Expand The Skill, Then Contract It

When I am learning something new, I am relentless. More than relentless, I am ruthless. I like to practice it for hours a day, obsessively, until I get it.

A truth that I have found through my varied approaches to learning, is that we are capable of learning, developing, and progressing very fast — far more quickly than we realize — except that most never give their full attention to anything. We are able to learn harder thing than we ever thought we could, and deal with more complexity, if we have the right approach.

This is the idea behind Expand The Skill, Then Contract It.

Expand It, Exaggerate It, Make It Big

I like to expand the skill first, then contract it. There are two meanings to this. Expand the skill in the sense of devoting more time to it. Make the task big in your life first. Spend as many hours per day as you can on the task so that you can obsess over it, and learn it quickly. Then once you have the skill, it takes comparatively little to maintain.

The other meaning is more literal, and has to do with efficiency. Expand the skill at the beginning, meaning to allow yourself to be wild, to be gregarious, to be imprecise, and to make mistakes. Make the movements bigger, obvious, exaggerated, sloppy even, in order to learn them. To think them through and get a feeling for them.

One mistake that people make is to be perfect from the begging. It is such a stupid approach, because how could a beginner ever hope to know what perfection even looks like — let alone feels like — without the skill to recognize.

I heard a professional footballer (soccer) player explain the greatness of Messi, explaining the genius of a single move that he made. Granted, I don’t know soccer (I don’t watch sports, although I play most at a high level — ironic, I know) so while I knew the move was brilliant, I had no idea it was godly. I literally did not see the complexity. Literally, I did not see the extra moves between A and B that made it brilliant.

This is, in essence, the mistakes that people make in learning: they try to make the thing too small, too tight, too perfect before its time. When you are learning, you have to be a little bit wild. Sloppy. Make the mistakes. It is like watching a young future-NBA player, or a drummer who will one day be great. You know they are great, and you can see it in them when they were young, looking back, but they don’t have the elegance that they have later.

Wild energy, creativity, and rough skills at a high level. But not the technical brilliance, timing, and perfection you know they will grow into. Therefore at the beginning, expand the skill. Take the time to develop, and claim the freedom to express yourself — and fail — early on.

It is like writing a book, or writing a song, or trying to solve a problem. At the beginning you have to put everything down. Every though without inhibition, every idea. This is why Ernest Hemmingway said “Write drunk, edit sober”, because the alcohol removed his inhibition so that he wouldn’t limit himself.

To try and write a book with one perfect sentence at a time, only writing a sentence that is perfect, is a fools errand. It will not work. You write everything, without thinking. Then perfect it later. Same thing with music, you try everything. Testing out different instruments and settings, trying to find the rights sounds and combinations and layers to embody the feeling you are going for. You perfect it later.

So make it big, at first. You have to. Not too big. But big enough that you allow yourself room to breathe and expand into the space.

Speed, Progress, and Depth

Speed and rapid progress are not the point here. But I am not going to lie. As the years go by, I feel the pressure of time. I am continually feeling like I have more and more to do, and less time to do it in. Yet speed is not the main concern, even if it is a factor.

My main concern is depth. In my experience with learning, skill development, and mastery I have again and again had to begin at square one. There are skills that I have partially learned (knowledge that I have half-learned, and projects that I have gotten halfway) only to drop them for a year or two, and had to start at the beginning when I returned.

I have grown to despise that state.

Usually it feels like a waste of time, both in the past and the present. Even though sometimes it was necessary because I realized I didn’t have the skill (tools, knowledge, etc) to continue at that time, there is a part of me now that feels if I would have tripled down from the beginning, I could have built the knowledge and skill right then and there, through that project, right when I needed it, and finished it then. In some cases, I know that to be true.

What I have learned is that when we deeply engage from the beginning — engage like our life depends on it, as if it is as important as breathing — and devote ourselves wholeheartedly to the task without distraction, barrier, or inhibition, we will surprise ourselves. And then depth is always the answer.

Every time I have been unable to achieve something at first, time has always been the answer. I didn’t spend enough time with it, I didn’t allow myself to go deep enough. I spent a scattered 30 minutes and gave up, rather than the determined 14 hours I should have given it.

That right there is the difference. Did you try? Did you really? Did you really, really try? Honestly, I doubt it. I doubt that every failure you have had came after your best effort, your utter maximum. Did you work 8 hours a day, every single day, sacrificing sleep, while working your 9-5? I doubt it.

Many will complain, “But you need sleep to operate at your best! Take care of yourself!” Sure. Long term, definitely. But now? F*$k that. We don’t often have the luxury of time, or of being at our best. No professional athlete is at 100% health. Period.

Oftentimes we fail, only because we quit before we failed enough times that we finally succeeded. Being in perfect form all the time is not relevant — not as relevant as getting the work done. Put in more time, give the problem more time, do the work, and you will get there.

Expand The Skill, Then Contract It To Efficiency

After the intense expansion phases when you actually build the skill, then comes the time when you contract it towards precision. Doing the work, and refining the strokes to perfection. Cleaning up what you have, tightening it, and polishing.

You don’t polish the gem as the first step, but by degrees as you go. Each iteration brings you outwards further, then falling in deeper, incrementally gravitating towards the pure form that was your goal.

While the expansion phase can be wild, messy, chaotic, uninhibited, there comes a time where you need to bring it all together. When you need to reign in all your ideas and work, and make something out of it. This is when you can start thinking about precision.

This is how Jimi Hendrix wrote and recorded some of his best music (and he has at least 3 albums in the top 100 albums of all time, in spite of a short 4 year career). He would start the song with ideas — hundreds of them, from left field, from right field, from left field of a neighbouring pitch — and gradually draw them in, tightening it to perfectly-tuned final product. Then in recording they might do 50 takes, as Jimi gradually dialled in the solo to where he wanted it.

This ebb and flow between expansion and contraction is a universal principle, one that is seen in nature, just as readily as in the learning process, creative process, and the path towards mastery. Moving in and out, away and towards, in regular oscillations.

I elucidate these principles here so that they may be understood — yes, certainly — but more importantly, so that they can not be resisted. They are natural, yet people are afraid of them. They can’t deal with chaos because they cling to every little peace, and so are overwhelmed easy. Or they cannot deal with failure, with mess, and so never try, make mistakes, and learn. And we have a tendency to be backwards anyways. We expand when we should contract, or stand still when we should sprint.

So expand the skill, then contract it. Understand it, then perfect it. Learn it, then master it.