🤯Unknown Unknowns #126 - Developing Taste vs Learning

A reader asked me what the difference is between developing taste and learning.  Developing taste is a meta-level above learning.  It’s figuring out what tools/skills/resources work best for you.  Suppose you have three options to solve a problem.  First, you would have to learn the basics for each of the three.  Then you’d have to pick the one that best works for you.  Or you would have to determine which option matches up with what specific situation the best.  And then you’d have to work out how to best implement that option.

Let’s take the simple example of traveling through New York City.  I can walk, bike, take public transportation, or take an Uber.  

Even if you’re Lance Armstrong, the circumstances will determine which transportation you should take.  Is there a time constraint?  What’s the weather like?  Are you near a subway stop?  Do you want to enjoy the trip?

There are an infinite number of preferences that you subconsciously consider as you develop taste.

And once you’ve chosen how to get there, you can still refine the journey.  Do you want to window shop if you’re walking?  Do you know which train car is near the exit you want to leave the station from?  Do you know where the bike lanes are and which direction traffic goes?

The distinction I would make between learning and taste development is learning is knowing how to perform a specific action while taste development is fitting the action to my preferences.  

Pablo Picasso supposedly said, "You need to know the rules in order to break them."

To develop taste, you need to learn the underlying skills, learn your own motivation, and learn how to use the underlying skills to accomplish what you want.

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📝 Writing of the Week:

I’ve been writing unpolished, around 100-word mini-essays.  Just reflections on ideas from podcasts or things on the news.  Here are the latest:

1️⃣ Maniacs Save Money

2️⃣ 2x Speed

3️⃣ The Ticking Bomb

4️⃣ Things You Can't Aim at Directly

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🔍 Discoveries:

Having agency is table-stakes when developing taste.  If you don’t have agency, you can never accomplish what you want.  It was a weird coincidence that I ran into two essays about how to develop agency this week.

1️⃣ Luca Dellanna writes, “Low agency is a learned reaction to a past experience that taught them that it’s not worth it to be high agency.”   Therefore, if you remove that conditioning, anyone can become high agency.  

Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, “We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down.”  The default is to condition children to be low agency.

🔗 Agency is trainable

2️⃣

Cate Hall

points out that high agency has competitive advantages.  Having agency allows you to find things that you have an edge in.  And it’s easier to cross the “moat of low status.”

The moat of low status is one of my favorite concepts, courtesy of my husband Sasha. The idea is that making changes in your life, especially when learning new skill sets, requires you to cross a moat of low status, a period of time where you are actually bad at the thing or fail to know things that are obvious to other people.

It’s called a moat both because you can’t just leap to the other side and because it gives anyone who can cross it a real advantage. - Cate Hall

🔗 How to be More Agentic

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💬 Quote of the Week:

“People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They’re people in cages with open doors.” - George Lucas

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🏴‍☠️ Something Fun:

I like Michelle Khare’s videos because when she learns new skills, she’s very self-reflective.  Here, she goes to Santa School, but she doesn’t just learn how to be a good Mrs. Claus.  She’s learning how to find and fulfill the expectations that everyone has.

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👨‍🔧 If you need help in your writing or creative journey, perhaps I can help you:

⇒ Concept Crafting - Have an idea for an essay but not sure how to get it on paper?

⇒ Whiteboard Ideation - Through a one-hour call, we’ll unlock your ideas

⇒ Course Catalyst - Get the most out of taking an online course

And one way to help me:

⇒ I’m always looking for feedback, and in Cate’s above essay, she suggests this tool for giving feedback anonymously.

Anonymous Feedback

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You can find more of my writing at chr.iswong.com.

Questions, suggestions, complaints?  Email me at [email protected].  

Feedback welcome.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.  And feel free to send anything you find interesting to me!

Leaving you in peace,

Chris