Learning to juggle isn't about catching the balls, it's about throwing them. One reason many people have difficulty learning to juggle is because they can't unlearn the "catching" part.
Letting go of old habits is difficult but if you can master the trick of unlearning you just might be able to better handle the new "balls" life throws your way.
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The Wall Street Journal has an informative article on running entitled Why Trainers Say, 'Slow Down.' It does a good job of punching a hole in the "more-is-better" mentality espoused by many in the marathon/distance running community. (Including, I should add, myself -- once upon a time.)
From an unlearning perspective, however, I especially enjoyed this observation: 95% of all marathon starters finish the race. This little tidbit would seem to confirm the "more is better" approach, right?
Not so fast. It is a fact that nearly 25% of all people who sign up for a marathon fail to make it to the starting line. (Remember, unlearning requires us to also see what isn't there. And, in this case, we often don't see the people who don't make it to the starting line.) There are, of course, a variety of reasons for why people don't make it, but the largest is that many runners over-train and injure themselves.
It is easy to believe that if a little is good then "more" should be even better. This isn't always the case.
Interested in other unlearning-related running pieces? Try these two on for size:
“It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.”--Satchel Paige
Question #86: In both 1995 and 1996, David Justice of the Atlanta Braves had a higher batting average than the New York Yankees Derek Jeter. Who had the higher two-year average over the same two-year period?
The answer is Derek Jeter. The anomaly, known as Simpson Paradox, occurred because in the first year Jeter had only 48 at-bats and 12 hits for average of .250, while Justice batted 411 times with an average of .253. The following year Jeter batted 582 times and hit for a .314 average, while Justice hit .321 but had only 140 at bats.
In other words, when you combined the players totals for both years Jeter comes out on up as the table below demonstrates.
|
1995 |
1996 |
Combined | ||||
|
Derek Jeter |
12/48 |
.250 |
183/582 |
.314 |
195/630 |
.310 |
|
David Justice |
104/411 |
.253 |
45/140 |
.321 |
149/551 |
.270 |
The sporting world is ripe with unlearning examples. One of my favorites occurred on December 30, 1936 when over 17,000 fans packed into the old Madison Square Garden to watch Long Island University, the country’s top-ranked basketball team, take on Stanford University. It was slated to be a great game. Long Island was putting up its 43-game winning streak up against the reigning Pacific Coast Conference champions.
More than that, though, people were eager to watch Hank Luisetti, Stanford’s star sophomore. He was the only player known for shooting the ball with one hand while jumping up in the air. At the time, every other basketball player in the country shot with two-hands or took hook shots.
Luisetti’s “jump-shot” was so radical, in fact, that it caused Nat Holman, the legendary coach of City College of New York—and a man known as “Mr. Basketball”—to remark, “That’s not basketball! If my boys ever shot one-handed, I’d quit coaching.”
Luisetti and Stanford went on to crush Long Island University and, two years, later, Luisetti became the first college player ever to score 50 points in a game.
Today, it is impossible to find a single player at either the collegiate or professional level who shoots two-handed.
It took a long time for basketball players (and their coaches) to unlearn the two-handed shot but the story and Jeter/Justice anomaly remind us that unlearning can be both counter-intuitive and paradoxical.
To this end, while it is true that a return to two-handed shooting is unlikely, it might make sense on one area of the basketball court: the free-throw line. Consider the case of Rick Barry. Although he used an unorthodox under-handed “granny-style” style to shoot free-throws, Barry is the National Basketball Association’s second most accurate free-throw shooter of all-time with an average of .900. Today, not a single player shoots free-throws under-handed. This is in spite of the fact that the average accuracy rate in the NBA is roughly 75% and many games are determined by just a few points.
For those players and coaches with the courage to unlearn their current free-throw shooting style, it could lead to an “above average” outcome because even a modestly higher free-throw average could result in a handful more victories each season.
Homework Assignment: Explain why you think no one in the NBA shoots under-handed free-throws. For extra credit: Name at least two NBA players who might want to unlearn their current form and consider shooting “Granny-style”? (Hint: At 52.4%, Shaquille O’Neal is only the second worst free-throw shooter.)
“When men know not what to do, they ought not to do what they know not.”--Abigail Adams.
Question #58: If five frogs are sitting on a log and four decide to jump off, how many are remaining on the log?
The answer is five because deciding to do something isn’t the same as actually doing it.
From childhood, we are instilled with a bias for action. In many cases, it is a useful trait. It is even possible that our bias for action is a genetic hand-me-down from our pre-historic ancestors and it enabled us to avoid being devoured by predators by reacting with haste to the slightest rustling in the bushes.
Is this bias toward action something that we may need to unlearn?
The answer is a qualified yes. Scientists studying the odds of goalies trying to stop penalty kicks concluded that a goalie’s best strategy was to stay put. If they had followed this course of action, goalies would have been successful 33 percent of the time. According to the data, however, they only employed the strategy 6 percent of the time.
There is a reason for this: people don’t like “doing nothing.” In fact, people who don’t act often feel a deep emotional pang of guilt for their inaction. In the case of a goalie during a shoot-out, for instance, the goaltender would feel worse for standing there than he would have if he had dived left on a kick to the right. This is true even though the outcome would have been the same – a goal. In common parlance, “At least he did something.”
The example of a goalie staying still might seem trivial, but the implications for staying put can have real-world implications. Consider the stock market.
It is not uncommon for people to rush in and buy a certain stock when others are doing the same. The result, as a spate of investing “bubbles” have recently demonstrated, is the creation of artificially high and, ultimately, unsustainable stock prices. Counter-intuitively, many people also follow the actions of others when selling a stock. They sell only because other people are selling—not because the underlying of the fundamentals of the stock has changed.
Warren Buffett is one of the world’s richest men, but his sage partner, Charlie Munger, says “Half of Warren’s time is spent sitting on his ass and reading; the other half is spent talking on the phone or in person to a highly gifted person that he trusts and trusts him.” In other words, Buffett has a bias toward inaction.
A bias toward inaction can also reap other unexpected benefits. Have you ever been traveling down the freeway and then spotted the other cars moving over into a more crowded lane? What is occurring is that drivers in the trailing cars believe that the action of the drivers in front of them are based on the knowledge of something that they can’t yet see and so they decide to mimic the action. Sometimes there really is something ahead in the road, but sometimes it is the result of nothing more than two cars simultaneously shifting lanes for arbitrary and unrelated reasons.
The problem begins to manifest itself as this faulty logic gains momentum and subsequent drivers shift lanes and thus create more “evidence” for others to shift lanes.
If you want to get ahead on the freeway and in life in general it behooves you to wait to “jump off the log” until you actually have access to compelling information that requires movement.
Homework Assignment #58: For the top five stock holdings in your portfolio, write down your rationale for holding the stock as well as the length you expect to hold it. Next, list the conditions under which you will sell the stock. Before you sell the stock revisit your notes.
"When it becomes necessary to develop a new perception of things, a new internal model of reality, the problem is never to get new ideas in, the problem is to get old ideas out." – Dee Hock
Question: How many planets are there in our solar system?
The answer is eight. If you said nine don’t feel bad because that was the correct answer until August 24, 2006 when the International Astronomical Union, in its infinite wisdom, declared Pluto was no longer a planet.
In addition to delivering a crushing blow to Pluto’s planethood by ignominiously demoting it to “dwarf planet” status, the IAU also single-handedly rendered obsolete the famous childhood mnemonic -- “My Very Excellent Memory Just Served Up Nine Planets -- for recalling the names of the then nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
In terms of unlearning, however, it is not Pluto which concerns us but rather Uranus. This is because between 1690 and 1769 the planet was observed no fewer than 18 times -- six times by the English astronomer, John Flamsteed, and an additional 12 times by the French astronomer, Pierre Lemonnier. In each instance, the orb was not recognized as a planet and rather believed to be a star because of its dimness and slow orbit.
It was not until William Herschel observed the planet on March 13, 1781 and then described it as a “comet” in a report to the Royal Society that experts began to consider it might be something other than a star. Still, it took an additional two years before most astronomers agreed that the celestial body was neither a comet nor star but, in fact, a new planet.
The story reminds us that when we are predisposed to see something, it can be difficult to see things differently. In a landmark psychology study, Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman showed a group of 28 college students a series of cards. Most of the cards were normal but some were incongruous. In other words, the colors and suits were reversed so that, for example, the three of hearts would be black and the six of clubs red.
Whereas most students quickly identified the normal cards, it took, on average, four times as long to correctly identify the incongruous cards. There were three typical reactions. The most common was what the authors called a “dominance reaction.” In such cases, heart-shaped cards would be seen as red regardless of whether they were colored black.
A second outcome was what Bruner and Postman called a “compromise reaction.” A black heart might be described as “purple” or “brown.” In essence, the “red” heart the subject expected to see would blend with the black heart on the paper and merge in their mind’s eye to create a compromise color. Lastly, in a few rare instances, the subject would recognize that something was wrong but be unable to articulate the appropriate solution.
For unlearning, the real world implications of this study and the Uranus story are evident in many aspects of our lives. In his book, Moneyball, Michael Lewis describes how many baseball scouts eschew a player’s statistics and instead draft baseball prospects on their physique because “they look like a baseball player.”
Voters do much the same with political candidates. In a recent study people were shown the pictures of two opposing candidates – with no other information – and were asked to identify the more competent candidate. Surprisingly, their selections corresponded with the winning candidate 70% of the time. The finding strongly suggests that voters, when engaged in one of the most important civic duties in a democracy, are taking into consideration things other than performance-based information when selecting political candidates.
Like Uranus, baseball scouts and voters might believe they know a “star” when they see one but they would be better off using this new mnemonic for recalling the eight planets: Many Vain Experts Must Just Study Unlearning Now!
Homework Assignment #7: Could a politician with the physical appearance of Abraham Lincoln or the physical disabilities of Franklin Delano Roosevelt be elected President today? If not, why not and are there similar prejudices in how people select their doctors or a marketing executive or salesperson is hired?
Almost two years ago now, after his team's stunning upset loss to the New York Giants in the Super Bowl, I applauded Bill Belichick for his willingness to make an unconventional -- but statistically correct -- decision in a high stake situation. After his latest controversial decision on Sunday night against the Indianapolis Colts, where he decided to go for it on fourth-and-two from his own 30-yard line with his team leading by six points and two minutes to go in the game, I again applaud him. This time, however, I am going to go a step further and name Bill Belichick my first ever "Unlearning" hero for his willingness to stand up proudly against incorrect conventional wisdom.
Just because his New England Patroits didn't convert the play, Belichick's decision has been roundly criticized by thousands of "Monday morning" quarterbacks and scores of professional analysts who felt that Belichick should have punted the ball in the situation.
Well, as is so often the case, the Monday Morning quarterbacks and the pundits are wrong! Just because a decision doesn't work out, does not mean that it was the incorrect decision. According to this article in today's Wall Street Journal, Belichick's decision gave his team a 79% chance of winning the game. This compares with a 70% chance of winning had he decided to go for the "safe" (or conventional) option of punting the ball.
In other words, Belichick gave his team the best chance of winning. Isn't that what a coach is suppose to do? Of course it is, but the reality is that a surprisingly high number of coaches play it "safe" and end up hurting their teams prospects for victory. (See this old post: Ohio State Needs to Unlearn).
In situations such as this, where the masses are screaming for Belichick's head, I am reminded of the old quote by John Maynard Keynes: "Worldly wisdom teaches us that it is better for the reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally."
Well, I say screw "worldly wisdom." I would rather have a coach that succeeds unconventionally. Bottom-line: Bill Belichick should be applauded -- not criticized -- for his decision. Standing up against the power of conventional wisdom isn't easy but it is the correct thing to do when the numbers are in your favor -- and, in Belichick's case -- they were!
This past Sunday I completed the Twin Cities Marathon and achieved my goal of qualifying for the 2010 Boston Marathon. As I mentioned last month, however, I am serious about this idea of "Unlearning the Running Rules." Today, I purchased my first pair of Vibram FiveFinger's -- the "barefoot alternative" -- and went for a modest two mile run. It went quite well.
I intend to gradually build up my mileage up and then, if all goes according to plan, run in the 2010 Boston Marathon using the Vibram's.
Unlearning is not an easy process. Nor is it without risks. But, as with so many things, it must begin with a small step and today I took my first small step toward unlearning the running shoe.
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As I said the other day, if you want to unlearn it helps to "see what isn't there." And, as this old clip from the cult classic movie, This is Spinal Tap, proves: 11 is like 10 -- only better.
In an early key college football matchup, the 8th ranked Ohio State Buckeyes lost to the 3rd ranked USC Trojan's last evening by a score of 18-15. A number of reasons will be given for the defeat and many will be valid. One key decision likely to be overlooked by most observers was Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel's decision in the second quarter -- when faced with a 4th and goal from the Trojan's half-yard line -- to kick a fieldgoal.
