Stop Working. Start Learning. Here's the Neuroscience

Skill is one of the least talked about things in the context of flow and arguably is one of the biggest levers for increasing sustainable access to flow. Welcome to the Seek and Flow Podcast where we synthesize the most important research on flow state and consciousness development into protocols that help you reach your potential. Maybe we'll start with defining skill. Skill is the learned ability to perform tasks with efficiency, precision and control. I rephrase that for myself just because it felt more accurate which was the deeper the skill set, the deeper the flow state. I like that. And I think that's actually a really important point which is that expertise is a lever on flow. It's not just that access to flow occurs when challenge at strip skill, access to flow also deepens as the challenge goes up and the skill goes up accordingly as well and you still have the challenge at stripping skill. So when the challenge and the skill are at a much higher level, you get bigger, deeper access to flow states. And it's interesting is the self-consciousness that you bring when you're first learning a skill, you're trying to figure something out for the first time. It's just riddled with self-evaluation, self-criticism, errors, actual raw errors that you're making. You're doing something incorrectly, you've never done it before. It's just keeping you prefrontal cortex activated in the opposite flow state. The opposite flow naturally there's almost no entry point to flow state if you're stuck in that zone. And the only way to get out of it is through automaticity skill. Yeah, yeah. A good example, like simple example would be if you've played chess only two times before and you're trying to get into a flow state playing chess. You're still trying to figure out the exact same thing. You can better remember the difference between the pawn and the rook and you're having to think about what the distinction is and what the rules are that apply to each one. You can't have unconscious information processing take over. So I was talking to a failing member and I saw she and her roommates all fit into this interesting quandary. They're all Gen Z and then this interesting quandary where none of them have developed a skill that allows them to experience flow and they're locked perpetually to their devices and whatever source of dopamine stimulation they can get that that gives them a sense and relief from boredom of some kind of this stimulating but their subjective well-being is really low. It's a form of flow deprivation that I think we're imposing on ourselves but we don't even know what we're doing because we just haven't developed the skill and the fluency. If you can't sustain your attention long enough to develop a skill you'll never experience flow. It's scary to think that flow state is something that people will never experience as they didn't have the attention span to develop a skill. And that kind of comes back to the paradox we mentioned at the beginning as well which is that to develop the skills that unlock the flow states takes the grit and determination to do skill development activities that are very unflowy grindy at the beginning. It's extremely grindy. Like plucking on a guitar that you can barely play for ages. But my brother, son of guitar player, my brother, he had to endure and he'll still tell the story. I was in the room next to his and I had a PV amp and I had my center stratocaster and my dad got me and he had to endure me playing the inspector gadget thing hours and hours of playing inspector gadget and butchering the thing. And he'll sing it. It's a little lazy. Wrong note. Like timing's way off and I got the right note and then another wrong note. It's a day of a day of a day. So that's what it is until it's not. But then the doors will start opening up even within a narrow band of challenging skill. Like I could play the inspector gadget thing song. Very low skill but it took some time to get there and that's the challenge skills balance lining up enough for me to get into flow playing inspector gadgets. Pretty funny. That's a very good example. It sets up the neurobiology perfectly because the neurobiology explains how and why it is such a grime. At the beginning. To transfer the skill from one half of your brain to another. Exactly. It's a very simple way of describing it. That's a great way to describe it. Exactly. You're transferring it from newer prefrontal cortices. Human brain exactly. The new cortex basically down into deeper cerebellum basal. Exactly. Reptilian brain structures. It's quite a nice visual to have in mind when developing skills. You're trying to get it from here to here. Exactly. Once you lift it over, it's automatized and flow and locks. So skill goes from effortful prefrontal cortex dominant brain structures to sub cortical systems like the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. It starts with conscious and effortful exertion and then over time it becomes automatized. So early in the learning process, skill execution is dominated by top down control, particularly within the prefrontal cortex. The CEO of the brain, the prefrontal cortex highly active as we attempt to just figure it out and start doing the behavior. No matter what kind of skill it is. It doesn't have to be a motor skill. The guitar obviously, the decent example of the motor skill that kind of has crossover with cognitive skill. There's the three stage model. As practice continues, you go from the cognitive stage of skill acquisition to the associative stage, which is where the execution becomes more consistent. The brain begins to offload aspects of the task to more specialized and efficient systems. The cerebellum creates an internal model of the task within the cerebellum, which predicts the consequences of our actions. Then the basal ganglia starts to encode action sequences that prove most effective. So the skills moving from the conscious cortex to the sub-cortical systems that specialize in efficiency, rhythm and prediction. Eventually you reach the autonomous stage of learning. That's when the skills deeply ingrained. No longer have to consciously think about what we're doing. Action flows from us effortlessly within a certain narrow band. The orbital frontal cortex evaluates task value and asks if this worth it. The anterior singular cortex monitors the outcomes. And that asks, am I succeeding or am I failing? I'm making errors. Exactly. Am I making errors or not? And then both send signals to the locus cheryleus, which then basically secreets noripinephrine in one of three ways. The phasic mode of noripinephrine secretion, which is like these bursts, exactly, sharp and attention and focus and plunge you into flow. Yeah versus the volume transmission. Exactly. Just like dumping, it dumps noripinephrine over the surface. Exactly. You get stressed and you want to self-destruct. You want to alleviate that pressure, which is the tonic mode. Yeah. If the skill level is insufficient for the challenge that you're up against in whatever the context is. And then there's the hypomode, which is where there's just not enough noripinephrine at all, and you feel apathetic or basically. Exactly. When it comes to, so going back to the inspector gadget, yeah, playing the guitar, when you're first loading the skill, you have that experience of the OFC. Exactly. Am I doing this right? Is it working? I'm progressing. And it takes a while to even get past that phase before the ACC starts to be able to evaluate making errors, getting negative feedback, reactions that you're taking. So it's so useful to think about that, at least for me, in the context of the OFC transferring almost to the ACC to the LC. Basically, the locusts are really as. Which then modulate noripinephrine, which handles the attention and focus that then. Exactly. You want to get phasic. That is the process of taking it, again, simplifying it, taking it from this half of the brain to the half. Yeah. You're dropping it from one brain region to another brain region. And when it gets passed down, cognitive load plummets. It's so useful to develop skills to the point of authenticity because it means you can think while doing. It means you can problem solve while executing. It means you can navigate and hold multiple perspectives at once in parallel while hosting a meeting or giving really challenging feedback to a team member, which is obviously it's a big unlock. You're able to do and think at the same time. If you're under skilled, you're chronically in anxiety or overwhelm. Yeah, the tonic. Exactly. Your nerve and effort is basically constantly floating you. It was a great way to think about it. This was in the literature. The ancient systems of animals, the default mode is that volume transition and transmission. It's the notion of pulsing it to guide the activity. The organism vomits out nor up and effort across the whole system. Exactly. I find that to be really helpful to consider. Okay, that's how it starts. And that's our evolutionary history. Yeah. It makes sense. That would be that way. Through this deliberate practice of the development of the skill you start getting into that. Fasic. It's so fascinating the way over time evolution just becomes so much more sophisticated and precise. Where it starts off with even prima malian creatures had nor up and effort and volume transmission. The earliest living things on earth had that but then over time it's become really targeted. It's gone from just being the sub-amidant of nor up and effort into being like a sniper that shoots the right nor up and effort in the right place at the right time to create an altered height and state that increases your capacity to execute and think and do. Also knowing that what is happening when you feel overwhelmed like that in business is that you're under skilled. And it's biological. Exactly. It's not your mindset. Yeah, exactly. It's not that your self belief is off. It's mechanical. Your skill deficiency is dysregulating your nor up and effort which is making you feel like you can't handle the challenges required. to build the company. And what's the good news? You can keep control over developing that skill. Exactly. Leveling up. And that gives you affordances. Super exciting. I know it's read that out at that point in affordances because I think it's a really huge point. Fortunances is a term from ecological psychology which describes the actionable possibilities that we perceive as available to us in our environment. So to take down a level, a beginner may feel stuck in a problem while an expert sees that there's lots of different affordances or paths forward. The implication is that skill doesn't just cause the automaticity of action. It actually expands our perception of what is possible and literally alters how we see our surrounding environment and reality itself. The example that I really like which is nice and simple is that a flat surface affords walking to someone who can walk. And a handle affords pulling to someone who understands or has the skill of being able to pull a handle. If you don't have those foundational skills, you don't even see that possibility on a flat surface when you look at it. Obviously it goes much further into realms like being a rock climber for example to a rock climber, a jagged wall. There's 47 footholds. Exactly. They can see all that. 47 footholds. It's an exhilarating prospect to look at its full of possibility. They can climb it in 10 different ways. They can speed run it. To someone who can't rock climb, it just looks like an insurmountable object. To share cliff. Exactly. Plank wall. It's blank. Exactly. It's blank. There are no possibility affordances. There's no affordances or possibility within it exactly. So the implication is that if skill development expands your affordances and thus the possibilities that you see within reality, skill development then has a direct throughline to how big you think for yourself, for your company, for your team, whatever it is. It's really arguably one of the main rate limiters on how big you think. Absolutely. You tying it back to the flow literature. They sometimes call the challenge skill balance. The demand, demand skill balance, the other things where what you perceive as opportunities for action, that's another way of saying affordances. They're opportunities for action. If your opportunities for action in the context of the company are limited based on your skill level, you're necessarily limited. But the beautiful thing is there is no limit. The skill development means there's no limit to the affordances, which means there's no limit to the ability. Exactly. To your possibility space basically. It divorces it from being a mindset thing. It's just a mechanistic thing. It's something you have complete control over. You can develop the skill. And then suddenly you're on a holiday level. You just see a completely different reality. Yes, that's another key point, which is that when it comes to affordances and expanding your possibilities, you see a through skill, it's also not mindset based. It's mechanistic. It's perceptual alterations that occur at the level of the brain. Some people stuck at skill plateaus due to a lack of flow. If you open up a certain field of possibility or affordances to the skills that you develop, but then you are stagnant at that skill. You reach a certain level with that skill that you never expand beyond. The challenge skills balance doesn't continue to spiral upward. And so you no longer get in the flow. One of the consequences of getting less flow is you actually develop less skill too. Skill is a skill accelerator. Right, exactly. Just as much as you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Flow is a skill skill. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a virtuous, a virtuous, compounding feedback loop. Yeah, and if you stop leveling up, even in a domain that you have to a certain level gain procedural fluency or skill, you could stop experiencing flow. And the affordances, atrophy in a certain sense, they're just locked in at whatever possibility space your app based on your current skills and current set of affordances. It's a huge thing, dude. Imagine if you're building the company and you never develop the skill of marketing or sales. You can build a product, do operations, but you never really learn how to acquire customers, you never learn how to sell. It's a perfect example of a lack of skill, causing a lack of affordances, causing a narrower possibility space. And it's super common with lower seven figure entrepreneurs, which is that they haven't yet learned skill of recruiting. Managing or operating a team to get leverage in that way, rather than an entrepreneur who has that skill and sees the growth path, for example, a high-touch service making it scalable through adding team members and building a system and then having the neighborhood. The trap is that they think they have to fundamentally modify the entire nature of the service they're delivering around themselves because they can't expand delivery. They can't see that, of course, you can expand delivery, such as recruit team members, train them up, manage them well. It's a matter of affordances they don't see due to the skills that they have. Exactly. And then the whole business model, the whole strategy gets contorted and locked down at an hour at a smaller level. And then in example, on the other end of the spectrum, people hate Elon examples these days, but what we do in any way is when he went to Russia to buy those rockets. Without him having the skill of engineering, prowess, the skill of negotiating all of those different things, it wouldn't have even been within his realm of possibility or reality to do that. There would have been no affordance that existed to do that and he did do that. And as a result, SpaceX was born. The other thing that I think is worth it just to come back to for a moment is the self-reinforcing spiral which we touched on earlier where skill enables flow, flow accelerates skill development, and then this new level of skill invites much deeper flow. The conscious becomes subconscious, the clunky becomes graceful, the learner over time becomes the expert without ever needing to push in the traditional sense, except for I think at the beginning of skill development. Yeah. Touched on. To tie some of a back to entrepreneurship, what it got, just reading it all, what it got me thinking when factoring in affordances and the degree to which shapes have big, you can think and the types of decisions or moves you can make is that I always experienced periods of most rapid business growth when spending the highest percentage of my time, relative to other times, learning. Yes. By far. By far. Same here. Same here. Yeah. And so when you start to understand that skill, depth and skill breadth, how skilled you are at one thing and how many different things you're skilled at is sort of a ceiling on your ability to get into flow. And then when you start to see skill depth and skill breadth is also a ceiling on how big you can even think. The reality you see starts to make skill development seem much more important to entrepreneurship than I think the vast majority of entrepreneurs viewers. To the point where I think you could argue, amazing to do a randomized control trial on this. But I think there's a strong argument we made that at least the primary founder, the CEO, the fundamental operator, because they're the one responsible for all the visionary, capacities the big thinking that gets unlocked through skill development should learn more than they work. I think that in some ways in terms of practically boiling it down to a single principle, it's a pretty tough one to be. If you start running Facebook ads, you're going to learn how to run Facebook ads better. But how much leverage is there in taking three hours every morning for six weeks or to go through every Facebook ads course? Yes. To learn a master in parallel with running the actual Facebook ads? Absolutely. Massive amplifier. That's funny because with motor skills, I think this is more obvious. Exactly. It's hidden in these skills. It's hidden with these skills, yes. Exactly. I think of it with obviously in the context of let's take a guitar play. It's obvious that you have to learn to sit down and do your deliberate practice. You just have to. That's exactly how it is. You have to. There's never a point where at least if you're serious with it, you can't be doing that. You can't just play the stuff that you already know how to play over again. Just not that much. If you want to get better, you know. And maybe you'll be able to perform a little bit better, but it's incredibly incremental. And it's just part of the culture. Part of what it means to be a guitarist is you are deliberate practice. How many hours of practice are you doing? The piano player doing their scales. It's a guitar player learning their scales. It's funny how that doesn't transfer in quite the same way even though it is obvious. It's obvious in principle when you break it down, but when it's applied, the lines are much murkier. Like the clarity and the distinction between repeatedly practicing a chord, which is the learning, and then playing a song, which is the doing or to analogize at the working. It's a very clean distinction between those two activities. But the argument is, you should, is the argument that is that I think you have. Just spend more time learning. Absolutely. I think you absolutely should. And it's something I'm just going to try and implement for myself. And it's hard to implement because it is an output dip. All the time spent on skill development is an output dip where your immediate production is declining while you're leveling up your proficiency. But then as the proficiency levels up, not only does flow get unlocked and your possibility space get expanded, but also your amplifies, relift, any given input, and your leveraging increases as well. I want to tie back to the affordance expansion piece neurologically. What's happening with the affordance expansion connects directly to predictive processing, which is one of the most powerful neuroscientific theories today. The brain's constantly generating predictions about the world and updating its models based on feedback. Skill performers have tighter prediction loops, smaller error signals, and more accurate internal models. The internal models in the cerebellum where the auto-maticity that's taken over, makes their world more coherent, fluid and responsive. So flow, at least in this concentration, is the optimal state of predictive alignment. The world behaves as expected. Challenges remain engaging but not overwhelming and feedback is continuous and meaningful. - Yeah, so just to put a pin on that, you're just building fine tuned internal models that make predictive processing far more efficient. That's how that self-reinforcing cycle happens. It's spending more time learning than working. Now, I think that one thing that's worth in tangolines, why is it so rare to do that? If, look, maybe we're wrong about the hypothesis that you're gonna do better by spending more time learning and working, don't look we are, I'm just gonna propose the hypothesis. It's so uncommon, that's done. I think the reason is linearity bias, which is the cognitive bias where we see the world more linearly than exponentially and we find it very difficult to take in exponentials. I think it's pretty simple. It's very hard for us to envision how much our per hour output can go up with an extreme focus on skill development and learning. - Ford and suspension. - Exactly, which is the whole other dimension of the upside. - What happens that you get? But I think it's so hard to accept and embrace the fact that if you focus on learning more than working, you're not gonna get 25% more done per future hour a year at. You're gonna be whole paradigms ahead. - Hundreds of times more done, over time per hour. - Then possibly high amount of output that can't see. - You're truly, it's the affordance expansion again. - The affordances that you see, you can guess at, "Oh, if I just do this many sales calls per day, I could reach this revenue number," or whatever. - Versus if I have 50 sales people doing the sales calls and what kind of number. - Your affordances, what affordances you have or don't, you're blind to determines the cap. - Yeah, we're right, exactly. - And the linearity bias is kind of what keeps you in. - What keeps you locked in. The reason someone won't spend 30 hours learning and 25 hours working, which would be an example of applying that rule, is that in their minds irresponsible to do so, because linearity bias makes you assume that will be 20% more productive. 25% or 50%, or 50%, or even double, which is too low. Even if you double the productivity, it's still not high enough to justify that little work relative to that much learning, but it's not true. - It's orders of magnitude more I put. - Really, it's a double grind. That's another reason I think there's so much resistance to it. You're not only having to go into the output dip, where your immediate results dip down while you're there doing the learning, but you also have to learn. And the learning is a grind itself, due to the neurobiological that we've been talking about. - Basically. - You're doing more work and you're squarming through the work. - Because of what we talked about at the very beginning. - The neurobiology. - Exactly. - It's very squarming. - It's very uncomfortable. - Of the neurobiology. - Yeah, yeah. - It's extremely neuroc, squarming neurochemistry. - Exactly. - It's not flowing, which means that if you can overcome linearity bias, if you can ride the output dip and stay tolerant of the fact that you're going to get less doing short term while you work less and learn more and develop the great trans-work. - And skillful. - And here it is an unbelievable advantage. 'Cause who's going to do that? - Exactly. - Because the moat is defined by those three things that we just talked about, and so few people are working across that moat. So it's an incredible moat to apply that. For me personally, prepping for this topic reminded me of just this point and how unbelievably high leverage learning in this way and with this level of intentionality is it's a new principle I'm going to try and live by and take extremely seriously more time learning the working. (soft music)