Foundations of Restaurant Management and Culinary Arts Level 1 Book

Art Carden is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Business at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Read total profile

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Josh Waitzkin has led a full life as a chess master and international martial arts champion, and as of this writing he isn't yet 35. The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Operation chronicles his journey from chess prodigy (and the subject of the moving picture Searching for Bobby Fischer) to world championship Tai Chi Chuan with important lessons identified and explained along the manner.

Marketing expert Seth Godin has written and said that one should resolve to change iii things as a result of reading a business organisation volume; the reader will find many lessons in Waitzkin's volume.  Waitzkin has a list of principles that announced throughout the volume, but it isn't e'er articulate exactly what the principles are and how they tie together.  This doesn't really injure the volume's readability, though, and it is at best a small-scale inconvenience.  There are many lessons for the educator or leader, and equally ane who teaches college, was president of the chess club in eye school, and who started studying martial arts most two years ago, I establish the book engaging, edifying, and instructive.

Waitzkin's chess career began amid the hustlers of New York's Washington Foursquare, and he learned how to concentrate among the dissonance and distractions this brings. This experience taught him the ins and outs of ambitious chess-playing likewise as the importance of endurance from the cagey players with whom he interacted.  He was discovered in Washington Square by chess instructor Bruce Pandolfini, who became his beginning charabanc and adult him from a biggy talent into one of the best young players in the world.

The volume presents Waitzkin'south life as a report in contrasts; perhaps this is intentional given Waitzkin'southward admitted fascination with eastern philosophy.  Amidst the most useful lessons concern the aggression of the park chess players and young prodigies who brought their queens into the action early or who set elaborate traps and then pounced on opponents' mistakes.  These are first-class means to quickly dispatch weaker players, but information technology does non build endurance or skill.  He contrasts these approaches with the attention to detail that leads to genuine mastery over the long run.

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Co-ordinate to Waitzkin, an unfortunate reality in chess and martial arts—and maybe past extension in educational activity—is that people learn many superficial and sometimes impressive tricks and techniques without developing a subtle, nuanced command of the primal principles.  Tricks and traps tin can impress (or vanquish) the credulous, but they are of limited usefulness against someone who really knows what he or she is doing. Strategies that rely on quick checkmates are likely to falter confronting players who can deflect attacks and go i into a long middle-game.  Smashing inferior players with iv-move checkmates is superficially satisfying, but it does little to better 1's game.

He offers one child every bit an chestnut who won many games against inferior opposition but who refused to embrace real challenges, settling for a long string of victories over clearly inferior players (pp. 36-37).  This reminds me of advice I got from a friend recently: ever try to make certain you're the dumbest person in the room so that yous're always learning.  Many of u.s., though, draw our self-worth from existence big fish in small ponds.

Waitzkin'due south discussions cast chess equally an intellectual boxing match, and they are peculiarly apt given his discussion of martial arts later in the book.  Those familiar with boxing will remember Muhammad Ali's strategy against George Foreman in the 1970s: Foreman was a heavy hitter, simply he had never been in a long bout earlier.  Ali won with his "rope-a-dope" strategy, patiently absorbing Foreman's blows and waiting for Foreman to exhaust himself.  His lesson from chess is apt (p. 34-36) as he discusses promising young players who focused more intensely on winning fast rather than developing their games.

Waitzkin builds on these stories and contributes to our understanding of learning in chapter two past discussing the "entity" and "incremental" approaches to learning. Entity theorists believe things are innate; thus, one can play chess or do karate or be an economist considering he or she was born to exercise so.  Therefore, failure is deeply personal.  Past dissimilarity, "incremental theorists" view losses equally opportunities: "step by step, incrementally, the novice can become the master" (p. 30).  They rise to the occasion when presented with difficult material because their approach is oriented toward mastering something over time.  Entity theorists collapse nether pressure level.  Waitzkin contrasts his arroyo, in which he spent a lot of fourth dimension dealing with end-game strategies
where both players had very few pieces.  By dissimilarity, he said that many immature students brainstorm by learning a wide array of opening variations.  This damaged their games over the long run: "(m)any very talented kids expected to win without much resistance.  When the game was a struggle, they were emotionally unprepared."  For some of u.s.a., pressure becomes a source of paralysis and mistakes are the get-go of a downward spiral (pp. 60, 62).  Every bit Waitzkin argues, nonetheless, a different approach is necessary if we are to attain our total potential.

A fatal flaw of the shock-and-awe, blitzkrieg approach to chess, martial arts, and ultimately annihilation that has to exist learned is that everything tin can be learned by rote.  Waitzkin derides martial arts practitioners who go "form collectors with fancy kicks and twirls that have admittedly no martial value" (p. 117).  One might say the aforementioned thing about problem sets.  This is non to gainsay fundamentals—Waitzkin's focus in Tai Chi was "to refine certain fundamental principles" (p. 117)—but there is a profound difference between technical proficiency and true agreement. Knowing the moves is one thing, merely knowing how to determine what to do adjacent is quite another. Waitzkin's intense focus on refined fundamentals and processes meant that he remained strong in later round while his opponents withered.  His approach to martial arts is summarized in this passage (p. 123):

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"I had condensed my body mechanics into a stiff state, while well-nigh of my opponents had large, elegant, and relatively impractical repertoires.  The fact is that when at that place is intense contest, those who succeed take slightly more honed skills than the rest.  It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the tiptop, just rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill ready.  Depth beats breadth whatever day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential."

This is about much more than than smelling blood in the h2o.  In chapter 14, he discusses "the illusion of the mystical," whereby something is so clearly internalized that most imperceptibly small movements are incredibly powerful as embodied in this quote from Wu Yu-hsiang, writing in the nineteenth century: "If the opponent does non motion, and then I do not motility.  At the opponent's slightest motility, I move offset."  A learning-centered view of intelligence ways associating endeavor with success through a process of education and encouragement (p. 32).  In other words, genetics and raw talent tin can simply get you and then far before hard work has to option upwardly the slack (p. 37).

Another useful lesson concerns the use of adversity (cf. pp. 132-33).  Waitzkin suggests using a problem in one expanse to accommodate and strengthen other areas.  I accept a personal example to back this up.  I will e'er regret quitting basketball in high school.  I remember my sophomore twelvemonth—my last twelvemonth playing—I broke my thumb and, instead of focusing on cardiovascular conditioning and other aspects of my game (such as working with my left hand), I waited to recover before I got back to work.

Waitzkin offers another useful chapter entitled "slowing down time" in which he discusses ways to sharpen and harness intuition.  He discusses the process of "chunking," which is compartmentalizing problems into progressively larger problems until one does a complex set up of calculations tacitly, without having to think well-nigh it.  His technical example from chess is especially instructive in the footnote on page 143.  A chess grandmaster has internalized much about pieces and scenarios; the grandmaster can process a much greater corporeality of data with less endeavor than an expert.  Mastery is the process of turning the articulated into the intuitive.

There is much that will be familiar to people who read books like this, such as the need to pace oneself, to set clearly defined goals, the need to relax, techniques for "getting in the zone," and and so forth.  The anecdotes illustrate his points beautifully.  Over the grade of the book, he lays out his methodology for "getting in the zone," another concept that people in performance-based occupations will find useful.  He calls information technology "the soft zone" (chapter iii), and information technology consists of being flexible, malleable, and able to adapt to circumstances.  Martial artists and devotees of David Allen's Getting Things Washed might recognize this as having a "mind like water."  He contrasts this to "the hard zone," which "demands a cooperative globe for you to function.  Similar a dry twig, you are brittle, prepare to snap nether pressure" (p. 54).  "The Soft Zone is resilient, similar a flexible blade of grass that tin can move with and survive hurricane-force winds" (p. 54).

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Another analogy refers to "making sandals" if one is confronted with a journeyacross a field of thorns (p. 55).  Neither bases "success on a submissive earth or overpowering strength, merely on intelligent preparation and cultivated resilience" (p. 55). Much hither will be familiar to artistic people:  yous're trying to think, only that one song by that i band keeps blasting abroad in your head.  Waitzkin'southward "merely choice was to become at peace with the racket" (p. 56).  In the language of economic science, the constraints are given; we don't get to choose them.

This is explored in greater detail in chapter 16.  He discusses the meridian performers, Michael Hashemite kingdom of jordan, Tiger Wood, and others who do not obsess over the last failure and who know how to relax when they need to (p. 179).  The feel of NFL quarterback Jim Harbaugh is besides useful as "the more than he could let things go" while the defense force was on the field, "the sharper he was in the next drive" (p. 179).  Waitzkin discusses further things he learned while experimenting in human performance, particularly with respect to "cardiovascular interval preparation," which "can have a profound event on your ability to rapidly release tension and recover from mental exhaustion" (p. 181).  It is that final concept—to "recover from mental exhaustion"—that is likely what most academics need aid with.

At that place is much here about pushing boundaries; however, i must earn the correct to do so: every bit Waitzkin writes, "Jackson Pollock could draw similar a camera, merely instead he chose to splatter paint in a wild fashion that pulsed with emotion"  (p. 85).  This is another expert lesson for academics, managers, and educators.  Waitzken emphasizes close attention to detail when receiving teaching, specially from his Tai Chi teacher William C.C. Chen.  Tai Chi is not nigh offering resistance or force, but most the power "to blend with (an opponent's) energy, yield to it, and overcome with softness" (p. 103).

The book is littered with stories of people who didn't achieve their potential because they didn't seize opportunities to improve or because they refused to adapt to atmospheric condition.  This lesson is emphasized in affiliate 17, where he discusses "making sandals" when confronted with a thorny path, such as an underhanded competitor.  The volume offers several principles by which we can go better educators, scholars, and managers.

Celebrating outcomes should be secondary to celebrating the processes that produced those outcomes (pp. 45-47).  There is as well a report in contrasts beginning on page 185, and it is something I take struggled to learn.  Waitzkin points to himself at tournaments beingness able to relax between matches while some of his opponents were pressured to analyze their games in betwixt.  This leads to extreme mental fatigue: "this tendency of competitors to exhaust themselves between rounds of tournaments is surprisingly widespread and very self-destructive" (p. 186).

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The Art of Learning has much to teach us regardless of our field.  I found it peculiarly relevant given my chosen profession and my determination to start studying martial arts when I started educational activity.  The insights are numerous and applicable, and the fact that Waitzkin has used the principles he now teaches to get a earth-course competitor in two very demanding competitive enterprises makes it that much easier to read.

I recommend this book to anyone in a position of leadership or in a position that requires extensive learning and accommodation.  That is to say, I recommend this book to everyone.

More About Learning

• 13 Ways to Develop Self-Directed Learning and Acquire Faster
• How to Learn Fast and Remember More: 5 Effective Techniques
• How to Create an Constructive Learning Procedure And Learn Smart

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