From Thought to Movement, From Movement to Action

Preface

There’s a class of activity that requires overcoming some minor skill barrier to get started. Whether that’s Programming or the Piano, these aren’t activities where you can simply get started¹. The terminology here goes something like “X has a bit of a learning curve and skill floor to getting started”. Then there’s the other side to this, the activities that don’t have any such barrier, and the way I internalize this difference is in understanding how much theory I need to know to kickstart my execution.

It boils down to the question pf: “Do I need to learn something before I get started?”

The Problem With Thought

When faced with this requirement, there’s an overwhelming urge to dive into the theory, to learn. Whether this involves reading a book, listening to a podcast, or watching a tutorial of some kind, they’re all problematic for the same reason:

The illusion of progress as a result of conflating learning with consumption.

Don’t get me wrong, theory is important. But only so far as we apply it. We tend to take the path of least resistance, which, coupled with our perception of ’learning’ as a passive activity… well that’s a recipe for disaster.

What’s easy is good when you’re an adult. When you might have only an hour to spare each day on trying something new falling into this pattern of thinking is par for the course.

It’s easy reading another page of a book or watching another youtube tutorial. It’s not enough.

It’s all in our head, it’s all just Thought.

The Problem With Action

The discernment on how we tend to spend our time when learning something new is only the first step, and there’s nothing special about it either. Given some reflection it’s a pretty reasonable conclusion to make.

With that, we’re immediately propelled to the other end of this spectrum. We’re pushed into Action.

Action is a vector, it’s about directed effort towards a goal. Referring back to my previous examples, it’s akin to going getting into setting up a website or learning to play your favorite piano piece.

The problem is that action doesn’t meet my criteria for overcoming our inaction inertia.

Action isn’t challenging and interesting.

A quick digression to explain why these are important.

We’re wired towards what’s easy and a result things that are too hard can be unappealing. What’s too easy on the other hand is what we’re geared to but no better than Thought. So we’re looking for something that hits that sweet spot of being just challenging enough.

Challenge isn’t enough by itself. We still need to override our “take the path of least resistance” reflex, and that’s why we need something interesting.

Action fails to meet the above criteria because at the start of any new endeavor we’re pretty terrible at being able to gauge the difficulty of that which we’ve set out to do. This wildly inaccurate assessment is going to set us up for failure. That is, a lack of appropriate challenge. And even if it doesn’t, our interest in the subject is an unsteady thing given our (supposedly) only recent introduction to it. It’s far too easy for us to simply give up without ever having done anything.

The Gap

So we need to get ourselves out of simply Thought, but we’re missing something before we can dive into Action.

That intermediary step is what we’re attempting to actualize.

The Usual

A digression before we move on to our finale.

The usual way I see this problem resolved is to continually move between thought and action. The parallelization of both activities would, you’d expect, help cover up for the weaknesses of each activity in isolation.

This is basically following along with any tutorials you’d see around. These work to an extent. The effectiveness of this process is largely dependent on the resource you use.

However, it comes with its own set of pitfalls. The resource could be:

1. Too focused on the action, and you end up losing interest, or are unable to keep up with the challenge
2. Too focused on the thought and you content yourself with consumption
3. Able to strike a balance between the two allowing for an optimal learning experience

[3] is great, but dependent on your choice of resource. What if we’re able to formalize those lessons under system where the burden is on the learner and not the availability of learning resources?

The Bridge

Movement. That’s the magic word. It’s what I’ve conceptualized to solve this conundrum, to bridge that gap between Thought and Action.

I characterize movement as undirected effort. As an exploration of that which you wish to learn. You could call it also call it “playing around”, but the title doesn’t stay as catchy :)

It solves our two earlier problems:

Movement helps us explore the space we’re diving into. We get an inkling of what might be possible, but more so, we learn more about what our options are and what we might be compatible with. This gives us the nuance to later determine what kind of challenge might be appropriate for us. All the while, the freedom that comes with movement should be fun and heighten our interest in the subject, while making sure learning endeavors don’t burn us out.

Now instead of distributing your time in a new field between thought and action, you should also spend some time on movement.

An Example

When I was trying to pick up drawing (I never did get very far though), Draw A Box was one of the resources recommended to me and their very first lesson communicated a part of this vision. They call it the 50 Percent Rule and asked drawing initiates to spend 50% of their time following the lessons (thought) and the exercises (action) and the remaining 50% of their time drawing whatever ( movement).

I wish I could share more examples, but I myself haven’t explored as many of these activities I would have liked to! Perhaps a future post would have me detailing more of my own experiences in this regard.