After taking his young daughter to chess tournaments, journalist Tom Vanderbilt decided to take up the game himself. Competing against (and losing to) eight-year-olds is not an enjoyable experience for most adults, but for Vanderbilt it was an exhilarating foray into the world of “beginnerdom.” Beginners is an ode to learning new things, to old dogs learning new tricks, to extricating ourselves from our comfortable, deeply grooved patterns so we can embrace those moments of looking like a clueless fool, and rediscovering the joy of discovery itself.

Wherever your small pockets of knowledge about life may reside, most can be sorted into buckets of declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge. When you possess declarative knowledge, you know about a thing. It’s the kind of knowledge that serves you well on Jeopardy or other trivia games if you have enough of it. Then there’s procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge is the more practical, hands-on, how-to kind. If you have declarative knowledge, you can explain it; if you have procedural knowledge, you can do it.

There are few realms of life in which that distinction becomes more poignant than childrearing. If you have never had a kid before, you probably know less than you think about raising one. Sure, you have read a few books and heard some friends describe their transition to parenthood, but not even the most rigorous theoretical introduction prepares you for holding a hungry, crying human in your arms—one whom every neurotransmitter in your body is convincing you to love—and wondering how best to keep this thing alive. In the words of a Yale philosophy professor, the adventure of childrearing is “epistemically unique.” That’s a sophisticated way of saying, “Prepare to have no idea what you are doing.”

As a new parent, you are entering beginnership in a brand new way. You weigh decisions about strollers, car seats, formula, and baby foods. Is it too soon to start thinking about a college fund? You find yourself comparing notes with strangers about what has worked and what has not. There is the anxious uncertainty of not knowing the different kinds of cries, or wondering if your home truly is “baby-proofed.”

And then, as your child gets older, you are initiated into the role of teacher as well. It has been so long since you learned to throw a ball or ride a bike that your own learning process feels too hazy to recall. How do you teach your child without resorting to, “Just do it.” Declarative knowledge helps here, but repackaging explanations for a five-year-old is yet another dimension of being a novice parent-teacher. Whatever your child gravitates to, watching your child learn and explore (and even joining them in that learning process) might also be a wake-up call that you have stopped learning.

If you do a quick search about learning with your child, you will find numerous books and articles that assume you’re focused on the child’s learning and only the child’s learning. But what if mom or dad wants to participate in the learning process along with the child? There is much less literature on that. Of course there are some parents who stifle their children’s growth by crowding their existential space, but more often than not, parents are so busy encouraging their children to try new things and explore that parents forget to continue learning themselves. They stick to comfortable routines and do their best not to venture beyond the realm of familiarity.

There are a lot of perks to continued learning. One is that you run a lower risk of falling into the “symbolic self completion” trap, the theory that some parents unconsciously nudge (or force) their children to complete what they themselves failed to achieve as youngsters. By looking for opportunities to learn new things as an adult, parents take pressure off their kids, and avoid becoming the proverbial old dog with no new tricks.

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The Infant Action Lab is a branch of New York University’s Center for Neural Science. The Lab is designed with all the thoughtfulness of a top-of-the-line daycare; only the place is teeming with researchers interested in discovering the secrets of motor skill acquisition. How does a baby learn to crawl? to walk? to walk well? What motivates the series of transformations?

On average, young toddlers traverse the equivalent of eight football fields daily, spend almost a third of every hour learning to move, and fall 19 times an hour for their trouble. They are constantly exploring, and log more daily steps (about 14,000) than the average adult. Infants pick themselves up without the slightest perturbation, and this serves them well.

There is tremendous flexibility to the causal connections infants form; cause and effect are not nearly “fixed” in the infant’s mind. One baby at the Infant Action Lab fell down some stairs during an experiment and had to be taken to the emergency room. Within days, that same baby was back at the lab, boldly crawling down daunting slopes.
Such pertinacious behavior might seem like a distinct disadvantage in life, but it allows infants to continue “learning to learn” without getting stymied by bumps and scrapes along the way. The world is constantly changing for infants, and each day has plenty of challenges. Unlike adults, infants don’t berate themselves for yesterday’s mistakes.

In the estimation of the Infant Action Lab’s director, Karen Adolph, the worst thing infants can internalize is, “Stop trying.” Babies fall all the time. That’s just what they do. They spend so much time attempting new feats that their doggedness serves them well.

As we get older, we fall less, but the cost of falling becomes more severe. Bones become brittle and take longer to heal. Interestingly, adult parkour classes for seniors teach adults how to fall in a way that will minimize injury. What is true literally is also true in the more metaphorical sense of making mistakes. Unlike infants (which we once were, lest we forget) who get up and keep going without a second thought no matter how many times they fall, many adults make avoiding mistakes our all-consuming obsession. We need to retrieve and channel the younger, less-inhibited self that is unafraid to fall down and simply gets up when the falls do come.

Infants are the best kinds of learners. They are adaptive, flexible, and masters of learning how to learn. They explore situations without feeling daunted and gradually learn to adjust themselves to all kinds of scenarios and landscapes. Making mistakes simply does not faze or deter them. Among many other things, infants teach us that, “If you don’t learn to fail, you will fail to learn.”

Singing is a remarkable phenomenon in humanity. A cynical view might try to reduce it to a series of pitch alterations, and yet singing possesses a primal allure that, according to some evolutionary biologists, ranks up there with our desire for food and sex.

Not only is singing enjoyable and capable of scratching some primal itch, recent research continues to uncover its surprising health benefits: It improves our immunity, stimulates oxytocin production, and activates the vagal nerve complex, which, when online, tells our body that fight-or-flight is not necessary. Heart rate drops to at-peace levels, and breathing becomes less shallow and frantic. Some studies even suggest that singing diminishes depression.

Music is tied to healthy development as well. Infants seem to be obsessed with their mom’s singing even more than speech, and dad’s singing goes a long way, too. When you serenade your infant, you are basically bathing your baby’s brain (and your own) in love- and bond-strengthening hormones like oxytocin and serotonin. When children are very young, their parents sing lullabies and even communicate in more singsong ways. As kids grow up that engaged pitch variation tapers off and communication dwindles to an auditory bare bones of monotonicity. Talking and singing become starkly divided activities and the latter we might stop doing entirely. With or without an infant present, singing can induce a gentle, warm euphoria in a singer, regardless of whether or not they can carry a tune, which begs the question: Why don’t we sing more often than we do?

The sad truth is that this life- and relationship-enhancing activity is in remission.  If you are not a churchgoer and don’t sing in a choir, you probably haven't sung with other people in a long time.

Humanity has never had more ready access to more music than we presently do, but there is also less singing than ever. And what happens when people listen to more music than they make together? One natural outcome is that no one knows lyrics—not unless they are singing with the recording. Even a wildly popular number like Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” has most people humming and mumbling by verse two.

There are a number of connections between the rise of access to professional recording artists and our own singing. A preponderance of top class vocals has heightened our awareness of what good singing sounds like, and we hesitate to add our own voice to the mix. Is there a singing insecurity epidemic plaguing the nation?

Singing could also simply be declining with church attendance, where congregants worship together weekly. But in church contexts, too, congregants defer to the “experts.” The experience of singing is an increasingly private endeavor, something attempted in the seclusion of the car or the shower. For some, singing has become shrouded in shame.

Part of the shame lies in the unrealistic categories we have. When we tell ourselves and others we cannot sing, what we mean is we don’t have perfect pitch and will never tour as a vocalist. We also presume that the voice we have right now is an enduring, static feature of who we are, like a chronic medical condition that we can’t do anything about.

Research does reveal there are many in the tone-deaf masses, precious few in the upper echelons of vocal performance, and very few in between. But here too, relying on recorded music could be impeding pitch precision. Without the buffer of instruments or the recorded song in the background, the voice just sounds more thin and vulnerable. Listening to a recording of oneself singing drives this home. When we listen to ourselves recorded, we tend to cringe because it sounds even thinner without the sound-enriching experience of hearing our sounds resonating in our own body. Singing with a recording covers over a multitude of tonal sins.

If you sing by yourself in front of a crowd or voice coach, you put on display your incapacity to match pitch. For most people, it is a vulnerable experience. But letting go of the pressure to be pitch perfect allows you to enjoy singing in a new way. And as any voice coach can tell you, anyone can improve as a singer. The most destructive forces are mental limits people place on themselves that end up reinforcing physical limits. In other words, if you are convinced you can’t sing you will close yourself off to improving that skill, and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, even though experts in the field see potential in your voice that you might be missing. 

The surf and sea have always possessed a mythopoetic splendor, especially for those (like the author) who grew up landlocked. For anyone who wants to surf, one faces the vulnerability that comes from not knowing what you are doing, and the added layer of vulnerability imposed by cynical surfer communities with a reputation for being ruthlessly critical of midlife beginners. One pro surfer remarked that surfers are “more cocky and judgmental than any group of people in the world.”

The beginner's environment is a wonderful opportunity to let go of self-consciousness. The saying rings true that “beginners focus on themselves.” As ability improves, your field of vision expands beyond “you” and what is immediately in front of you. Surfers observe the same principle: “If you look down, you will go down.”

Sports psychologist Gabriele Wulf seconds these intuitions, arguing that when people focus on themselves rather than some external target, performance plummets. In a meta-analysis of almost 200 studies of performance (including everything from darts to golf to playing music), Wulf found the same pattern: Self-preoccupation leads to "micro chokes," those slight, jerky, over-analyzed movements that prevent fluid execution.

According to Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus, brothers and colleagues at the University of California, there are five stages to adult skills acquisition. The stages the brothers identify are novice, advanced beginner, amateur, proficient, and expert. What they found was that the model runs along a U-Shape, where things get harder before they get easier.

So novices might be elated to have popped up on their boards and surfed their first wave (and rightly so!), but for the novice, most of the territory of surfing remains to be explored. It will take perseverance to ride the “U” and end up on the other end of proficient or expert.

Surf instructors observed the same five stages in adults that the Dreyfus brothers identified. One surf coach described the difference between coaching kids and coaching adults as the difference between dispelling irrational fears (“I’m going to get eaten by a megalodon”) and dispelling rational fears (“What if I sprain or pull something?”). Additionally, kids come for lessons looking for fun while adults can be so driven by goals and achievement that they not only ruin any chance of having fun, but their driven dispositions prevent them from progressing. His impression is that women are better beginners than men, who are more likely to want to be great immediately and end up getting in their own way. Ironically, they trap themselves in the novice state they are so anxious to leave behind.

Even with the openness needed to let go and learn, surfing is still just tough. It takes time to learn, and a lot of time to do it very well. “Focus on process, not product” is a helpful mantra for learning to surf or any other venture into the unknown.  

Consider how the word “mediocre” implies “deeply unimpressive and lackluster” to the success-oriented. But “mediocre” derives from the Latin for “half-way to the top.” That’s not bad, especially if you are attempting something you have never tried before. Mediocre means you are no longer at the bottom. If it's not part of your job, not a burning passion, or not something you have the opportunity to pursue regularly, then mediocrity is a thing of beauty in its own right. Who wrote the rule that it is not worth attempting something new unless you eventually can become an expert in it? It is one we unconsciously abide by, but embracing mediocrity in nonessential beginner domains can open up an array of opportunities you never considered trying. If you are mediocre at something, that still means you’re not half bad, and more importantly, you can enjoy the partial ascent for what it is.

You have probably watched someone perform a skill with such grace that they make it look easy, and then said to yourself, “I could never do that.” True, you may never master that skill yourself, but it is also true that it takes only a little effort and dedication to become proficient in a skill that very few people possess. Perhaps there are skills you yourself did not possess a year or two earlier, but somehow, mysteriously, they became reflexive.

Juggling is an interesting skill because it teaches us a great deal about the process of learning. It is no coincidence that researchers at MIT and other top institutes have found juggling fascinating. It is easy to contain within a lab and observe, people want to practice it and improve at it once they have begun trying, and, just as significantly, it is fun.

Most experts are unable to convey their expertise to the novice. Teaching skills is entirely different than being able to demonstrate those skills. In other words, having Lebron James at your child’s basketball camp would be a memorable moment, but it would not help your child play better. With basketball, juggling, or any other skill, DIYs have their place, and it can be very helpful watching others perform the skill you are hoping to learn, but there is no substitute for someone observing and critiquing your action and process of change.

When we possess a skill we run on autopilot because it saves mental bandwidth. The brain makes endless mini decisions very well when conscious-but-slower parts of the brain don’t clog up the natural flow state. So, lest we be too hard on professionals, it is worth remembering the feeling of losing your knack for executing a skill as soon as you are pressed to explain it. Even with a task you have known almost all your life, like walking, once someone asks you how you walk, your gait will shift to something unnatural and mechanically inefficient. That headspace of overthinking is common for novices who are moving their bodies and using their minds in unfamiliar ways. They live in that head space of stressed overthinking.

When teaching someone to juggle, an instructor will typically have one start with scarves. It slows things down, allows the beginner to focus on proper body mechanics without the stress of dropping balls and breaking flow. It also offers the added perk of small, early wins, a consistent theme throughout the learning research. The trick with expertise is, as one learning expert puts it, “getting people to learn to move without knowing they are learning.”

A common misconception about juggling is that the idea is to keep your eye on the balls and track their movement, but the idea is to refine the body mechanics so that the tosses are consistent and the balls follow predictable parabolic arcs, so predictable that one only needs to be peripherally aware of the balls themselves. A good juggler pays attention more to what is called “the apex,” the highest point the balls reach in the pattern.   

As one improves in a skill, time and motion start to slow down. In juggling, perception of time and motion change drastically. At first, everything is fast, the balls are falling too quickly and the body’s movement is spastic. Eventually, the balls are virtually floating. The general rule of thumb is that the more things you try to pay attention to, the faster time moves. For the novice, everything seems fast and out of control because he is trying to keep track of everything. But proficiency allows one to let go of the motor reactions and thoughts that don’t help accomplish the task. Eventually we learn to hone in on what is most crucial.

Another challenge we face when learning new skills is that a wide range of motions is available to us, but we don’t know yet which mechanics serve us best in a skill. If you tried juggling without prior experience, your arms would flail, your head would spastically pivot back and forth tracking balls, and your torso would contort every which way as you attempted to catch everything flying around (because you would believe that tracking balls matters more than creating a consistent pattern).

Overtime, the muscle groups needed to perform a skill get on the same page and the ones not needed learn to stay at rest. That beginner stiffness begins to thaw.

The ideal scenario for the learner is "virtuous cycle of skill improvement": The more you learn something, the more you like it. The more you like it, the more you practice it. The more you practice it, the more you improve. As you get older, it becomes more and more crucial to engage in this process of learning.

This is not a case for giving up, but for devoting even more time to learning. The old dog can still learn new tricks, and in fact he needs to. The more adults learn how to learn, the more adaptable their brains become. In effect, older adults begin to operate like younger adults, in terms of their ability to learn. So however young or old you are, never stop learning, and never lose your willingness to put yourself in the position of a beginner.

These insights are just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Beginners here. And since we get a commission on every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.

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