Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

   Why would we want the right to be wrong? Don't we want the right to be right? No, if the world is going to move forward, we want the right to be amazingly wrong. 

   Imagine if the rule for learning to walk was pass or fail. If you could not walk at the right moment, you were fitted with leg braces and sent off - consigned to the label of "non-walker" forever. Perhaps this seems an exaggeration. But we do this with people all the time. 

   The key to mastery is effort and time. For some, mastery takes longer. But the end result may actually be superior expertise compared to the person for whom it came easily. Why? Because we learn from our mistakes. All those blunders provide an information set on what to do in the future.

   For the best levels of expertise we need to embrace more than one path to success. We can't just pick the front runners early and "label" the rest as incapable. But, we like our human filing cabinets. This person is one of "these", that person is one of "those". It's neat and clean. Except when it's us being stuck into a particular drawer or onto a certain shelf.

   Because in our heart we know it's rubbish. The whole reason we like the "filing cabinets" is because figuring people out is messy. Many of us are more bright than our transcript lets on. Most of us have a topic we are interested in, but are too timid to pursue. So we'd under perform on knowledge but over perform on interest.

  It's worth it to evaluate each other with greater depth. In a world going shallow, go deep. Be willing to accept mistakes from both yourself and others. Pursue mastery right through a barrage of errors. Everytime we fail we get a bit better. 

  Suddenly we can be better than the best, a breakthrough occurs and we are soaring. After sloppy results and discouraging reviews, we jump ahead. We discover something new that benefits the world. A moment which requires our patience and that of those around us.

  Never give up. Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

   A great quote from Mark Twain. I love putting it on Twitter. It always gets positive feedback. But that is actually rather ironic. If so many people love that quote, then why are such gargantuan sums spend on schooling?

   In a similar sense, parent after parent brags about how their child does in school. As I parent, I too feel some of the glow from a "good grade". Some is a simple matter of wanting to let my kids know that I appreciate the effort they make. But I question how important the grade is, what meaning it actually holds. Moreover, I wonder how much more meaningless it becomes when put into a global schematic.

   As someone who is "successful" I look back at my own schooling and see how incredibly unprepared my schools and teachers were for me. I did well in school at times, but was pretty much always a discipline problem. Mostly because I refused to accept some lessons as true. I wasn't content to just digest and regurgitate the information they fed to me. I wanted some answers. They didn't like that, they didn't like that at all.

   A dramatic example occurred in the seventh grade. Having been asked to solve an algebra problem I went up to the chalkboard and began scrawling out my answer. "No, no, no" my teacher screamed. Bewildered I looked over to her. "You have to show ALL YOUR WORK." she continued. Right about this time my blood headed to an immediate boil. I stormed over to my desk and grabbed my things. I then walked back to the front of the class and threw my books onto her desk. "If your way is so perfect then do it yourself" I shouted. I then proceeded to walk out of the class, and out the front door of the school, and continued walking until I was home roughly four miles away.

   A rash decision? Maybe, but I don't regret it. She was wrong to publicly humiliate me for not following "her" method to precision. It was also pretty obvious from the way I wrote the equation that I had used logical thinking to arrive at the answer. Her goal wasn't that I simply know the math. Her goal included my submission to her methodology. As you may have noticed, submission isn't my strong suit.

   The problem, from my vantage point, is the teacher's desire to make me conform to her methodology. She valued compliance over competence. It doesn't matter why. Schooling should create thinkers, not fleshy calculators. The desire for compliance makes children into pliable robots who indirectly learn to keep their head down, and put out what is asked. No more, no less.

   "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel." - Socrates

   Socrates knew something about educating people. If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world. Imagine a world of people taught to think rather than simply remember. We need people who push boundaries rather than retreat inside them. 

   How different might my education have been if I had actually been encouraged to think differently. What would my perspective be if it had been molded through an educational model of investigation rather than recitation and repetition.

   As parents, students, or both, we need to demand that school provide a true education. School must provide the spark, the catalyst, that will drive students to excellence. Not excellence as measured by a standardized test, but excellence that is demonstrated in ideas and actions. 

   As much as I love the Mark Twain quote, I'd be happy to make it irrelevant.

Don't Waste Your Effort...Really, Don't!

   Once upon a time I swam for the Miami-Dade Community College swim team. Perhaps a better way to phrase it, they didn't prevent me from practicing with them. That said, I was decent enough, and was fast enough to stay out of their way. It was a point of pride with me that I was there, and I trained HARD!

   You might think I would have developed a bit of insight after having to learn how to swim properly at the age of 23. Previously, I couldn't even get my face in the water. But a few sessions with a friend that had a swimming background put me on the path to swimming quasi-normally.

   One week we "hosted" the University of Miami swim team, as their pool was being renovated. This was a great opportunity as UM had some potential Olympians on their team. Swimming next to them was going to be a treat. A chance to measure oneself against greatness. Well, after a brief comparison I was ready to drop the idea of measuring anything.

   The first time I set off next to one of the team, I was dumbfounded. Was the guy being pulled by a jet ski? I redoubled my effort. This made me marginally faster, and massively exhausted. He, on the other hand, appeared to be having a nice leisurely dip. ARRGGGHH. My only hope was to be less embarrassed over a short distance. So much for training HARD.

   Had I been wasting my time? No, I had gotten much better than before, and the training had made a difference. But, if my goal was to diminish the gap between myself and the UM swimmers, I knew pretty much instantly that MORE TRAINING was NOT the answer.

   This leads me to my point. Effort is great. But effort without great technique can be wasteful, and potentially damaging. Too often the standard motivational cry is to TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT. Good luck with that. My experience is that while clearly motivation is important, as you approach higher levels of competition, how you try is likely more important than how hard you try.

   When you want approach the top of a sport or field of endeavor, pretty much everybody is motivated. In a swim competition you need only look around the pool to see that everyone is very fit. Past that point the biggest differences are down to technique.

   To improve myself I solicited a member of the UM team to train me. While I never got anything close to good enough to compete with them, I made amazing progress in improving my own times. To do this, I had to take a step back and evaluate my approach. By being objective, I knew I was in very good condition, had an excellent diet, and was putting forth an tremendous effort. Trying harder would have been pointless.

   Thus, when I say "Don't Waste Your Effort" I mean it literally. Put forth an effort, absolutely. But be sure you are putting forth the right effort. In a race, nobody cares about your horsepower, they care about your speed. By putting your effort to translating horsepower to output, you won't waste your effort. You'll get more out of doing less.

   That's the right way to apply effort.