figurines of babies in cute costumes and their pet animals. She is eager to involve me into the game, while I am making her breakfast, so she lines up the animals at the edge of the table and makes a math problem for me: how many of them have tails? I am a little surprised at this initiative. Normally, it is my wife and I, who try to work little math questions into our games with our daughter.

I think what sparked her creativity is the fact these toys are new to her. She absolutely craves new things. Of course, this is not surprising, simply because she is human. I’ve read somewhere that the humans are programmed by evolution to favour new over old. A new object that enters the scope of our attention is getting more processing power of the brain dedicated to it, because there is potential danger and opportunity in the novelty.

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I think it was Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who said recently that if you have a choice between being the best at doing something and being the first to have done something, choose being the first if you want to make a mark in history (or generally make a impact). Actually, I think it is a false dichotomy. You don’t have to choose, because in many situations you can be both first and, eventually, the best (or one of the best). But the point is generally correct – it is a powerful statement and an advantageous position to be the first, whether it is scoring the first point in a kendo match, publishing the first paper in a particular research area or being the first to apply a certain technique (either in science or in art).

Of course, being the first at something genuinely novel is difficult. One technique is to broaden the scope to include not only whatever you are doing, but also yourself. For example, Amilia Earhart is not known because she was the ninetieth (or so, depending on how you count the early flights) person to fly over the Atlantic, but because she was the first female to do it. We all have a combination of certain skills, and while we might not be the best in the world in any one of them, the intersection of these skills makes us quite unique.

So with the new toys for children, it is probably wise to maintain some balance. On the one hand, excessive dependance on external rewards or praise is not healthy. On the other hand, new toys, puzzles and books are clearly effective for stimulating thinking, because novelty sides with evolution.

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Just doing it

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“If you feel you need permission to do all the reading and writing your little heart desires, however, consider it hereby granted by yours truly.”
— Stephen King, “On Writing“

A few days ago, I came across an article about different speech patterns in men and women, and what they reveal about confidence, stereotypes, etc. In particular, women tend to use the word “just” more often than men. It is a “permission word”, which people use to subtly, and often subconsciously, justify their right to talk about whatever the subject happens to be.

As I was reading the article, I realized that I also use “just” often, especially in emails. Also, I noticed that I use permission words more often when I write about photography than when I write about academic research. This happens because my photography work evolved from being a pure hobby, while the research has always been in the “job” category (so I take it more seriously). Similarly, new writers are often reluctant to view themselves as professionals, as Stephen King described in his fascinating and incredibly insightful book “On Writing”.

In fact, what determines whether one is doing something professionally is not the fraction of personal income that this activity generates. Instead, what makes a professional is her professional attitude. This includes:

1. Showing up to do the work every day. It is not the amount of work per se that is important, although quantity does matter, as well as quality. The important factor is regularity. Professionals do not make grand accomplishments their daily goal. Instead, they aim for continuing improvement.
2. Treating tools of the trade and the working environment with respect, but without making them cult objects. A perfect example of this how experienced kendoka, who practiced martial arts for a significant part of their lives treat their bogu and shinai. They don’t bow to the shinai every time they take it out of the bag, but they keep everything in good working condition.
3. Not using elitist excuses for not doing the work. Those excuses are related to the lack of resources (“proper” tools, ideal conditions, sufficiently long uninterrupted periods of time) that are apparently necessary for doing the activity. If I can’t do it perfectly, I won’t do it at all, an elitist would say. But the reality is never perfect, so a pro would say that a little bit of practice is better than none. And those little bits do accumulate over time. Yes, deep work requires large chunks of time and specific conditions, but not every time. In challenges, there are opportunities to practice certain aspects of the craft. In fact, limiting the choice of tools or media is a well-known artistic technique. Jigoro Kano said: “Derive meaning from the struggle”. Brandon Webb, a former US Navy SEAL sniper, puts the same thing less poetically: “Embrace the suck.”

In other words, professionals are just doing their craft, without needing justifications for it. This is exactly what Nike is inviting people to do in their famous slogan: to adopt a professional attitude towards running, even though, ironically, they do it using a permission word. Perhaps, once we give ourselves permission to be pros, we don’t need to subconsciously seek this permission from others by using “just” in our speech.

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Too present to learn

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“You can’t think and hit at the same time.”

– Yogi Berra

I wonder, wouldn’t it be super-productive to apply my analytical skills to learning a physical skill? For example, I could use a fundamental studying technique like note-taking for learning kendo or violin-playing.

However, this is obvious and easy only in principle. In reality, I find that practicing a martial art or music requires so much focus and present-moment awareness that I literally remember very little to take notes of after practice. All my energy, both physical and mental, is spent on doing the thing, not on thinking about it. In fact, I am surprised how some people can ask questions during a kendo practice. Not that that find the answers obvious (mostly, quite the opposite) or the behaviour awkward (even though the structure of a typical kendo practice is not conducive to question-and-answer sessions, we are not in Japan after all). I just don’t find that beyond the very basic level, intellectual understanding of a particular technique is helpful for making progress. It feels like practice is needed at the moment, not another explanation.

I recently came upon a similar reflection in a book I’ve been reading, “A Man in Love” by Karl Ove Knausgaard (which is a fantastic book, by the way – I can’t say that I enjoy any particular aspect of it, and the story is not exciting, but somehow I just know it’s a modern masterpiece, and I cannot stop reading it). There, a writer friend of the main character describes his experience of writing about and training with professional boxers: “You know, the boxers I wrote about had an incredible presence. But that meant they weren’t spectators of themselves, so they didn’t remember anything. Not a thing! Share the moment with me here and now. That was their offer.”

Having said all this, I think there is a way of harnessing the power of analysis. In fact, this is how progress usually happens – at the juncture of previously disjointed fields. Just look at Bruce Lee’s notebooks with all the detailed sketches and notes on the physical, psychological and philosophical aspects of his practice. I think the idea is to separate the two activities in time. Practice first, analyze later. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, you cannot think while hitting, but you can think about how you’ve just hit.

In fact, I was probably wrong, when I said that couldn’t remember anything about the last night’s practice. After all, there are established techniques for helping me remember, to improve my ability to remember:

  • Verbalize the learned concep. If I learned only one thing during last practice, what is that? Assigning words to the idea captures it and gives it some substance. Now it can be studied and analyzed.
  • Do this soon after practice (within the first 24 hours). Make a written note of what you learn.
  • Revisit the note before the next lesson, so you can build upon what you’ve learned during the practice.

In the case of violin practice, things are even simpler – my teacher takes notes while I practice and gives them to me after the lesson.

All these suggestions sound incredibly simple and obvious. This is what we teach our students, who study math, physics and engineering.

Obvious – definitely. Simple? I find them easier said than done. But if nothing else, learning this way is a practice itself.

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Coping with change

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I recently heard somewhere that an effective way of avoiding stress of rapidly changing life situations is to regard the change as a normal, and even desirable state. There is an analogy with downhill skiing, which many people enjoy. When you do downhill, your immediate environment changes very rapidly, things come into your field of view quickly, forcing you to constantly adapt. But that is is perfectly normal and expected. In fact, this is what makes skiing fun. So in everyday life, constant change is the norm too, rather than the exception. We just need to learn to ride it (or roll with it, depending on your skill level).

Museum of contemporary art. Kanazawa. Japan.
Museum of contemporary art. Kanazawa. Japan.

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Time running like a cheetah

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It’s been a month since we came back from sabbatical, and our six-years-old daughter said, being in one of her philosophical moods: “In Milan, time was running like a cheetah, chasing away holidays, so that they would pass quickly. Here in Victoria, time goes a bit slower. I like that.”

I am not sure I agree – I hardly noticed the last month with all the logistics of re-establishing the daily routines and the start of the school year, both for us and for our daughter. I did go to Japan during that time, though, and visited the places we called home during our last sabbatical. That was certainly nice, and I guess, a lot has happened in this short last month. Doest it mean that time runs fast or slow? My daughter is probably right after all.

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Being selfish

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“Most people think self-oriented and other-oriented motivations are oppositeness of a continuum. Yet, I’ve consistently found that they’re completely independent. You can have neither and you can have both.”
— Adam Grant

It’s a counterintuitive idea that you have to improve yourself in order to be able to help others. That means that at every given moment, as you work on something, your motivation is is both selfish and altruistic. But the fact (demonstrated by Adam Grant’s research, for example) that these motivations are independent is even more difficult to grasp.

In the end, I think that a selfish interest comes first. This is what sparks the initial interest in whatever we decide to do. Later on, as we develop some expertise in the subject, we might be able to maintain the interest as we find the purpose (as the answer to the “Why?” question starts to involve other people beside ourselves).

In my case, I am interested in photography first of all because I am a geek and love technology. Second, I love art, and photography lets me combine the tech and art aspects. Third, I like to photograph my family and the places I visit. Finally, I like the fact that my images are useful to other people: the athletes get to see the moments of their performance that otherwise only the spectators can enjoy, parents have memories of their kids practicing and performing dance numbers, etc.

Paradoxically, we do things we love mostly for ourselves, yet we seek external validation and are delighted by it.

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