Beginners

because positive feedback boosts learners’ confidence and motivation, this might be more helpful than repeatedly pointing out what they did wrong, which might just make them more anxious and self-conscious. You can have too much feedback, of course. As learners, we need to make our own mistakes, then figure out a way past them.

The whole idea that there’s some sole passion that’s out there, or secretly within you, waiting to emerge and magically change your life is questionable.

“Learning,” as The Journal of Positive Psychology put it, “requires the humility to realize one has something to learn.”

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the classic book by Betty Edwards.

Drawing is said to be a good way to actually acquire knowledge, because the act of drawing adds another layer of memory encoding in your brain,

Don’t ask if you are happy, he said. Do things that make you happy. Don’t pursue happiness; find happiness in your pursuits. I might only add: Do not worry how well you’re doing them.

Being a beginner is precisely about putting your status aside, about being willing to listen to and learn from others, about revealing your insecurities.

Here’s one advantage of being a perpetual beginner: Rather than grinding out a marathon, you are putting your brain through a variety of high-intensity interval workouts. Each time you begin to learn that new skill, you’re reshaping. You’re training your brain again to be more efficient.

In the Dreyfus model, novices live in a world of rules to be learned and followed. Getting to the “advanced beginner” stage requires actually applying those rules. This also means knowing when not to apply rules, or how to act when no rule seems to apply.