How to approach developing intuition from people with more expertise

Dear readers, thank you for your patience. For the last two months we have been considering ways to both manage this Substack and broaden the range of applications of the micromastery pattern. We intend it to remain a monthly newsletter in the main but will be flexible on this. It may be slightly less frequent sometimes and equally we might publish two newsletters some months.

Among others, we have forthcoming micromasteries for : writing poetry, pie making, a big survey of the role and scope of intuition and approaches to a allow a more receptive intuition to develop, working with fabric with children and a return to cheese making and ‘barriers to learning.’

Useful Approaches to developing intuition from people with more expertise

‘The master demonstrates.

The journeyman teaches.

The apprentice copies the master and follows the teaching of the journeyman as best they can.

The apprentices share stories with each other.

These stories blend with the experiences.

The craft continues.’

A few years ago, I was given an insight of a better model for me to approach learning of any kind - from a specific skill to something as broad as practical wisdom. It was to stop considering it as a binary of - aspirant on one side and expert/master on the other. I had noticed that some novices (including myself) would compare themselves with a master in some field, and noticing the gulf between their achievements think that the jump was too big. So, they got discouraged and sometimes gave up. Others however would make a start, sometimes on their own to begin with and then go and seek help when needed, and they would carry on.  Rather than see learning as this binary then, I began to model it as a process - starting as a novice and moving towards greater expertise. I could move towards mastery to the extent possible. This way it was much easier to start things and keep going. Also, that any progress in learning, if carried out in a reasonable way (for instance not too selfishly or obsessionally), would benefit all concerned. Similar in some ways to that of Bonita’s perspective as described in a previous newsletter.

This discussion is follows on from the one in the March newsletter on micromastering one aspect of intuition (what could be described as in terms of  embodied skills) and can be read alongside that.

It can also be seen equally as about approaches to learning more broadly.

There is a lot to work through by yourself in any field of learning if you start from first principles and try and ‘reinvent the wheel’ all by yourself. Those with experience would suggest that you may not have enough years to do so. We can ‘accelerate’ moving towards greater expertise to an extent by learning from and with others and this is possible in the formal education that we attend as children and young adults, if it is both managed carefully by both the teachers and the learners. What we are also considering here, is how to do so in contexts where you as an adult, are using your own agency to seek learning in areas that you, individually, value.

The aphorism at the top describes, with some simplification, the apprentice model of learning – an effective means of knowledge evolution. Now you may not be able to find or easily access such communities today, but we can make the best of what we do have available.

Some perceptions or habits that come from having spent a long time in formal education can be barriers – for instance, that all learning has to be through formal channels such as enrolling in a ‘school’, that you must find the master with the most expertise, or that you must be in personal contact with ‘the’ teacher for long continuous periods of time. Robert has several entries in his blog that explore this topic, so I won’t repeat their content here other than to suggest this simple model - Even for things that can’t be learnt fully from a book and a bit of practise, that can be a starting point. Try things out, experiment and look for micro masteries. Then when you get stuck you go and look for help from someone who has more expertise. Having had some practise, you are likely to have more precise, useful questions. That help may be in both informal and formal settings - it depends upon your needs and current capacities and quite simply what is available.

At some point you will need the advice of someone with more experience who can also in effect diagnose your difficulty and stipulate what to do. Also, one needs to keep in mind (to keep this approach in balance), that there are objective standards of competence needed to fulfil certain responsibilities. An obvious example, is that one wouldn’t like to be flown by an aeroplane pilot who was just self-trained in this way without having shown his competence by some kind of ‘test’. The principle holds in all areas, including practical wisdom.

But there is much you can be getting on with, using information that is often in the public sphere,

So far, I have avoided the word ‘expert’ and there are several reasons. Top level experts have learnt some things implicitly and have habituated some aspects so thoroughly that either way they have lost contact with how they do things and can have difficulty explaining it to novices. Other people with mastery ‘just below’ theirs can often better see what is going on. I used to practise a martial art in England with a very expert master. I was told that if he was in Japan, he would only teach 3^rd dans and above for this reason. Such was the lack of interest there, that he was reduced to teaching total beginners like me! Fair to say, he was aware of the teaching problem. Secondly, as others have pointed out, we live in a world where anyone can declare themselves an expert, any many do so! Also, there are aspects of our culture that encourage many experts to be too full of self-importance from their learning to operate a functioning apprentice relationship. Real experts who can also teach are somewhat thin on the ground and unsurprisingly given their habituation of their expertise, may need training in teaching.

Professor Klein has identified some criteria for identifying ‘experts’, none of which is infallible on its own but used together may be of help in judging expertise. I will post these on our Facebook page in due course.

Perhaps looking for the enthusiastic amateur or professional who has some more expertise than you, the ‘apprentices and journeymen’, rather than (or alongside) the ‘top teacher’ might be a more functional approach for the novice. One aspect that does stand out in such people is that they have an area that they want to get better at too. Also, they may be more willing to share their knowledge with other enthusiasts.

If you manage to seek out and meet such people Professor Klein and other suggest the following approaches – not exactly ‘duties’ but approaches which have been found from experience to be useful.

Observe them closely (we will explore this more in a future news letter)and prompt the conversation –

ask them questions, almost interview them.

Probe their stories - they do like to share their experience as stories but because of the reasons mentioned above they will miss things out, particularly some of their tacit knowledge.

Ask them about tough cases,

“I really can’t see how you knew that?” By asking questions you may help them realise or remember how they did something or made a decision which at the time they perceived as ‘obvious.’

Knowing what people who have more expertise can do more readily, might give you suggestions for further questions. It is worth working these out for yourself, but we will publish some more in due course.

·      They are curious about errors and their errors niggle them enough.

·      They are open to change of course.

·      They put more focus on situational awareness. Subsequently they notice things that novices don’t, both detail and the wider picture.

·      They are more likely to anticipate what will happen next.

·      They can rapidly assess what is going on in a situation.

·      They know when their expectations are violated and don’t have an over-emotional response to it.

·      They often see additional opportunities and improvisations.

·      They are good at trade-offs and satisficing.

·      Have a better understanding of their own limitations.

Working with other novices

There are advantages. Exchange of tacit knowledge is easier between people with common experience. Symbols and stories can be used to share complex information concisely as the person is part of the group of symbol users and there is a common experiential understanding of the symbols. Stories are mental simulation tools, and you can use them even if you cannot remember all the details. Stories are also good at conveying complex causal interactions. When a story is created several independent variables can be incorporated.

If you are also working with other novices and sharing stories, questioning sincerely goes a long to keeping communication going. You want to encourage dialogue, not defensiveness.

“You did that in a way I wasn’t expecting. Tell me what was on your mind?” Rather than – “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!”

There are downsides to working with other novices in groups. The tendency of people in groups to use it for other purposes is well documented. Forewarned is forearmed to an extent.

‘Managing’ the Process of Developing Expertise

Small initiatives, as in the micromastery approach, allows information input to be more ‘natural’ – just in time, rather than the just in case approach of much formal education. Artificial puzzles or ‘hypothetical cases’ aren’t always very good for developing insight. Scenario training and practice is best if it is authentic (serves a real purpose) as possible. Small, real initiatives, and the context it is being learnt in, can help memory retention too. More and more de-contextualised information isn’t necessarily going to help understanding. Developing expertise is also not just about introducing more rules and procedures to those that you have. These have their limitations and run into problems in dynamic situations where goals change or are even hard to define.

The focus is more on developing the ability to keep modifying mental models and that involves being able to continuously discard the ‘old furniture to make room for the new’.

Larger initiatives, particularly in the group situation above tend to produce more of a linguistic, conformist approach. Also, small initiatives allow clarity of responsibility and ‘failure’ to be less practically and emotionally costly. If small projects fail, you are more likely to learn from them.

Sometimes it can be useful to overestimate the odds of a project succeeding otherwise you would not try it. However, you need to have some awareness of the worst downsides.

Many potential micromasteries are being shared on this platform but the intention is not that one must try all of them! Perhaps see them more as a menu that you can select from that might suit both your needs and interests. The neuroscientist Professor Eagleman recognises that his interest in a particular project can wane, or he can feel stuck. He puts several projects that he is resonating with at any moment on a lazy Susan or carousel in his mind and when he finds himself slowing down, he jumps to or prioritises another project. Robert elaborated on this in his newsletter on Sir Richard Burton. Most of us have or eventually develop some kind of sense of how many projects we can juggle in this way. This can help maintain the all-important curiosity and energy to keep developing expertise. It is important to remember the difference between stretching and straining yourself. The emphasis of micromastery is the fun, (and the agency that comes with it) and can help in this regard.