I would argue based on my own experience, that it is very difficult to maintain this type of attention when practicing any type of complex skill. I think the typical pattern of rapid learning at the beginner stage and then stopping improving completely is the result of mind resisting continuous, persistent attention. The beginner’s state of mind is not a pleasant one to be in and we want to start feeling comfortable quickly. Easiest way to do this is to stop paying so close attention. I don’t think this is an explicit decision. It’s just our tendency to not want to be in beginner’s state of mind.
I think the best performers in almost any field continue to feel like beginners even though their skills keep improving. Of course, a skilled performer knows that he’s better than vast majority of others. But this doesn’t make him feel comfortable. Skilled performer concentrates on the aspects that he’s bad at and he compares himself to better performers and not to his past performance but what he feel he could be.
It’s easy to agree with the original article but without actually implementing what it suggests. As a personal anecdote, I often play video games with my kids and I recently noticed that at some point I just stopped paying attention of what is going around. Sure, usually I don’t take the game too seriously, but it’s more fun when I do and the game itself is pretty challenging. When I realized that I didn’t give it my full attention, I decided to concentrate on seeing the game more clearly. Suddenly I noticed a lot more and the driving improved significantly. The difference what I saw was pretty dramatic at start. It felt like I was half-blind before deciding to pay more attention.
The decline in our ability and willingness to pay close attention is, in my own experience, inevitable. There’s no magic insight or system to keep us from falling back to auto-piloting. You just have to rediscover the attention over and over again.
I would argue based on my own experience, that it is very difficult to maintain this type of attention when practicing any type of complex skill. I think the typical pattern of rapid learning at the beginner stage and then stopping improving completely is the result of mind resisting continuous, persistent attention. The beginner’s state of mind is not a pleasant one to be in and we want to start feeling comfortable quickly. Easiest way to do this is to stop paying so close attention. I don’t think this is an explicit decision. It’s just our tendency to not want to be in beginner’s state of mind.
I think the best performers in almost any field continue to feel like beginners even though their skills keep improving. Of course, a skilled performer knows that he’s better than vast majority of others. But this doesn’t make him feel comfortable. Skilled performer concentrates on the aspects that he’s bad at and he compares himself to better performers and not to his past performance but what he feel he could be.
It’s easy to agree with the original article but without actually implementing what it suggests. As a personal anecdote, I often play video games with my kids and I recently noticed that at some point I just stopped paying attention of what is going around. Sure, usually I don’t take the game too seriously, but it’s more fun when I do and the game itself is pretty challenging. When I realized that I didn’t give it my full attention, I decided to concentrate on seeing the game more clearly. Suddenly I noticed a lot more and the driving improved significantly. The difference what I saw was pretty dramatic at start. It felt like I was half-blind before deciding to pay more attention.
The decline in our ability and willingness to pay close attention is, in my own experience, inevitable. There’s no magic insight or system to keep us from falling back to auto-piloting. You just have to rediscover the attention over and over again.