How I Learn Stuff

When my publisher decided to release my Secrets book for “free” as an ebook, I thought it meant FREE. I just found it meant free-for-a-little-while-and-then-gone. Apparently it has some sort of DRM expiration date on it.

[Update: One of my tester friends found that he could defeat the expiration mechanism by playing with the system date, but that's not very practical, I guess.]

They didn’t mention this to me when they told me about the promotion. I suppose they thought “Well OBVIOUSLY it’s only free for a period of time… we’re in the publishing business!” But it wasn’t obvious to me or I would have told you when I announced it.

[Update: Turns out the editors running the promotion did not know that the download had a time limit.]

Anyway, you can still download the book until the 24th of July, and you can read it for some period of time after that before it goes POOF. Not bad, considering that it didn’t cost you anything except the annoyance of downloading it, but still…

Naturally, I hope everyone goes out and buys the hardcover with real money. That way I’ll be encouraged to write more books. Otherwise, it’s an expensive hobby.

Side note: It’s interesting how glitchy the process is, too. Several people found that the special Adobe reader software complained and moaned and wouldn’t install on their systems. QUALITY IS DEAD!

I wrote Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar for several reasons. The principle reason was to impress my dad. But right after that is another important one: I want to talk with people, argue with people, and work with people on the subject of self-education and how to brand ourselves and invent ourselves as thinkers.

My father is quite reclusive. I’m the opposite– though I guess if the book is very successful I will have to reconsider that. Anyway, for the moment, I’m very accessible, and I hope people will write me and tell me how they react to the ideas. I hope my follow-on to Secrets will be something about how these principles work for different people.

Several hundred folks have gotten the free download. So, read it and talk to me!

If it’s successful enough, I expect to get hit with a lot of criticism for my attacks on school. I say: bring it on.

Amanda Enclade (@aenclade) is one of the unschooling lights on Twitter. She posed a problem: How do you help young adults who can’t read, learn to read?

Approaching this problem as a buccaneer, first I remind myself:

Neither I, nor anyone else, can “educate” someone against their will or inclination. Where it appears that this has successfully been done, it’s but a shallow illusion. Yet, I do feel good if I can be of service, so let me look into it…

Next, I focus on a particular person, and think a few skeptical thoughts:

1. Maybe he doesn’t want to learn to read. What makes me think that he does? Maybe his desire is weak, or maybe it appears weak because the desire is masked by fear.
2. Maybe he doesn’t want help learning to read. Has he specifically asked for my help? If not, maybe he wants to ask and doesn’t know how. Maybe he’s embarrassed to ask. Maybe he’s comfortable learning on his own and I should butt out.
3. Maybe he can already read. Illiteracy is not an all or nothing thing. We are all illiterate in some ways. Try reading a patent, for instance. Try reading a medical textbook, or instructions for doing origami. Maybe my illiterate friend has trouble reading novels, but no trouble reading street signs. Maybe he knows the alphabet. I would need to learn what level of reading ability he already had and build on that.
4. Maybe his life would be better if he didn’t read. You know what I love about walking around Lund, Sweden? It’s that I can’t read the signs. I don’t speak or read Swedish, so the advertising on the signs doesn’t burden my mind. I can walk and think more easily than when I’m in New York City. I get along fine in other countries without the ability to read. Depending on what kind of life you want to live, you may not need to read at all. Socrates apparently didn’t read. You can live a quiet, earnest, and helpful domestic life without reading. I saw an interview with a fellow who taught English in Japan, no one ever knew he could not read.
5. Maybe the world would be better if he didn’t read. I believe the world benefits from having in it people with a wide variety of abilities and different kinds of focus. Someone who doesn’t read may focus on music (I’m a musician who doesn’t read music, by the way), or building things, or art. He may become adept at teamwork– getting other people to read things for him. This may lead to new ideas, new art forms, new communities. I like the example of my dogs. My dogs can’t read, but their beaming enthusiasm and affection makes my life more worth living. Bottom line: someone who can’t read may make someone who CAN read better at what they do.

Now let’s say that my friend asks me to help him learn to read. Okay, well, I’ve never helped anyone learn to read before (my son wouldn’t let me help him, except with a word here and there). I have no specific program for teaching reading. Obviously, I’m not an expert in this. But let’s assume there are no experts nearby willing or able to help. Or let’s assume my friend doesn’t want help from a stranger. Based on how I have helped other people (mostly adults) learn various things, this is what I would do.

1. First, talk with him. I want to discover his history of trying to learn to read. What went wrong? How does he feel about it?
2. Discover his talents and achievements. Learning something new and difficult requires us to believe “I AM SMART ENOUGH!” That’s why, as a coach, I’m always alert to any hint of confidence or pride. I want to fan those flames. Often the people I teach are not aware of how smart they already are, and it takes someone like me (with an outside perspective) to point out what is obvious to everyone but them.
3. Discover how I can learn from him. I don’t find it appealing or useful, long-term, to be an authority figure dispensing wisdom. (Short term, for childish ego reasons, I kinda like it.) So, I want to position myself as a fellow student. That means as I help others learn, I also learn. If I’m helping a man read better, I will ask him to teach me something in return. In general, this will improve his confidence, while helping me exercise my sometimes lazy humility.
4. Discover the authentic problem and turn it into a project. There’s got to be a good reason to read. I need to find that. I want my friend to finish the sentence “If I could read better I would be able to [...] which is important because [...].” Maybe he wants to read a novel, or maybe a textbook of case law. Once we have found an authentic problem, we can set about solving it. Put the authentic problem into the context of a project to accomplish something tangible. My son learned to type mainly because I would not type for him when he wanted to enter cheat code for video games. His project was playing better at video games. Knowing his way around the keyboard was crucial. Later, he wanted to appear older than the age of 12 when playing World of Warcraft online, that inspired him to learn to type chat messages in complete sentences, with good punctuation and spelling. Other players guessed that he was 25.
5. Focus on doing. Sometimes lecture matters. Mostly I want to get him doing things. If you want to learn to read, start trying to read!
6. Watch CAREFULLY for ANY improvement or accomplishment and celebrate it. Sometimes students can’t tell when they are getting better, or focus too much on mistakes. Every little success is an existence proof of a better future.
7. Watch for bold mistakes and celebrate those, too. Among my son’s first sentences was “No, please!” Technically an incorrect sentence, but what a bold idea to combine those two words. I told him he hurt my feelings once when he was five or so, and he said, with an elaborate and sincere sigh. “Ooookay Dad, I FORGIVE you.” Wrong words, but such a worthy mistake. Failing while sincerely trying is a kind of failure we must not fear, and therefore, we must celebrate it.
8. Set expectations low, and aspirations high. Let’s set our sights on reading Scientific American or Shakespeare. We can aspire to those things, without beating ourselves up for not getting there very quickly. Expectations must be kept low to prevent discouragement, but aspirations must be set high to stir the heart.
9. Don’t fret about lapses. Energy for this process may ebb, then flow. It’s all good. There’s no need for a do or die mentality. Externally imposed discipline can be a dangerous corrupting force. I might nudge and harass now and again, but ultimately, I watch the energy of the student and reflect that. Helping someone learn should not be like doing CPR or electroshock therapy.

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar is now available in electronic form. You can get it from Simon & Schuster, or less expensively on the Kindle from Amazon.com.

[UPDATE: This will be a free download from HERE (or free on Kindle) from the 13th to the 24th. This is all part of the publisher trying to get the word out about it.]

It will be available in hard cover starting in September. It’s being translated into Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and Chinese, that I know of. Also possibly other languages that I was told about and then forgot.

I expected that the Kindle version would be poorly formatted… and it is… but not as poorly as I expected. It’s quite readable. But the print version is definitely easier on the eyes. I have it on the Kindle so that I can always quote myself!

I had a fun time being interviewed by Ken Ludwig on Co-Creator Network.

I talk a little about my rebellion against school and how I had to learn to treat my mind more like a beloved pet and less like a slave or a machine.

This is the first radio interview I’ve ever done. Ken made it very pleasant for me. I’m grateful.

“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/20ventura.html?_r=4&hpw

This is one of my major arguments against the casual way people assume you have to “go to college” to have a future. If higher education were free, I would still oppose it as the only choice or default choice. But, in fact, it’s quite expensive for most people. I keep hearing from people who have huge student loans they are paying off.

Like Ray Bradbury (a friend of my parents, years ago, though I don’t think I ever met him), I haunted a big library, soon after I quit high school. I lived in Chico, CA, for a while, where California State University has a campus. I used to love being there with all the books (500,000 of them).

Since that time, I have not had the opportunity to live near a really huge library, but I am surrounded by several thousand of my own books (Here’s my non-fiction collection). And, of course, I now have the Web, which Bradbury never dreamed of… except perhaps in tattoo form.

There are vast free resources out there for people who want to learn. Some things about Universities are nice, but they are not the only route to greatness, and are definitely not the best route for disruptive thinkers like me.

“Self-educated people are in a class by themselves.”

(I googled it. No hits. I’m the first to think of it.)

Brother Jon came by this weekend to help me work on part 2 of “To Describe a Stone.” The project has grown into a beast. I keep wanting to do more research. I may end up writing a book out of this.

We shot more video footage and produced the actual stone description. Now I’m creating the documentation of how we produced the description. The whole idea is to show the nuts and bolts of a deep learning process that was inspired by something humble. It’s just like that Stone Soup folk tale, with a real stone inspiring us to learn, instead of make a soup.

Meanwhile, we created a new video about different challenge: testing an “Easy Button.”

(Since this pertains to both self-education AND technical work, I’m posting this on both of my blogs)

Randy Ingermanson has an interesting approach to writing fiction. It’s called the Snowflake Method. It looks interesting, but I won’t be following it in my work.

First, Don’t Follow
I only use my own methods. That is to say I’m happy to use anyone else’s ideas, but only if they become mine, first. I can learn from other people, but I don’t follow anyone. See the difference? The only way I can responsibly follow someone as a thinker is if they are supervising my work. For instance, when Captain Ben taught me to sail, I used his methods because he was right there to correct me. Also it was his boat, and he answered my questions and let me experiment with alternative ideas to see why they were inferior. As he trained me, his methods became my methods. I began to do them based on my sense of their logic– which means I also came to understand under what circumstances I might need to change them. That’s the difference between learning and numb indoctrination.

When Jerry Weinberg taught me the Fieldstone Method of writing, I formed my own interpretation of it, and now it’s the James Bach version of Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method. And when I teach Rapid Software Testing, my methodology ideally becomes personal to each student, morphing to their own preferences and patterns, or else they should not be using it.

“Composting” Good?
In describing the Snowflake Method, Ingermanson discusses something that he says every writer does: composting. That’s where you actually dream up the story. He writes that

“It’s an informal process and every writer does it differently. I’m going to assume that you know how to compost your story ideas and that you have already got a novel well-composted in your mind and that you’re ready to sit down and start writing that novel.He says how you do that is a personal creative matter.”

Okay. Interesting that he says nothing about how to do that, though, since for me that’s almost all that writing is. But now, the actual Snowflake Method, he says, kicks in after composting is done with. It’s a way of progressive outlining of the book so that you can write it in an organized way.

Wait, did he say that happens after composting?

AFTER composting? Seriously?

This is a problem for me, because I’m nearly always doing that thing he calls composting. For me, writing is an exploratory activity. I’m constructing my ideas before I write them down and also as I’m writing them down. I’ve written many articles and two books that way. I have not yet written much fiction, but I have a hard time believing my method will be or should be different for fiction.

“Seat of the Pants” Bad?
Here Ingermanson makes a tiresome rhetorical move: He contrasts his approach with the “seat of the pants” method. He believes his method is better. I agree that it’s probably better for him, because it’s his own personal method. But on what basis can he say that his method is better than the alternatives for anyone else? Besides, it sounds like “composting” is just “seat of the pants” that happens to be Ingermanson-approved.

This is typical best practices rhetoric, and the pattern generally goes as follows:

1. I conceive my method as figure and everything else as ground. I won’t talk about how my method blends into and is supported by any other methods or skills or talents or preferences. I won’t talk about how it may go horribly wrong. The method is an island.

2. Since I like my method better than the other not-the-method thing I once did, [cite anecdotal and cherry-picked evidence here], it is probably better.

3. Since I taught someone else to use my method and they said they like my method better than whatever unexamined way of working they once had, [did they actually use my method? Well, they said they did, but I didn't actually watch them do it], it is even more probably better.

There are a few problems with this pattern of reasoning. One is that it is not necessarily a comparison of one method to another. It’s more likely a comparison of a state of confusion to a state of decision. Decision usually does win over confusion. The people who are out looking for a method may not already have a sound understanding of the methods they already use. So they leap on any method offered as if it were a life buoy. This of course is no indication that the method itself is better than any other method, but merely that people hate feeling confused and incompetent.

Another problem is that even when it is a comparison of methods, it’s generally a comparison between an ineffable method and one that sounds good when explained. Things that are ineffable, no matter how useful, get a bad reputation. That’s why you’ve met at least one person in your life who has claimed that you need to “learn to breathe” or “remember to breathe.” In fact, you already have a method of breathing, and unless your eyes have just gone so fuzzy that you can’t read this at all, you are probably breathing pretty well right this moment. An effective way to present a method of breathing could be to say “If you are having problem X, one solution might be to try a special kind of breathing called Y. Let’s try it now so you can see what I mean…” This way offers the practice without implicitly or explicitly denying other ways of working.

Yet another problem is that all methods rest on a certain way of organizing the world. If you don’t accept that foundation, then the method won’t satisfy you. Ingermanson seems to find it easy to segment heavy creative work from the light creative work. Hence composting is good, but seat-of-the-pants writing is bad. Since I don’t accept that distinction, to use the Snowflake Method as presented would force me to become alienated from my creative process. I would not be in direct touch with my own mind, but all thoughts would be mediated through the controlling outline of the Snowflake. Ick!

A Rhetoric for Pushing Back
It’s not “seat of the pants”, I say. It’s not merely “ad hoc.”

It’s thoughtful and responsible, rather than mindless and robotic. It’s exploratory, rather than pre-scripted. It’s agile rather than rigid. It’s constructive and generative, rather than a mere conditioned response.

Want more? Try breaking the method down into sub-parts. In exploratory work, I might cite such tasks as:

• overproduce ideas and abandon them (think “brainstorming”)
• recover previously abandoned ideas (think “boneyard”)
• pursue lines of inquiry
• conduct thought experiments
• alternate my tactics for better progress
• dynamically manage my focus (from very focused to de-focused)
• charter my own work in light of my mission as I understand it
• view my work from different perspectives
• produce results, then reproduce them differently based on what I learned (cyclic learning)
• construct a new and better version of myself as I work

Seat of the pants? That sounds like a put-down. Why don’t they call it dynamic control and development? Because that doesn’t sound like a put-down.

Reclaim Your Personal Method
As Adam Savage says, “I reject your reality, and substitute my own.” Yes, indeedy.

You don’t have to accept someone else’s intermediating artifice between you and your thoughts. Whether that’s a book outline, or a test plan document, TPI, or some method of artificial breathing you can say no. You can say “that would be irresponsible, because I must remain attached to the source of my own methods of working. I can’t drive a car safely from the BACK SEAT!”

Having said all that, I found Randy’s Snowflake Method interesting and I think I will try it. I will meld it with my exploratory style of working, of course, and claim it for my own.

In the famous Milgram experiment people were forced to choose between obedience to authority and following their conscience. Obedience won most of the time. It’s scary. See also the Stanford Prison Experiment and the BBC Prison Experiment.

With that background, I’m going to take a long leap: goals. I think one cause of the world’s ills is people being obsessed with setting and achieving goals. By obsessed, I simply mean treating the fulfillment of a goal as good in itself, rather than good because the goal was worthwhile and better than any alternative. This leads to doing things that you might come to believe are bad or hurtful, but you do them because you “promised” or, worse, you “promised yourself.”

You may think it’s bad to “be a quitter” and that “follow-through” is an important skill. I disagree. Follow-through is not a skill, it’s just a natural consequence of finding something to be worth doing and investing in it because it’s worth doing. And meanwhile, to promise yourself something is to enslave your future to the wishes of a younger, stupider you. In the chilling social experiments I cited above, the participants enslaved themselves to a duty. This may be important in order for a group of people to get things done quickly, but we must approach it with care. We must not let ourselves become robots who process any arbitrary goal as input, regardless of how it hurts ourselves or others.

Being obsessed with goals fixes our minds in the future and encourages us to devalue the present. It also cuts ourselves off from full contact with what’s happening. Maybe a better goal will suggest itself to us, but whoops, we’re already committed to a different goal and we don’t know how to switch. We’re on automatic pilot.

In my way of learning, quitting and procrastination play a big role. Procrastination gives me room to reconsider. Quitting opens me up to new possibilities. When I quit I am telling my past self, “No, you don’t own me. I own myself, here and now.”

I actually do have goals, but I have them in the sense that some people have cats: pets that come and go. I don’t feel bad when I don’t reach a “goal”, or at least, if I feel bad, it’s not because of the abstract notion of “failing to attain what was targeted”, but rather because I don’t get the direct benefit of that particular goal. The concept of a goal is useful, especially when I’m explaining why I do what I do, but I ignore all the morality and I deny all the nobility of achievement for the sake of achievement.

So throw away your “bucket list.” If you want to visit Italy before you die, then go ahead, but not because it’s on some damn list. Go because, on the day you made the reservations, you were curious to discover Italy, and that seemed to be the better use of your limited time of the planet. And if get there and find you don’t like Italy, by all means cancel the trip, or head to Switzerland, instead.

It took me 26 years to write my Buccaneer-Scholar book. I’m glad I didn’t rush it. I became the person capable of writing it only a few years ago. I know that now. You might tell me “James! But you can’t take so long to produce work! How will you live?” Of course, I did other things instead of writing that book. I was not idle. I have many projects going at once.

Tell your past self to go live in the past, and leave your present alone!