What the brain can teach us about achieving mastery

Praneet Bhave | 29 December 2018

All of us have a brain. Though we have varying IQ & natural ability, most of our brains are similar in capacity.

Then why do humans have such varying levels of accomplishment? Have you wondered why?

The answer is that most of us would go much farther if we understood how to work or learn according to natural principles of how our brains work. We are often inundated with misguided beliefs and concepts of what we can achieve.

However if you look closely, you see that any skill is a set of neural patterns developed in our brains through deliberate practice over a period of time. So if you are watching a master golfer or dancer or mathematician or a chess grand master and ever wonder how did he do that! or I could never do that or wow that person is so naturally talented. In fact it’s quite the opposite. You could definitely get quite good at that.

But here’s the catch- it takes very efficient methods of deliberate learning & time investment to get world class at anything.

And knowing how we think and how to apply that to anything you want to accomplish can be really crucial in getting us there.

Here are some principles on how the brain works for mastery in any field. I’ve added my personal favourite books at the end of each section to dive deeper into the topic.

Focused mode thinking:

There are two modes in which your brain thinks & one of them is called the focused mode.

In the focused mode, we are focused on one process — that one part of the golf swing, one part of the song we’re trying to master or thinking hard on solving a problem. It is maintaining a singular point of attention when the brain concentrates its abilities, ignoring all extraneous information.

After deliberate practice this focused mode forms essentially patterns or as I like to call “programs” in your brain which you can repeat given the situation arise. The higher the focus, the more you practice & the lesser the distraction, the better the pattern. Being in the focused mode is how you start to learn anything.

Process Vs Product:

However, while you’re just starting out your product is most likely going to suck, however that shouldn’t dishearten you to the extent that you quit. Cause what else did you expect. And this is where exactly most of us falter. Which is why it is definitely not surprising that 90% Of New Guitarists Quit In First Year. When they picked up that guitar, they had the product in mind. They just didn’t want the struggle that comes with learning the guitar as a beginner. But the struggle can be enjoyable.

And here’s how to learn anything:

You must learn how to love the process.

The better your focus on the process, the better the pattern. It is too tempting to try to solve the toughest problem or create the most masterful piece of music, but that’s where most fail. You are focusing too much on the end goal.

Your current level of challenge should not be so hard for you that it’s impossible to achieve and not so easy enough that you cruise through. Learning happens not at but these extremes in between — which is where you get in the state often referred to as the FLOW.

Diffused mode thinking:

So now you’ve spent some time learning or solving problems in a focused way, working your way upto to more challenging skill levels. You have formed your patterns and learned a few basic & advanced techniques. Here is where your diffused pattern of thinking comes in. This mode is also called big picture thinking. This mode gets activated when you’re not thinking of the problem in particular, or thinking of the problem very loosely taking a bigger view.

Sometimes the most creative ideas come from this part of our brain. Because we’re not focusing on the problem, the subconscious brain itself makes connections at random, rearranges the solution within and presents it to you. Given that you have had enough programs written in your brain about that topic before. Running, listening to music, taking a nap have been shown to automatically put us automatically into diffused modes where we can just let the solution come to us.

If you are focused on a problem hard enough and can’t seem to arrive at the right solution, try to put yourself in this mode, give it time and let the solution come to you.

Both focused and diffused mode thinking are incredibly useful and you want to use a good mix of both. This was not surprising to me when I came across this. As a kid, I intuitively knew this. And I feel most of us do, but as we grow older most of us forget this ability of our brain and just don’t utilise both of these modes really well. Especially in the mobile world, ever connected and ever occupied, we do not spend enough time in play to turn off our focused minds & let our diffuse parts take on.

Mental Models & The Power of Reading

The more programs or mental models as they call them, the more ways you have to solve a problem. Which is why most successful people are avid readers. Reading gives you such a wide breadth of ideas from a vast variety of fields. Giving you numerous ideas & concepts you could sort of cross-pollinate to create newer ideas.

Real mastery often lies in knowing the right pattern to use in a given situation.

Habits

Do something often and the brain creates a habit for it. These are sort of auto responders. There’s always a trigger, an action and a reward.

Some auto-responders come bundled with your hardware. You wouldn’t need to think what to do if an object is coming flying past you. You would move instinctually.

Some are coded over time.

Practicing any skill has the same effect of creating a super efficient auto-responder.

Imagine Roger Federer. I’m sure he thinks where he wants to place the ball. However he has learnt the game so well that he intuitively knows the right racket speed, the angle, the right spot to hit the ball. He does not think & calculate these.

This is how your brain runs on autopilot. The player is not “thinking”. The answer just comes to him.

Relying on Intuition Vs Thinking

One thing to note is auto-responders or habits are not perfect. They fail often.

Federer hits net.

In life, they come in the form of bad habits & bad decisions.

Which is why when you have time to control your auto-response, you may want to think. The key is to know what’s the right thing to do — Go with your auto-response or think harder to find a better option & optimise for it.

Another aspect in mastery is how you space your learning over time. There is great difference in practicing frequently over a period of time rather than rushing before the end of a deadline. The kind of neural patterns formed are much deeper in the former case. We all know if we’ve crammed something before the test, we might be able to vomit it on the paper the next day but the retention after that day is extremely low.

Great learners also do one thing particularly well i.e continuous testing & iterations. They’re always testing themselves with their knowledge & theories in practice sessions or in real life.

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