the 4 move checkmate and the Gettysburg address -- respectively, these are concepts that introduced me to the notion of chess strategy and the art of rhetoric. Finding a simple but interesting entry point question or concept into a given concept is how a child becomes good at it
#childlearning maybe part of the reason that children seem to be able to pick up new skills better than adults is that they are equally bad at everything, so they aren't the started from letting it by things they are better at learning it by things they are better at. Moreover, it doesn't take much work for them to make a given skill there top skill. Then it is even more fun to practice it because there is a certain joy that comes with mastery in the development of talent
Reading a good review of something
I am not exceptional in any way. No, any skill and success I might have is simply the result of my ability to become — for lack for better word — “obsessed” to anything and everything that I desire to master. It probably started with yoyoing. I had always loved yoyos, but I was never particularly good with them. However, in middle school, I really became intensely fascinated with them, and resultantly “practiced” unconsciously in sleep and in my waking hours. Whether or not I had a physically yoyo with me, I could feel my subconscious thinking its way through the maneuvers and inventing. So every time I actually picked up the wonderful little gyrating device, my performance improved by a quantum leap. Around the same time, I became interested in Web programming. While I had always been interested in computer science, I knew little about this field and was excited by its potential. I was in middle school, and a couple of friends pointed me in the right direction and I launched. I found tutorials and examples online and read them and made my own modifications. I reverse engineered existing web sites, figuring out how to replicate and improve upon behaviors that I discovered in the “wild.” My skill level reached that critical threshold at which I was eligible for entry into professional world and, with experience, the skills that my yoyo-like obsession with the subject had seeded blossomed outwards.
This building skill positively impacted my understanding of other skills I was attempting to build. It was as if by mindlessly observing myself as I trained and grew, I taught myself not only the nuances of the subject but how to efficiently learn, how to efficiently teach myself. So suddenly, I found myself more academically successful than ever in fields from mathematics to biology to English to history. It was with the same open-mindedness and intent to get myself “addicted” to thinking about the subject,that I approached each new item and it was suddenly very easy to learn. Every waking and sleeping moment, with no effort on my part, my subconscious turned out mutations of questions I had. My skill level skyrocketed with relatively little conscious effort, and I overcame and outraced even many of those with pre-existing advantages.
So I entered high school and I then was the one with a head start, not only in specific skill areas, but again, in teaching myself. When I observed a bunch of people amazingly speedsolving Rubik’s cubes and other twisty puzzles in my AP computer science class (which I had skipped into as a freshman on the basis of my prior knowledge), I thought to myself “well, cool, I wish I could be able to do that!” And I envisioned the result and for the first time consciously applied my earlier technique. And I doubted myself – “No, people can’t modify the way they learn!” – all the way up until the point at which I found that I could suddenly, magically, do it. I had just put a bit of genuine interest — not an undue amount of practice or effort — and my brain had taken care of it for me. I had made the subliminal portions of my psyche “obsessed” with it and they in turn made all that they could of these reverberating neural patterns.
And every new skill I gained, every new subject I became interested in, every new book I read, broadened my horizons and increased my ability to learn and assimilate knowledge. Through speed cubing and memorizing and practicing algorithms, I learned the value and the joy of going to great lengths to finally master a skill. This, I realized was true of nearly anything that I wished to learn, be it math or history or english. I simply need to have the interest and dedication to overcome a certain threshold and suddenly I would accelerate forward of my own accord.
It is said that to become an expert at something, you must undergo 10,000 hours of practical experience. I have not found a way around this — my brain is not magically wired to assimilate information more rapidly. No, whatever’s going on in my head, thoughts pertaining to subjects that interest me seemed to echo in my brain and twist themselves around and etch themselves into my neurons over the course of every waking and sleeping moment and I simply log my 10,000 hours more quickly and in a different manner.