Psychology Lesson

Life moves quickly. Step back periodically, take a moment to reflect about where you are and where you are going. Sometimes you will arrive at your destination more effectively with careful planning than furious effort.

On the road to mastery, what is the best route? There's a strong argument that it begins with FUN, the enjoyment of an activity, followed by COMPETENCE, and then EXPERTISE.

But balancing the input between ability and degree of difficulty matters. When ability far exceeds challenge, the result is BOREDOM. When challenge far exceeds ability, the result is ANXIETY. Finding a middle ground, where FLOW occurs, is the great challenge. FLOW is that zone where the greatest learning takes place, where we become lost in events and time is secondary, and seemingly EFFORTLESS activity takes place.

Building COMPETENCE takes time, but achieving EXPERTISE takes even more. Furthermore, competence is subdivided into PRIMARY and SECONDARY competence, think about it as routine and ADAPTIVE competence. Primary competence is adequate to meet the usual challenges, but experts in a field go far beyond that, with the ability to succeed in unscripted circumstances because of unusual experience and expertise.



"As soon as you've got THE formula, you should be concerned." - Robert Wolcott


When you have a question or concern or a possibility, WRITE IT DOWN.