The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

Author:Josh Waitzkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

CHAPTER 13

SLOWING DOWN TIME

As a child I had a fear that I could never be a chess master because I wouldn’t be able to fit all the information into my mind. Sometimes after two hours of a chess lesson, my teacher’s words seemed to go in one ear and out the other, and I envisioned a brain filled to the brim. Where could I ever put so much more? And if I did manage to cram everything in there, how would I be able to sort through the stuff? Of course this type of childhood fear is a little silly—skilled humans internalize large amounts of data—but I was on to something. Once we reach a certain level of expertise at a given discipline and our knowledge is expansive, the critical issue becomes: how is all this stuff navigated and put to use? I believe the answers to this question are the gateway to the most esoteric levels of elite performance.

Thinking back on the chapter Making Smaller Circles, it’s apparent that I was focusing on the subtle, introspective cultivation of external skills. Now let’s turn further inward, and explore what states of heightened perception can be cultivated with proper training. When I broke my hand in that Super-Heavyweight Finals match, time slowed down in my mind—or my perception became so sharpened, so focused on the essential, that I processed necessary information much more quickly than usual. I didn’t feel like I was racing, however. Internally, the experience was profoundly calm with a razor’s edge—the epitome of what I think quality presence should be all about.

Once my hand healed and the Nationals were over, the question on my mind was: how can I make time slow down without breaking a limb? Everyone has heard stories of women lifting cars off their children or of time seeming to slow down during a car accident or a fall down the stairs. Clearly, there is a survival mechanism that allows human beings to channel their physical and mental capacities to an astonishing degree of intensity in life-or-death moments. But can we do this at will?

When I started thinking about how I could consistently make my perception of time be different from my opponents’, I realized that I had to delve into the operating mechanism of intuition. I suspect we have all had the experience of being stumped by something, eventually moving on to something else, and then suddenly knowing the answer to the initial problem. Most of us have also had the experience of meeting someone and having a powerfully good or bad feeling about them, without knowing why. I have found that, even if a few times it has taken years to pan out, these guiding instincts have been on the money. Along the same lines, in my chess days, nearly all of my revelatory moments emerged from the unconscious. My numbers to leave numbers approach to chess study was my way of having a working relationship with the unconscious parts of my mind.

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