For most of us, the beginner stage is something to be gotten through as quickly as possible, like a socially awkward skin condition. But I want to suggest that even if we’re only passing through, we should pay particular attention to this moment. For once it goes, it’s hard to get back.

As you try to learn something, you shouldn’t lose sight of all the interesting little detours along the way.

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.

When we become skilled at something, it becomes automatic. We don’t have to think much about it, because our brain, running on virtual autopilot, is constantly making predictions—and most of its predictions are true.

This tendency for people to default to the familiar, even in the face of a more optimal novel solution, has been termed the Einstellung effect (after a German word that means “set”).

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.

mastery can become a closed system.

The adult brain, once believed to be hopelessly “fixed and immutable,” is now thought capable of much greater plasticity than ever before.