The Power of Unlearning: Serena Williams' Story

The Power of Unlearning: Serena Williams' Story

Here is a key paragraph.

Unlearning is the process of letting go, reframing, and moving away from once-useful mindsets and acquired behaviors. It’s not forgetting, removing, or discarding knowledge or experience; it’s a conscious act of letting go of outdated information and actively taking in new information to inform effective decision-making and action.

I have some experience with this from surgeries. In 2012 I had rotator cuff surgery then double knee replacements in June of 2018. In both cases I was unable to play tennis for several months. When I returned to practicing I used this as an opportunity to work on aspects of my game. I think it worked because people commented on how my tennis had improved from the last time they played with me.

Learning is optimized when we fail 15% of the time -- ScienceDaily

Learning is optimized when we fail 15% of the time -- ScienceDaily

As a junior varsity high school tennis coach I tell the players that they should look at losing matches as an opportunity to learn what they can do to improve their game. (I tell myself that too when I play tennis matches.) If the players can learn from losses they still win in the long run even though they lost the latest match. (I’d also say they can also learn from wins by looking at what they can improve. I do this by keeping a journal in which I rate whether I improved in technique, tactics and mental parts of my game and rate what needs to be improved.)

The Science Daily article links to a paper titled The Eight Five Percent Rule for optimal learning that is fairly technical. The Science Daily article summarizes:

Educators and educational scholars have long recognized that there is something of a "sweet spot" when it comes to learning. That is, we learn best when we are challenged to grasp something just outside the bounds of our existing knowledge. When a challenge is too simple, we don't learn anything new; likewise, we don't enhance our knowledge when a challenge is so difficult that we fail entirely or give up.

So where does the sweet spot lie? According to the new study, to be published in the journal Nature Communications, it's when failure occurs 15% of the time. Put another way, it's when the right answer is given 85% of the time.

So we optimize our learning if we fail about one out of six times. Good to know!

I believe these results parallel what it takes to achieve a state of mind that is called Flow, a concept identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist. The Wikipedia entry describes flow as “the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one's sense of space and time.”

I say that there is a connection between optimal learning and flow because achieving a flow state requires facing a task that challenges you without being daunting. The Positive Psychology website explains: “an optimal Flow state was created when people tackled challenges that they perceived to be at just the right level of ‘stretch’ for their skill sets. In other words, neither too tough nor too easy as to be boring.”

Putting together the findings on optimal learning and flow it appears that both need a “Goldilocks” challenge: one that stretches you to achieve flow and reveals what you need to improve for the next time.

What Separates Champions From ‘Almost Champions’? -- Science of Us

What Separates Champions From ‘Almost Champions’? -- Science of Us

I’m going to start of with a long series of quotes from an article in The Cut titled “What Separates Champions From ‘Almost Champions’?

It’s the perennial million-dollar question of nature versus nurture, sure. But the difference between the greats and the almost-greats (which, by the way, applies well beyond sports) also appears to be at least partially driven by one specific thing — how each group responds to adversity. The greats rise to the challenge and put in persistent effort; the almost-greats lose steam and regress.  

For a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, talent development researchers Dave Collins, Aine MacNamara, and Neil McCarthy examined the differences between athletes who overcame adversity and went on to become world-class (what they call super champions) and those who struggled in the face of hardship (the hearthbreakingly named “almost champions”) . Whereas super champions were playing in premier leagues and/or competing on national teams (think: Olympics), almost champions had achieved well at the youth level but were playing in the less prestigious leagues as adults. 

The researchers found that super champions were characterized “by an almost fanatical reaction to challenge.” They viewed challenges in a positive light — as opportunities to grow — and overcame them thanks to a “never satisfied” attitude. This runs in contrast to almost champions, who blamed setbacks on external causes, became negative, and lost motivation.
.... 

Super champions were driven from within. Their primary concern was self-improvement. They held themselves to high standards, but judged themselves against prior versions of themselves, not against others.
Almost champions, however, were focused on external benchmarks, like national rankings or how they compared to rivals, a mind-set the researchers speculate why almost champions got discouraged during rough patches.  

....... 

World-class performers, then, don’t rely on either nature or nurture, but on a combination of the two — and they are really good at nurturing their nature. All of which suggests the recipe that gives rise to super champions is worth emulating: Individuals who demonstrate persistent effort follow their interests; practice foremost to get better, not to outdo others; derive satisfaction from within; and feel constantly supported, but not pressured, in their journey toward achievement. If these criteria are in place, experiencing failure doesn’t weaken motivation — it bolsters it. In the words of Michael Joyner, an expert on human performance at Mayo Clinic, “With enough persistent effort, most people can get pretty good at anything.”

These results touch on a number of topics I’ve covered in previous posts: having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, focusing on the process rather than results, focusing inwardly on how you’re performing per your own standards instead of worrying about how you’re being perceived externally by your opponent or your friends, engaging in deliberate practice to improve, not just repeating what you already do well and not pushing yourself in practice and having grit as a personal quality. The Cut article doesn’t specifically touch on all of these points while I think they’re all implicitly involved.

I figure someone reading all of this might ask how studying world-class performers applies to us. How many of us really fall into that category? I know it will sound arrogant or obnoxious but I like to think I applied these ideas when designing and delivering presentations when I was working, in my tennis game and in other areas of my life such as relationships, etc. While I’ll probably never climb to the A level of players at the clubs where I play I do know my game has continually improved thanks to my constant investment into getting better. I like to think I’m now a B+ player! ;-) That’s why I believe the quote at the end of the article is key, which is why I’m repeating it below.

In the words of Michael Joyner, an expert on human performance at Mayo Clinic, “With enough persistent effort, most people can get pretty good at anything.”

Amen!

Continual Improvement Journaling

A couple years ago I read a tennis book that recommended using a journal to rate yourself after each match on how much incremental improvement you made while playing. (Unfortunately I don't remember the book.) It suggested rating yourself on a scale of 1 for low to 5 for high in how much incremental improvement you made in the areas of technique, tactics, mental/emotional, and adjustments. It also asks what you did well and what you could improve. The idea behind this is that we usually don’t drastically improve our games. It’s more a process of continual improvement, often with the quality of our play declining a bit because we’re trying to change things. (This is a common occurrence when people take lessons.)

After doing this for about two years I can say that keeping this journal has been helpful. For one thing, I’ve noticed trends that help me know what to work on, such as I’m not tossing the ball forward enough when serving or I’m hitting overheads long. It’s also been helpful seeing progress as my self-ratings in the categories have increased over time. It probably sounds like bragging but I have to think more about what needs to be improved because I’m making fewer errors or clusters of mistakes in one area.

I think this diary could be used to evaluate how we perform in other areas of our life. Obviously the categories we would use to rate ourselves would be different but the general concept would be the same: the level of incremental improvement. For instance, my job involved making ten or more stewardship presentations a year to customers. (I used the past tense because I’m retired.) If I were to use this self-rating method I would have evaluated how much my technique improved (pacing, variation of my voice, etc.) as well as the design of my slides (layout, simplicity, clarity, etc.) and so on.