In a recent podcast interview, author Tim Ferriss shared how he first learned to swim as a grown man in his thirties. Ferriss grew up on Long Island, New York, surrounded by water, but afraid to swim after a childhood incident. He finally learned his way around a pool by reading Total Immersion, a book by master swimming coach Terry Laughlin.

Yes, you read that right - Ferriss learned how to swim by reading a book.

Seth Godin, Ferriss's podcast guest, is quick to share that he, too, swims using the same swimming method (it's remarkably effective). But he's also quick to point out something that Ferriss doesn't mention - namely, that the method involves about an hour and a half of "drowning".

Not in the literal sense, of course. Ferriss elaborates by telling his listeners that Laughlin, being a superb teacher, recognized that one of the problems facing nautical novices is learning how to coordinate effective swimming technique with the motions necessary for breathing while swimming.

Theoretically, the most hydrodynamic swimming form would be to maintain a sleek "fuselage" of the body, as if there were a laser pointing straight out of the top of one's head, aimed directly at the swimmer's destination. The need to breathe disrupts this by necessitating a turn of the head that puts the mouth enough out of the water to take in air.

Rather than forcing his students to just deal with this awkward coordination from the get-go, Laughlin had his students learn correct form by swimming several strokes without breathing, in order to internalize the proper mechanics. This is the "drowning" Godin talks about.

Obviously, the coordination needed to breathe properly is eventually introduced. But, as Ferriss points out, trying to maintain perfect swimming form is hard when you disrupt it by breathing after each stroke.

This is where reading sheet music comes in. Just as it's tricky to learn proper swimming form while stopping every stroke to breathe, my piano teacher recognized that it's hard to play the piano when you're being forced to read sheet music every time you play a note.

Obviously, "reading sheet music while playing" is a skill that is eventually asked of most trained musicians. But, too often, students between the ages of five and ten are asked to learn both from their earliest lessons. Just as breathing disrupts proper swimming, clumsy note reading disrupts proper music making.

This is the secret of my teacher's great success as a piano instructor. For the first few months of lessons, her students don't "read" a single note. Instead, they merely play them. They learn the "geography" of the piano - what the repeated patterns of notes are, how to find each "A" or "E" on the keyboard, and what it feels like to play the piano.

The new students are never distracted, having to go through the tedious process of looking at the sheet music; mentally processing what the sheet music says; placing the hands in the correct place; playing the notes with perfect form; listening to evaluate whether they played the correct notes; looking back up at the sheet music; losing their place; using their hand to point to their place; and cycling through the steps again.

Students who go through this sad cycle will eventually learn to read sheet music and play piano simultaneously. But they will have suffered greatly at every juncture. If they can read quickly, their form will be inconsistent; if their form is perfect, they will not have learned to truly listen to the sounds they're making; and so on.

My teacher had arrived at this conclusion on her own, after taking on many students (including me) who had been burned by being put through the mill of Alfred, Bastien, and John Thompson piano course methods, which, being books, had little choice but to teach playing and reading simultaneously. Rather than rely on such books, my teacher would teach how to find one's way around a piano, how to find keys, scales, and chords.

One day, she had a new student who was rather older than her usual trainee - an English woman, born in the 1920s, who had had piano lessons as a girl, but had given up music until now, in her seventies, when she had the leisure to return to her studies. This woman had tried to learn from others before meeting my teacher, but they had all used some Adult Beginner book series or other, which created the same issues we described earlier.

Imagine my teacher's surprise when this new old student of hers remarked that this system is what she had grown up with in London - learning keys and scales and chords without ever reading a note. And imagine the later surprise and gratification my teacher experienced when she read (in Wieck's Piano Education for a Delicate Touch and a Singing Sound) that Clara Schumann - a piano "rock star" of her day, and one of my teacher's favorite heroines - had been taught piano through a similar method.

As Laughlin and my teacher both recognized, it will never do to saddle yourself with learning two things at once. Instead, you'd do well to isolate the particular skill or element which you wish to refine; to consistently work at it through play; and, once it has been internalized correctly, to coordinate it with the other skills/elements that make up your craft or work. In the end, we must all either learn to do this for ourselves - or suffer the consequences.

/

(For specific strategies and philosophies on learning effectively (such as the **DiSSS method**, the **80/20 principle**, and the concept of **deliberate practice**), please see: The 4-Hour Chef (Ferriss), Deep Work (Newport), Mastery (Leonard), and The Practice (Godin).)

Love is Love is Love.

But at the same time, Love = Time + Attention.

So…

Where are you sending your Love today?

When people hear the word “trauma”, many of them picture victims who have survived terrible ordeals: war, abuse, neglect, terror. As a consequence, PTSD comes to mind.

The association is justified - there are many people (too many) who have suffered more than their share and are traumatized as a result.

But trauma, in addition to its obvious, large scale forms, can manifest in little ways, too.

Today, I read a story about a woman named Rosalie.

The narrator, whose name is Ben, met Rosalie at a multi-day conference, where they happened to be sitting next to each other. Ben is a young father, while Rosalie is a grandmother in her seventies.

Ben noticed Rosalie doodling on her conference program, and they got to talking about her little sketches.

It turned out that, when she was Ben’s age, she had dreamed of writing and illustrating children’s books. Full of excitement and drive, she had enrolled in an art course at her local college.

One day, near the end of the class, the instructor called for all the students to stop working, and he proceeded to analyze and critique each student’s work aloud, in front of the class.

Most people’s work was deemed acceptable, decent, or even quite good. When it came to Rosalie’s turn, however, the instructor didn’t just share his thoughts: he took her chalk and proceeded to “correct” her work.

Rosalie was ashamed and aghast. Out of the entire room of people, she was the only one whose work was so bad that it warranted direct manhandling by the teacher.

The teacher’s “demonstration” lasted less than a minute. But over 50 years later, Rosalie recounted the story as if it had happened just a week prior.

After that semester, Rosalie mostly stopped drawing and writing. She confined herself to being a devoted wife, mother, and eventually, grandmother.

Over the years, she would occasionally remember her longing to write and illustrate children’s books. She would start drafting a story, or she would sketch a little scene. But, inevitably, she would replay the scene from her art class and remind herself: I just don’t have it in me.

Rosalie would briefly indulge her dream of becoming a children’s book author just long enough to remember she could “never really do that”, no matter how exciting or appealing it seemed.

Of course, the truth is that drawing and writing are skills - and skills can be taught.

It’s fair to say that Rosalie would probably never change the course of art history or literature. But it’s also fair to say that Rosalie could have been a respectably-good children’s book author if she had continued to hone her skills.

Instead, long after her semester-long class had ended, Rosalie still clung to the identity and personality she had held at the time she had enrolled.

Rosalie had been traumatized. As an artist, a searing, emotionally-overwhelming moment had shut out rational thought and replaced it with the stubborn belief that she could only ever be what she already was.

And she held on to this belief despite growing in other ways - as a woman, a mother, a leader. Despite her significant experience and wisdom, Rosalie hadn’t grown as an artist.

Was it because she truly lacked “the right stuff”?

Of course not.

To grow a skill, all you need is consistency, sound methods, and reliable feedback. Guidance from a mentor can be helpful, but it’s not a make-or-break requirement for growth.

In Rosalie’s case, an otherwise-mundane moment had come to define much of what her life became - what it wasn’t.

Sadly, this kind of moment happens all too often. A careless look, a thoughtless word, and… snap! Someone else has been traumatized.

Rosalie’s story didn’t have to turn out this way.

If she had been able to share her experience with an empathetic witness, perhaps that person could point out other feasible explanations for what had happened. Maybe that person could have encouraged Rosalie to find a different, but related, way to learn to be an artist, or to find someone to partner with to create children’s books.

It’s a shame that Rosalie’s dreams went for so long without being nurtured.

But one of the fortunate things about trauma is that it’s never too late to be healed. The trick is, the healing must happen in the context of relationship with another human being.

That’s not to say a romantic relationship, or even a physically present person. Just a relationship, or at least, the idea of one.

By the end of the conference where Rosalie had struck up a friendly relationship with Ben, she had reconsidered the beliefs she had taken for granted about not having the innate ability to draw. (It helped that Ben has a Ph.D in Psychology).

Rosalie hadn’t yet committed to publishing a children’s book - but she agreed that the idea that she could never learn or grow as an artist beyond what she had been capable of in college simply didn’t line up with her experience. She had grown in lots of other ways - why not make use of the free time afforded by her retirement and develop skills that would allow her to do the things she had dreamt of doing for over 50 years?

…

It’s a hopeful place to end an emotional tale. Plus, there are so many morals to take home!

One is that traumas, big and small, color all of our lives. Knowing this, it can be a powerful thing to ask in what ways we’ve told ourselves “No”, long before the World could pass its judgement on us.

Another moral is that, as we said earlier, it’s never too late to find healing from trauma. Once the traumatizing moment is not in our present, we only have to accept that it’s within our power to experience the present reality, which is defined neither by the past that was nor the future that will be - it just is.

Lastly, we understand that healing always takes place in the context of human relationship. Maybe it’s confessing our self-doubt to a friend; maybe it’s admitting to a therapist that we could have done more. Maybe, it’s even writing a letter to someone who passed from this world long ago, or praying silently to Heaven above. Whatever the case may be, healing can only be effectively sought in connection with another.

Don’t underestimate the effect that traumas - even little ones - can have in your life. But, even more importantly, don’t underestimate the power you have to reframe those traumas and so redefine your present life and the life waiting for you in the future.

Way back in 2005, Will Smith shared some powerful wisdom with the audience at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards.

“The keys to life are Running and Reading.

When you're running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh I'm tired. My lung's about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way I can possibly continue." You want to quit.

If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running, you will know how to not quit when things get hard in your life.

For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us.

There's no new problem you could have--with your parents, with school, with a bully.

There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book.”

This is a powerful idea, and probably the source of inspiration for my early conviction that someone, somewhere, had figured out the Secret to a Great Life.

As we stand here, 15 years removed from Will Smith’s speech, his words ring truer still.

I can only hope that young people now have loved ones in their lives who continue to pass on this kind of wisdom.

It’s never a waste of time to nurture someone’s soul or to slow down enough to make someone feel heard, respected, and valued.

But if being kind in that way were considered wasting time…

Well, I’d say we could all stand to be a little more wasteful.

Today, I encountered an expression for the first time:

“Low Floor, High Ceiling."

This phrase refers to a pursuit (typically a skill or knowledge set) that is easy to access (“low floor”), but that can be taken to great heights through increasing mastery (“high ceiling”).

I think playing the piano is a great example of this.

It’s easy to start playing the piano. Just walk up to one and start hitting keys.

But to reach the “ceiling” of piano-playing - to take the craft of playing to the absolute highest level of virtuosity and artistry - requires quite a bit of work.

Many other great pursuits fit into this category: archery, fishing, cooking, and even running.

My intuition says that being “low floor, high ceiling” is a feature of many peoples’ favorite pursuits (of course, due to the low barrier to entry).

It’s just a neat way to think about people and the silly things we do.

Have a beautiful day!

From my private notes:

September 13, 2015 -

There will always be a chance for you to mess up. No matter how good you become, no matter how careful you are, no matter how hard you try, there will always be the possibility that you are mistaken. It will always be possible for you to do the wrong thing, to act unwisely, to speak with cruelty instead of compassion. Within you, there exists both good and evil. Always seek to do good. 

Do not be afraid. Instead, be interesting, compassionate, and adventuresome.

Learn to trust your instincts. You know more than you remember.

Do not seek enlightenment. You - you, personally - are not going to get there. Instead, take that realization and find in it compassion for yourself. 

Provoke. Inspire. Play offense.

Gold and silver are pretty, but wear with age. Iron sharpens itself in combat. Be the latter. 

Whenever you castigate yourself for small mistakes, remember: that means you'll do the same to others. Instead, be loving and even playful. 

You will never learn these lessons with finality. Instead, you must be constantly relearning them. Be sure it's not too late when you do.

There’s a special kind of contentment that comes from knowing you have done the day’s work well.

This kind of peace can only come from knowing that you carried out your most important and vital duties to the best of your ability.

Sure, there are more tasks to be done. But they belong to tomorrow.

For now, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you have safeguarded today from the threats of inaction, laziness, distraction, and willfulness.

May tomorrow - and all your days - bring the same effort and reward.