Automaticity: How to go from a novice to a master
/By Duncan Anderson and Taylen Furness. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 10 mins
Summary: Automaticity is key to how masters in all fields function. By consciously cultivating one’s abilities in a certain area, I believe one can achieve automaticity and, therefore, mastery of anything. The best areas to achieve mastery in are areas that have wide reaching impacts, and that have multiplier effects. Want to melt minds with your seemingly magical mental moves? Become a multi-area, multiplier master!
Automaticity = The ability to perform a task by automatic processing, independent of conscious control and attention. Strong automaticity is almost entirely automatic and can be carried out without attention.
Working memory vs Long term memory.
They say you have 4-7 slots of working memory. This is where you can make your working memory work for you to build new automaticity.
However, it appears you can build unlimited amounts of automaticity in your long term memory! How cool is this?
Your working memory is limited, your long term memory is unlimited.
"People who jump from project to project are always dividing their effort, and producing high quality work becomes difficult without intense effort. Meanwhile, your average work day can be leisurely, yet also productive, if you return to the same project each day. Do one thing well and watch it compound." James Clear
A chess master needs less time to make massively better quality decisions than a chess novice. But the chess master can also do things that the novice can’t even imagine. So a master does higher quality versions of what a novice can do in way less time but also can do things a novice can’t do. The reason? Automaticity!
In your field of work, a master will be able to do what a novice can do in a far shorter amount of time AND at much higher quality… and also do things that a novice cannot do no matter how much time they are given.
So if you want to be really good at something, focus on improving at it for a LONG time. Focus on building large amounts of automaticity in one area.
Jingle: Automaticity turns complexity (what masters do) into simplicity.
++++++++++
Details
Masters: built not born.
In almost all areas we start off as novices, and if we do the work to upgrade ourselves we can become masters.
One core way to upgrade is to build automaticity in more and more things.
The Dreyfus taxonomy
Examples of building automaticity
One thing that I think is super cool about automaticity: it doesn't necessarily take the chess master any longer to think of a high quality move than it does the novice to make a low quality move. In a game of chess, if you gave both the master and the novice five seconds to think of a move, the master’s move is going to pants the novice’s!
Why is this? It’s the difference between dial up (novice) and broadband (master) - while the novice is still waiting for the page to load, the master has already loaded 10+ moves - they’ve got more moves to choose from
The master also can more quickly filter through this set of moves because they’ve seen each move played before and learnt the possible outcomes of it. It’s as if they have more time to think than the novice
Master = 1. More moves + 2. More time. The novice doesn’t stand a chance!
I think you can have the same thing happen at work. You can go from having no idea what you are doing to ‘checkmate in 5 moves’.
If you have done lots of upgrading, aka building automaticity, others can look at what you are doing and it seems like magic. It’s like being a chess novice and watching a chess master play, you don’t understand how they are coming up with the moves but they are crushing their opponent while barely breaking a sweat!
*Aside: the vast majority of workplaces are positive sum (IE win win) vs chess which is zero sum (win loss, yes I know you can have a stalemate). So seeing someone play well at work is normally good for everyone.
Another example is driving a manual car
First off you have to very consciously change gears, control the clutch, all without stalling or messing up your gear box
Later, after hours of practice, you change gears effortlessly without even thinking - that’s automaticity!
Who needs automatic transmission when you have manual + automaticity transmission!
"Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence." - Daniel F. Chambliss
Neural net analogy
An untrained vs trained neural net has the same input layer, output layer and neuron layers in between.
Training the neural net (AKA building automaticity, AKA loading schema into your mind, AKA building and seeing patterns) builds the right connection settings amongst neurons. This means the neural network can go from having no idea of what it is doing to being bloody good! AKA it goes from a novice to a master.
This is from ‘Brilliant - An Intro To Neural Networks’.
You can play with the trained vs untrained neural network in this course.
Untrained - See the output layer at the top has no idea of what is going on
In the right example, the number “2” has been drawn, but the neural net doesn’t recognise it
Trained - See the output layer at the top for very similar input has a strong idea of what is going on
In the right example, the neural net strongly recognises the “2” as being the number 2!
For reading you can go from having no idea what letters are to automatically recognising letters, to seeing whole words, to seeing thoughts as sentences, to intertwining your thoughts with the writers seamlessly. The input layer is the same, the output layer is something entirely different.
You can build automaticity to a level where you seemingly have otherworldly abilities.
This is an SBS documentary on adults who can’t read called ‘Lost for words’. One lady routinely gets lost as she can’t read street signs, train stations signs, etc. It’s super sad - to her, people who can read have ‘other worldly abilities’.
Again, I think you can do this at work. To go from looking at a problem and having no idea what you are looking at let alone what a good solution might be; to understanding the problem space almost instantly and being able to start articulating high quality solutions as fast as you can think!
From individual data points, to patterns, to patterns of patterns, ad infinitum
Making patterns your mind can see = Chunking (academic research name) = Schemas
Effectively one can build ever greater patterns of patterns and make more and more sense of a problem space!
Building patterns, and then patterns of patterns is one articulation of ‘automaticity’.
Chess analogy
What a novice sees:
What a chess master sees
An oldie but a goodie
Effectively one can look at the same problem space but masters can see many more patterns / apply multiple different schemas / have higher automaticity.
If I look at an AFL game I see the novice layer.
When I looked at a secondary school resource 7 years ago I didn’t really see much (was a novice). When I look now I see WAY more! It’s like I have a microscope or am ‘inside the matrix’.
"People who jump from project to project are always dividing their effort, and producing high quality work becomes difficult without intense effort. Meanwhile, your average work day can be leisurely, yet also productive, if you return to the same project each day. Do one thing well and watch it compound." James Clear
If you build high levels of automaticity in an area, you can have outstanding output with leisurely input.
Build automaticity in areas that have multiplier effects, and that can be applied to multiple areas. This is a core way to have epic output with leisurely input.
Multiplier effect: 1+1=3
Multiplier example 1: Learn about Pedagogy (Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners) and apply this to helping improve a maths resource. There are also likely learnings you can take from the maths resource to help improve a science resource.
Multiplier example 2: Learn about making things engaging. Often the same area (eg curriculum dot point) can be interesting and relevant or boring and irrelevant. Making education delicious and nutritious is difficult but, done well, fun and rewarding. Figuring out how to make geography interesting and relevant has learnings for how to make science interesting and relevant.
A personal example:
At the start of Edrolo 8.5 years ago I was god awful at making secondary school resources. Why should I have been any good - I literally had never done it before. I was at Level Zero.
But now I've spent a lot of time trying to get better at making education resources. Like 10,000+ hours. I better be better at making better resources than I was 8.5 years ago!!!!!
I used to look at an education resource ~5 years ago and have no real idea if it was good / bad or how to improve the resource. Now I normally describe what I’m looking at as fast as I can think. After I can understand something I can normally think about possible ways to improve something again as fast as I can think. This most definitely did not used to be the case.
It feels to me like I’ve built automaticity in 100s of areas, and that these areas combine together to create emergent new possible outcomes (aka multiplier effects).
There are lots of education resources to think about improving. From at least birth to 18, children are involved in some form of education. So the area that I’m levelling up in has no ceiling in terms of quality and a massive set of resources for which we can try and improve. Yay! I’m confident I can easily spend a life trying to level up here (build automaticity) and not run out of things to do.
Examples of areas I think one can build automaticity in:
General areas:
Jobs To Be Done
MECE
Problem Solving Ability
Ability to articulate yourself
Perspective taking
Useful concepts for the modern world (eg justice, politics, economics, etc)
Etc etc
Specific areas
Detailed maths academic research
How to make education interesting and relevant
Understanding all key education resource players in the market
Etc etc
If you only take away one thing
They say that 5% of people have something biologically off in their brain that counts as a significant impediment. This means that for 95% of people you can become a master in things if you do the work. I think this is bloody cool.
However, to become a master takes time, so the more you jump around the less likely it is you’ll be able to get to master level. The old adage of it taking 10,000 hours to become a master doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Also, IMO for most areas there is no ceiling, so you can continue to level up infinitely. After 20,000 hours you’ll be a master2!
Done well, becoming a master is fun, rewarding and good for the world. I’ve tried to pick an area that is big (the education system: pre school, primary school and secondary school) and where I think trying to make improvements is worthwhile. Working on making education resources for the rest of my life and working to constantly level myself up sounds like lots of fun. Hopefully, a life well lived.