I have been reminded about the importance of state of mind when engaged in any number of activities, including learning new skills, and developing habits from The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life – Master Any Skill or Challenge by Learning to Love the Process.

This smallish book by Thomas M. Sterner is an antidote to the current culture of rushing around, multitasking and instant gratification. Sterner draws on his early and recent experiences of learning piano, other instruments, and golfing as well as his personal studies of world philosophies and his personal experiences now as a concert piano technician and restorer. His tips are well explained and are encouraging as he shares the following:

Focus on the Process, not the Product – First of all it is important to focus on the task at hand and not fret about your progress against your ultimate goals. He compares it to swimming where you take a number of strokes before sticking your head up to see if you are on course, instead of looking for your distance landmark after every stroke.

Remember the Lesson of the Flower – The question “When is a flower perfect” could be answered many ways, but if we consider it closely we would have to conclude at each stage, it is perfect. We need to have the same acceptance of ourselves at each stage of our growth.

Create a Trigger – As is backed up by science in a number of recent books, Sterner points out that it can be helpful to choose a small action or event, that will serve as the kickoff to our execution of our practiced behavior. It could be as with professional athletes that will adjust their jersey prior to an attempt, or it can be in the workplace where we see ourselves start losing our temper at a coworker.

Remember the Four S’s, simplify, small, short, and slow – Here it is important to break up our actions that we are trying to improve into small bits that we can work on carefully. One term used to describe effective ways to improve is Deliberate Practice. Sterner makes some very interesting observations about being deliberately slow. He tells of a packed day that he was running back and forth between concert halls, and he decided that he was just losing the life balance game, and feeling frazzled. He decided that despite all that he was going to need to do that day, he would intentionally go about it deliberately and slowly. It felt great as he did it, but he was afraid that he was running late as a result. When he got back to his truck and looked at the clock there (he had removed his watch) he found that he was way ahead of schedule.

Equanimity and Do, Observe and Correct. – Sterner encourages us to develop a even tempered detachment to our behavior and actions. This will allow us to remain calm and in the present. We can correct ourselves without beating ourselves up.

Sterner gives further suggestions as to how to learn from our children’s approach to life. I found this to be a very powerful book, and one that I intend to apply to my own life. I will try some of the suggestions to reduce some of my mental multitasking at work. When I ran an errand yesterday, I turned off the radio and just concentrated on my driving. Frankly I did not notice much difference, but maybe that other drivers did. I strongly recommend this book, as I am going to apply in my own life.

How do you learn new skills? Please share.

I picked up The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction
because of the promise of the title. It is chock full of down to earth tips and advice to encourage us to take the time to use our brains more for contemplation and introspection.

There are chapters on the following topics:

• Why You Don’t Think and Why You Should
• Finding the Time to Think
• Attention: Awareness and Much More
• Reflection: The Art of Going Over Your Life
• Introspection: Self-Knowledge for Success
• Exercising Self-Control
• Embracing the Positive
• Being Proactive
• Making Wise Decisions
• Nuturing Outstanding Thinking: Insight, Discovery, and Creativity
• Managing Adversity
• Choosing to Be Thoughtful
• Conclusion: We Are What We Think

The author, P. M. Forni has created here a very thoughtful book about thinking. Even the tips at the end of the chapter are not “next actions” but are more often or not, items to think about.

Sometimes I felt that I was listening to Ophelia’s Father, Polonius as he gives his fatherly advice to his son, including the counsel to  “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”. Maybe it is because book relies more heavily on common wisdom, with some anecdotes but less on the neurological science common in the recent stream of self help books.

There are some valuable nuggets such as this paragraph that stood out:

I am not arguing that reality exists only as a mind construct. We are, however, all under the spell of an illusion of sorts. The illusion is that we are one with life, when instead life’s experience is always a mind-mediated one. As the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus observed with utter clarity two thousand years ago, it is not things in themselves that disturb us, but rather what we think of them.

You will note that he quotes one of the Stoics. He does rely on classic thinkers to illustrate some of his points and also a few more modern writers.

I found it interesting that he take Nike to task for promulgating the culture of throwing caution to the wind with “Just Do It”, since I have always understood it to mean, “get off the couch and take action”, not “mindlessly take action”.

Some sections are a little confusing. He debunks the myth of NASA developing a space pen while the Russians were smart enough to just use a pencil, where the truth is that both programs bought from the Fisher Space Pen Company, He then goes ahead and uses the apocryphal story to make his point about creativity.

Forni references the classics, both the society of stoics and the temple at Delphi as well as modern experts such as Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life.

I found this book to be a real jewel when closely read and pondered. This is no easy collection of checklists, but is rather a gathering of small essays and that discuss the benefits of thinking in all areas of life, and provide suggestions on how to raise our thinking to a new level and to realize the associated benefits.

In what areas of life do you think you could improve your thinking?