Notes on The Art of Learning

Part 1: The Foundation

Chapter 1: Innocent Moves

• Josh talks about the origins of his love for chess – how he fell in love with the game by playing the hustlers of the Central Park, New York
• It is here that Josh met his first coach - Bruce Pandolfini (he has also coached Fabiano Caruana!); Josh’s father recognized Bruce as the man who did television commentary with Shelby Lyman for the historic world championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972
• The movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer” is based on the life of Josh Waitzkin
• Young Josh was a hard student to teach - independent thinker, his parents encouraged him to engage in discussions even if he didn’t think he had the pre-requisite knowledge; Bruce as a teacher fit his style perfectly since he didn’t present himself as an authoritative figure, but more like a guide; They would have discussions if they disagreed
• Josh’s style of chess is make the game weirdly complex, and then find a way out

Chapter 2: Losing to Win

• This chapter recounts Josh’s defeat in the Primary School National Chess Championship, 1985; He lost the final game to David Arnett
• After feeling invincible against kids his age, this was a major shock to Josh; His parents helped him regain perspective - they went fishing after the tournament!
• The ocean played a big part of Josh’s life, his family would take him out to sea nearly every summer

• The year after the loss, from ages eight to nine, was the “defining period” of Josh’s life - chess moved beyond fun and glory, it became about love and pain and passion and pushing oneself to overcome for Josh
• Jeff Sarwer was Josh’s archrival this year; Jeff’s father was ruthless in Jeff’s upbringing - all Jeff did was play chess and chase victory
• In the finals of the national championship that year, Josh vs Jeff, Josh was in a tough spot but managed to draw the game, winning the tournament on the basis of tie breaks

Chapter 3: Two Approaches to Learning

• Dr. Carol Dweck makes the distinction between “entity” and “incremental” theories of intelligence
• Entity theorists (kids conditioned to think in this manner by parents, teachers), use language like “I am not smart enough for this” - they treat their intelligence as a fixed entity
• Incremental theorists associate “success” with how much effort they put in - they use language like “I have to try hard to solve this”
• In the face of challenges, entity theorists have a “learned helplessness oriented” response - “I’m too dumb for this”
• In the face of challenges, incremental theorists have a “mastery-oriented” response
• Note that this has nothing to do with actual intelligence, its just the “approach to learning” that can severely impact the effectiveness of learning - someone who is an incremental theorist but not as bright will do better than someone bright with entity theories

• Entity theorists cannot come back from failure, it breaks them; For incremental theorists, losing is an opportunity for growth
• Aside: Josh states that learning openings is not a good way to learn chess - he started by endgames and really gaining an intuition for the power of each piece on its own, and working backwards to the middle game, and so on; “Opening madness” - because opening theory is an endless pit, and learning the “tricks” and “traps” may give you short term success, but doesn’t give the understanding of the game required to succeed at a high-level - Josh describes it as “developing the habit of stealing the test from your teacher’s desk instead of actually learning how to do the math”

Chapter 4: Loving the Game

• Josh points out that, following from the discussion on entity vs incremental theories, people may conclude that winning or losing doesn’t matter and that it is part of the “process” in the development of a skill
• Saying “you only care about learning” when you lose isn’t true - it is an excuse of confronting yourself
• In the face of failure - it is important to be introspective; The technicalities are irrelevant, what’s more important is to figure out if there were any psychological lapses - in the context of chess, this could be a lapse in concentration, underconfidence, overconfidence, etc; The technical details of the game can be analyzed later; Having such dialogues at the outcomes of short-term goals is crucial

Chapter 5: The Soft Zone

In this chapter, Josh talks about how it is important to be able to focus and “enter the zone”, irrespective of the environment you are in. He calls this the “soft zone” – i.e being flexible enough to integrate yourself into any environment. The “hard zone”, on the other hand, would be where you have to try really, really hard to focus. All of us have been in situations where there may be loud music blaring in the background or people talking, and we find ourself straining to remain focussed and in the zone – this is the hard zone.

Josh envisions the soft zone through an Ancient Indian parable that has been very instructive throughout his life:

Chapter 6: Downward Spiral

The key idea in this chapter is that mistakes will happen! What’s important is that you don’t let it affect your mindset–you must take the time to recenter yourself and not self-destruct by losing your focus and going into a downward spiral.

Josh recounts a rather horrifying story of a woman who was wearing headphones and stepped into an intersection when the light the light was red and narrowly missed being hit by a cyclist. Rather than taking that as a “wake-up call” and hurrying back to the sidewalk, she began shouting in the direction of the cyclist–for disturbing her peace, perhaps–and was unfortunately hit by a car.

It is crucial to regain composure, presence, and clarity of mind after making a serious error.