This equation could be memorised. But with layering, you’re more likely to remember it seventeen years from now
Does the brain learn through memorisation?
Most people would think so.
And those people would be partially wrong.
Of course, you don’t have to believe me.
Because we’re going to do a simple test of memory.
So you studied for your examinations in school right?
And you had a hated-subject, but you also had a favourite subject.
Now let’s take your favourite subject (whatever it was).
And let’s give you that exam paper to write once more.
You know what happens next, don’t you?
Your memory is going to fail you. Yet, if you step back into your memory, you’ll sure as heck remember a picnic. Or a day at the zoo. Or some incident. And what’s amazing is that you’ll remember it with a decent amount of detail.
So what’s really happening here? Is it that school was too boring, and the zoo was more exciting?
Or is there something else at play?
There is something else, and it’s called layering.
Layering works in um, layers.
Like a movie it rolls out in your brain, enabling you to build one layer over another.
And memory forms the crucial role of remembering what you learned yesterday, and the day before, and the year before. But without layering; without that movie running in our heads, the memory is just a bunch of bits and bytes. It has little intrinsic value.
And a combination of memory and layering is what causes talent.
So as a child, you learn how to write the letter A.
Then you remember it.
Then you layer the letter A with an object. e.g. apple, or aromatheraphy (just kidding!)
The association is the factor of learning. And develops a talent for writing the letter A.
By itself, the letter A has no value. But with memory and layering, that letter enables you to create words, sentences and a lot more.
The brain depends heavily on memory.
But without layering, that memory becomes useless.
As useless as the information you learned in school, and promptly forgot after the exam.
So where does this take us when we’re developing a talent?
Talent requires layering.
So if you’re learning a skill, you have to learn a bit about drawing.
Then a bit about physics. Then a bit about woodworking. Then a bit about badminton.
And relate it back to your memory of drawing.
It’s when you put all these layers together, that you start to become an outstanding artist.
Or an outstanding singer.
Or an outstanding whatever.
Memory has its role. But layering, ah now that’s quite something else!
Watch this video: It’s quite fascinating…and very well made! (You’ll need to be reading this post online to see the video).
Imagine you listen to a song that you haven’t heard for twenty years.
And you know the tune, but the lyrics seem all jumbled in your brain.
So you play the song once.
Then once again.
By the third time, you’ll remember every word of the lyrics you knew twenty years ago.
So what happened there?
The same thing that happened to me when I went to play badminton.
I hadn’t played for well over twenty years.
The first day back was pure torture.
Both on the court, and off the court.
I was gasping for breath. My head was throbbing. I barely stumbled back to my car. And slept for the rest of the day just catching up on my energy.
Three days later I went back to play.
And something weird happened.
While I was struggling to get the shuttlecock across the net the first day, I was able to get it across a whole lot better the second time. And then I went a third time. And a fourth time. And by the fifth trip to courts, I was able to play eight games. Unlike the first time where I was struggling to reach the shuttlecock, I had no problem at all–sometimes I even had time.
So what’s so interesting about this story?
Here’s what’s interesting.
The five visits to the court weren’t back to back visits.
They were over three weeks.
And in those three weeks, I hadn’t done anything spectacular to bring about this massive change in my body.
I wasn’t exercising more. Wasn’t training more. This incredible change was happening in my brain.
Like some song from long ago, it was remembering the ‘lyrics.’
And letting me improve my game in massive incremental steps.
So that within five visits to the court my brain was remembering moves, and had the capacity to handle energy from twenty years ago. The lights were all switching on.
Your body too responds to long-lost memories
In fact, it’s not even fair to call them long-lost.
They’re more like long-buried. And re-discovered.
Which means that if you’ve been told you can do something exceedingly well, your brain reaches into the long-lost memory. And compares data. And then it does something short of exceedingly well. And then with little practice, it improves in leaps and bounds.
But the brain works the other way too
It can bring up failure-data. And the body then refuses to co-operate. And just like you remember the words of the song, you start to remember the words of failure.
Which makes it imperative to understand how layering and memories are linked.
And how we can get rid of stupid memories with the concept of layering.
And suddenly become far more talented than we thought possible.
Next post: How layering is almost more powerful than memory itself 🙂Â
Patterning is simply a factor of:
1) Recognition.
2) Repetition.
3) Layering.
Recognition comes first
Imagine you’re in a city you’ve never been to before. Around you are cobbled stone streets. Hey, you’re in Rome.
But you’re hopelessly lost. The summer sun has long set, and you desperately want to get back to the hotel. But you can’t figure out where you are. This situation, as you’ve already worked out is a lack of recognition.
Of course, you know what comes next
You go back to the same cobblestone area the next day. And the day after. And then suddenly, you’re not even thinking about the way back to the hotel. Ah, but you are. Your brain has worked out a temporary map. And the repetition has helped you to get back.
Layering of course, is something we don’t pay attention to, at all
But it’s layering that really makes the difference. You see, recognition and repetition are core parts of your learning. But layering takes it to another level.
The first time you were lost, you didn’t see the beautiful flowering tree
Or the green paint on the window. You didn’t see that pizza place around the corner. But now you do. Your brain is beautifully layering colour, odour, sound, texture and tons of other stuff, that you’d find impossible to explain. And in a way impossible to re-create.
How do we know that we couldn’t re-create it all?
Because if someone told you to simply draw the scene, you’d only be able to re-create some of the scene. You’d miss out on many elements. You’ll miss out that faded poster on the wall. You’ll miss the ornately carved park bench. You’ll wonder how you didn’t see the bright red post box.
And if someone were to take you on this magical mystery tour...
The tour of the faded poster. The ornately carved park bench. And the bright red post box.
Then you’d enter the first phase: Recognition.
Of course, you’d see it again and again: Repetition.
And you’d start to recognise details. Far more details would enter your brain every single time. Aha!: Layering.
Now add recognition, repetition and layering at high speed.
And you have patterning.
Patterns are why you see a chair and know it’s a chair.
Why you listen to Chopin’s Prelude No.4 you’d remember it, if it was played to you again and again.
Why you see a child, and know it’s not your child.
That’s patterning.
Which is why you could recognise the Rubik’s Cube at the top of this page.
Your brain had seen it enough times, to tell you that it was indeed not any old cube.
But a Rubik’s cube.
And if that picture wasn’t of an actual cube, but a cake designed like a Rubik’s Cube.
Or furniture. Or just about anything. You’d still recognise the pattern.
Aha, you’re a genius.
Recognise the pattern.
And you’ve cracked the code.
But there’s still more work to be done.
It’s not enough to recognise a pattern. Or to crack a code.
But let’s leave it for another post, shall we?
For now I’d love it if you had any life stories, or comments or questions.
Feel free to fill in the comments box.
Imagine you do a course with Psychotactics (e.g. the Article Writing Course). And you learn specific steps to write an article. Well, heck you’re copying the steps, right?
And that makes you a clone, right?
Wrong.
Well, not exactly wrong.
The chances of others perceiving you to be a clone are very high.
But you can never, ever be a clone.
You couldn’t be a clone, even if you copied everything…
Because layering comes into play.
What you’ve learned over the years somehow gets added into the mix.
Good stuff that you’ve learned. Bad stuff too.
And though you think you’re becoming a clone, you’re creating a variation.
Kids start off trying to be clones of their parents
A child copies the actions, accent of its parent. As humans we’re all wannabe-clones.
If the entire human race walked on one leg, you can be sure that our kids would learn to walk on one leg.
And yet, there’d be variations.
Which kind of takes me back to when I first started cooking.
At that point, I didn’t want to experiment at all. I’d want to be told exactly what to do, and how to do it, down to the last ingredient, and the last measure. At that point I’d be a clone–almost.
But as I grew in confidence, that cloning factor didn’t get reduced. It just layered itself on the top of other factors. And so, my ability to cook better and quicker meals continued to evolve.
And all the time, I thought I was just being a clone. But obviously, I was wrong.
Cloning is simply impossible
Because even when we’re trying to copy something in the greatest detail, we create some variation.
No matter how minute, the variation must exist.
Even an exact photocopy isn’t an exact photocopy down to the last detail.
A layer has entered the zone.
And layering is an amazing journey.
Have you ever seen an seven-year old child playing the piano?
Then listen to the same eight-year old playing the piano.
And then that child struggles on to become a nine-year old playing the piano.
And then he moves on to ten.
And then suddenly at eleven, something magical happens
The clunky sound disappears from the playing.
Suddenly, there’s flow and rhythm.
And you sit up in awe, saying: “What a talented child.”
And you’d be wrong.
Because talent has little or nothing to do with it.
Ben Zander, celebrated conductor of orchestras, and trainer shows you exactly what’s happening from the age of seven, eight, to nine, then on to ten. And finally what happens when the child becomes eleven?
The teacher hasn’t changed.
The method of teaching hasn’t changed.
So what did change?
Why does the child begin to play like a dream?
It’s a factor of impulses, says Ben Zander.
When they first start playing, children put an impulse on every note.
When they continue playing, children then put an impulse on every second note.
And if they persist, they then put an impulse on every fourth note.
And by the time they’re ten (and four years into training), they put an impulse on every eight note.
And then it happens…
The eleven year old plays music that makes you sit back in awe.
But what’s really happening?
Layering. That’s what’s happening.
When we learn a language, we learn to recognise sound.
Then we learn a word. Or two.
Then we’re able to string a sentence.
Then we’re able to add grammar, and make the sentence grammatically correct.
Finally we have enough layering, to not exactly pay attention to every word.
Every impulse.
We speak languages.
We rarely turn to an eleven-year old and say: Oooh, you speak such fine English.
You must be soooo talented in English.
And yet, English is a difficult language to learn. But learn it we all do.
The point is: If we’d given up speaking in our first year, or second year, or third year, we’d lose the ability to learn the language. The layering has to happen. Otherwise, we stop learning.
People consider talent to be innate.
But a core part of talent is mere layering.
One over the other, over the other.
And suddenly a child plays the piano with mastery.
We speak languages fluently.
And an ex-cartoonist (that’s me) starts talking about marketing and brain stuff.
We fail to become talented because we fail to layer.
We’re stuck at the basic impulses, instead of progressing onwards.
We’re just seven year olds hacking away at the piano.
That’s all we are!
Note:Look at this video (yes again). Because by the time you get to 2:30, you’ll see how Ben Zander explains the concept so eloquently. Yup, 2 minutes and thirty seconds should show you all you need to see. But watch the full video if you wish to, as well (I’ve watched it no less than eight times already) As you can see, I’m layering too 🙂
