Intuition without experience is dangerous ..
Oct 25, 2016For the last few years I’ve been getting preventative physio – every week I go to physio so that I don’t get injured .. or at least so that I have longer spells without being injured. As a consequence of going so regularly, I have some great conversations with my osteopath (for my american friends: think chiropractor).
In today’s session we were talking about intuition, and particularly, the process of learning to be intuitive.
My mind flashed back to being 8 or 9 years old and going over the gravel pits everyday with the other kids from our road. We spent literally hours and hours every day, for years .. throwing stones!
We threw stones at everything. We put things in trees and threw stones at them. We threw stones at things we really shouldn’t. We had competitions to see who could throw stones the furthest.
Throwing stones was a key part of our lives. In fact, social status was determined by how well, how accurately and how far you could throw stones.
I hadn’t really thought about it since, but any of us could pick up a stone, anywhere from an ounce to a pound in weight, and throw it at a target, a few feet or a few hundred feet away, and get impressively close, even if we didn’t hit it.
I can still do it today, many years after throwing stones for a living!
‘Do you realise how many different computations are necessary to take a stone of unknown weight, shape, size, aerodynamics .. and throw it an unknown distance .. to hit an object? The number of different permutations and combinations of weight, velocity, trajectory, distance, wind, etc. are dizzying’ he said.
‘And you don’t even think about it!’ I said. ‘You just throw it! It’s amazing how you just kind of .. know!’
When I was about 14, I remember my Dad pulling out a harmonica and playing a tune.
‘How do you do that?’ I asked, totally amazed.
‘It’s like whistling,’ he said ‘I just know how to do it .. I can’t really explain how.’
After much frustration at trying to play tunes myself I said ‘it’s not fair! I can’t just do it!’
‘I played every day for years when I was little,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t much else to do!’
I’m still amazed by it today. He wasn’t in the least musical in any way but if you could hum a tune he could just play it on the harmonica.
I wonder if someone who just watched my Dad playing his harmonica for hours on end, or just watched us throwing stones week in week out as kids would think that they knew how to do the same thing?
After all, they would have had the information that it was possible as well watched it being done .. but that’s not enough is it?
On one of my calls with John Maxwell a few months back he said intuition is very powerful for a speaker .. but it has to be intuition with experience. Intuition without experience is dangerous!!
Whether we’re learning a musical instrument, or learning a hand-eye coordination type activity, or trying to master a complex skill like speaking .. there is simply no substitute for action and evaluated experience.
If you find the thing you love, then the endless repetitions of experience seem to happen on their own and Gladwell’s 10,000 hours becomes easy prey!
If you’re toiling at something you don’t love however, you’ll almost certainly never get there!!
In today’s session we were talking about intuition, and particularly, the process of learning to be intuitive.
My mind flashed back to being 8 or 9 years old and going over the gravel pits everyday with the other kids from our road. We spent literally hours and hours every day, for years .. throwing stones!
We threw stones at everything. We put things in trees and threw stones at them. We threw stones at things we really shouldn’t. We had competitions to see who could throw stones the furthest.
Throwing stones was a key part of our lives. In fact, social status was determined by how well, how accurately and how far you could throw stones.
I hadn’t really thought about it since, but any of us could pick up a stone, anywhere from an ounce to a pound in weight, and throw it at a target, a few feet or a few hundred feet away, and get impressively close, even if we didn’t hit it.
I can still do it today, many years after throwing stones for a living!
‘Do you realise how many different computations are necessary to take a stone of unknown weight, shape, size, aerodynamics .. and throw it an unknown distance .. to hit an object? The number of different permutations and combinations of weight, velocity, trajectory, distance, wind, etc. are dizzying’ he said.
‘And you don’t even think about it!’ I said. ‘You just throw it! It’s amazing how you just kind of .. know!’
When I was about 14, I remember my Dad pulling out a harmonica and playing a tune.
‘How do you do that?’ I asked, totally amazed.
‘It’s like whistling,’ he said ‘I just know how to do it .. I can’t really explain how.’
After much frustration at trying to play tunes myself I said ‘it’s not fair! I can’t just do it!’
‘I played every day for years when I was little,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t much else to do!’
I’m still amazed by it today. He wasn’t in the least musical in any way but if you could hum a tune he could just play it on the harmonica.
I wonder if someone who just watched my Dad playing his harmonica for hours on end, or just watched us throwing stones week in week out as kids would think that they knew how to do the same thing?
After all, they would have had the information that it was possible as well watched it being done .. but that’s not enough is it?
On one of my calls with John Maxwell a few months back he said intuition is very powerful for a speaker .. but it has to be intuition with experience. Intuition without experience is dangerous!!
Whether we’re learning a musical instrument, or learning a hand-eye coordination type activity, or trying to master a complex skill like speaking .. there is simply no substitute for action and evaluated experience.
If you find the thing you love, then the endless repetitions of experience seem to happen on their own and Gladwell’s 10,000 hours becomes easy prey!
If you’re toiling at something you don’t love however, you’ll almost certainly never get there!!
Until next time ..
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