🌀 Learn How to Go from Novice to Expert in 90 minutes
The limits of mental models, Ray Dalio & believability, how “Irrational” people can be successful, and the quickest way to expertise in any domain.
If you’re like most people who engage with my content, you likely have an inner work practice.
You probably dedicate significant time to clarifying your intentions and aligning with your deepest values.
You might also recognize that much of what society pursues feels frivolous and disconnected from what matters most.
And as much as you want to contribute to positive change, you feel limited in your leverage.
This reflects a pattern I’ve noticed: some of the most embodied and heartfelt people often feel disempowered when it comes to impacting the world, while those who wield the most power are frequently disconnected from deeper wisdom.
The future of our world depends on our ability to align power (effectiveness) with wisdom.
Cultivating interiority is essential, but it’s no longer enough.
We must also develop minds capable of actualizing the visions of our hearts.
This is why I invited Cedric Chin on my podcast.
Cedric is a business operator, programmer, writer, and the founder of Commoncog, a publication that delves into the models of business expertise and how to accelerate its acquisition.
Cedric’s approach to writing and learning involves discovering interesting ideas, applying them in his life, and then sharing the results.
While his work primarily focuses on business, the principles he explores can be applied to various domains helping us think better and learn quicker.
Before our conversation, Cedric expressed surprise that I invited him on the show, noting that he considers himself one of the least spiritual people he knows.
But that’s precisely the point— even if Cedric isn’t as spiritually inclined as many of my listeners, he is highly effective in practical matters.
And if we’re honest most of us spiritual folk can get a lot better at getting things done in the world.
So if any of this resonates click the video below and tune into our wide-ranging conversation where we discuss the limits of mental models, Ray Dalio & believability, how “irrational” people can be successful, three approaches to expertise, why you should read biographies, overcoming information overload, and so much more.
Memorable Quotes 🗣️
The Limits of Mental Models:
“The problem with the mental model approach is that it oversimplifies complex situations. It’s not that the models themselves are bad, but they often don't capture the nuances and complexities of real-world scenarios.”
On Believability:
“Believability is very simple. It’s basically in order for a person to be believable, they need to have at least three successes, and they need to have a coherent explanation when you ask them about their successes, how they do what they do, how they think."
Epistemic VS Instrumental Rationality:
"Epistemic rationality... you need to know things are true and have beliefs that are true and verified through some form of epistemology... Instrumental rationality, though, is the ability to achieve your goals or the kind of thinking that is necessary to achieve your goals."
On the three approaches for gaining expertise:
"There are three approaches you’re interested in when you’re thinking about accelerating expertise: the deliberate practice tradition, the naturalistic decision-making approach, and then there’s the trial and error approach."
1.“Deliberate practice is still the gold standard for expertise research... It requires a structured pedagogical approach, which means there must be a syllabus... but you can’t easily do deliberate practice in a lot of domains that you care about.”
2."The naturalistic decision-making approach asks... Let’s go take a look at how experts execute in the real world. Let’s figure out what their expert intuition actually is, and then we turn that into training programs."
3."The trial and error approach is basically if you don’t have both [deliberate practice or naturalistic decision-making], then you just have to do trial and error.”
"I’ve experimented with different approaches and have come to prioritize, at least for myself, the NDM approach... but I won’t say that one is better than the other. They all have their uses depending on the domain."
On Tacit Knowledge:
"Experts cannot articulate how they’re able to do the things that they’re able to do. And we call that expert intuition... If you ask a tennis player or a carpenter or an experienced software developer... they will say words and the words will make sense, but it might not be or it probably will not be how they actually do it."
On the most important questions to ask Experts:
You should ask questions around the four bits of RPD: the queues, the expectancies, the goals, and the action script. And you always frame it from the perspective of, what would a novice get wrong here?"
What is the first priority thing to check for you? And what would a novice not think to check? What would a novice check first? What would you check first? Why would a novice do that? Why would you do this?"
How to learn what you read:
“My superpower really is just when you read a practical book, you take your time with it and you actually put it to practice. The right way to approach it is that you read it, you internalize it, you put it to practice, you put every idea in that chapter to practice before you move on to the next chapter.”
Dive Deeper 🤿
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