learning Archive - This Moment Counts

How I wrote my first book

When my Physics course in (the german equivalent of) high school started, my teacher made us an offer: “For every single topic that we cover over the course of the next three years, you can hand me in a text covering what we learnt in your own words. I promise that I will meticulously proofread every text and give you feedback on how well you understand the material, how well it’s argued and how well it’s written.”

Three classmates took the offer, including me. Of those three, I was the only one to do this for every single topic. When I finished school, I had basically written a textbook on school physics, mercilessly edited by my teacher.

That practice has served me well ever since. I’m thankful for this opportunity and for the generosity that my teacher has shown.

I’m also baffled at how often people will just pass on opportunities to grow.

It would be better to make a film

Film director extraordinaire Werner Herzog famously said: “I felt it would be better to make a film than go to film school.”

Herzog knows that the best learning is by doing the work. Because it’s all theory and “could” and “would” until you actually do the work.

I feel like today is a great day to stop overthinking and start learning – by simply doing the work.

“I like that.”

One of the simplest ways to improve in a skill is to become more specific about the things we like.

Let’s say you want to improve in public speaking. Certainly, there are a bunch of speeches that you love. Pick one and find three things that you like.

Be as specific as you can be. What is it specifically that you like? Why does it work? How does it work? How does it compare to how you would handle it?

Give the things that you notice names so that you can refer back to them and spot them in other speeches.

And then, when you prepare your next speech apply what you’ve learnt.

(Of course, the same process works for almost any skill. Whether it’s writing or graphic design. Cooking or crafting. Sports or music. Being able to describe the things we like makes it much easier to apply it to our own work.)

Defaulting to smart

This is not in line with what I know so it must be wrong.

And yes, it probably is.

Or not?

Because it might just as well be that we’re having this conversation with someone who’s just as smart as we are.

Or smarter.

I’ve found it to be of tremendous value to default to assuming the latter. You can only win. Either you learn something new. Or you dig deeper on what you already know.

Defaulting to assume a smart counterpart when having a conversation, giving a speech, or writing a text does not only help ourselves grow. It’s also generous. It leads to advancing thoughts rather than blocking them.

Natural born talents

“This is so hard but the eloquence with which you’re using words tells me that you must be a natural born talent.”

Only that she wasn’t. In fact, she struggled with finding the right words all her life. Which is why she worked like mad on improving her skills. She looked for better ways to express herself. She read piles of books on the topic. She went to workshops. Hired a coach to help her refine the skill. Analysed articles, movies, books, ads. And she never settled with the first idea.

So, when she publishes something, it’s the result of hard work. Not only the days that it took her to write that specific piece. But also the result of a lifetime of learning.

And that’s true for most “natural born talents”. It’s easy to envy the skill but a lot harder to envy the will and the effort that went into the skill. It’s a lot more useful to call them “natural born improvers”.

Answers and questions

There are at least two kinds of people: Those that have more answers than questions and those that have more questions than answers.

Given that most things are complex, few things have simple answers and each one of us is an expert in even fewer things, it’s hard to believe that any one person would be able to have definitive answers on many things.

People who have many answers tend to confuse answers with opinions and decisions. They tend to believe that their opinions and their decisions need to be right.

They don’t.

It’s perfectly ok to have an opinion even if you don’t know all the answers. It’s perfectly ok to decide what to eat, where to go, or what to say even if you don’t know all the answers. It’s probably even required in most situations because we hardly ever have all the knowledge that it takes to find the right answer.

But that’s ok. We can have an opinion and still acknowledge that there might be a different truth that we don’t fully grasp. Or that we just don’t know enough about, yet. We can always adapt.

It’s when we insist on being right all the time that we have stopped getting it right. Being right is hardly ever the point though. Working hard to be right leads discussions to become fights.

The world would be a much nicer place if we took opinions for what they are, if we admitted that we don’t know much about most things, and that getting it right is often a more helpful posture than being right.