When you were a kid, you not only went to school, where you did academics, art, and PE, but you probably also took extracurricular lessons in music or sports, and likely even taught yourself things like how to do magic tricks.
Now that you’re an adult, can you think of the last new skill you learned?
My guest today explains why there’s a good chance that you’ll struggle to answer that question, and how that’s a tragedy you ought to do something about. His name is Tom Vanderbilt, and he’s the author of several books, including his latest, Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. Tom and I discuss why his daughter’s desire to learn chess inspired him to spend a year learning the game himself, as well as to take on a project of learning other new skills. Tom explains the reasons adults give up learning, and why, while it is harder for adults to learn new things than it is for children, it’s still worth becoming a novice all over again. We then explore how to harness the beginner’s mind, using Tom’s experiences in learning how to sing, surf, juggle, and draw as examples. We end our conversation with Tom’s takeaways from his experiment, and how becoming a lifelong learner is really all about pushing through the mental barriers that hold us back from the many possibilities for growth that remain in adulthood.
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Show Highlights
- The reasons we give for not learning new skills
- How Tom decided which new skills to tackle
- How is the beginner’s brain different from the expert’s brain?
- Your crystallized brain vs. the fluid brain, or how age really does make a difference
- The value of learning new things regardless of any “real world” value
- The power of learning in a group
- What it was like learning to surf as an adult and some bigger lessons on skill acquisition that Tom got from that experience
- How to handle plateaus in our learning
- Why take on drawing? Why do people find it so hard to do?
- Some overarching lessons Tom took away from this experiment
Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast
- How and Why to Become a Lifelong Learner
- What Poker Can Teach You About Skill, Luck, and Mastering Yourself
- The Hidden Pleasures of Learning for Its Own Sake
- Learning How to Learn
- Grow, Adapt, and Reinvent Yourself Through Ultralearning
- Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
- Living with a SEAL
- Painting As a Pastime by Winston Churchill
- 100 Skills Every Man Should Know
- The Lost Pleasures of Group Singing
- Barbarian Days
- How to Learn Another Language
- Experimenting With Your Life
- How to Draw Teddy Roosevelt
- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
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Read the Transcript
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