Just over a month ago, I had my first piano lesson. It was very hard. The teacher kept trying to teach me about “Middle C”, a term that had little meaning and even less perceived value to me. And she taught me to play music that was so inanely simplistic that I was bored before I’d finished playing the first bar. But the experience was fascinating. Especially when you know how good some pre-school students are!

After getting bored with drills intended to train me like they might train a 3-year-old, who will take an average of 1200 hours of formal practice to achieve Grade 5 (according to Sloboda’s Leverhulme Project), I decided to just learn how to play a piece of music. I chose to play one of my favourites, Gymnopedie. It looked easy enough.

It wasn’t easy. To start with, it was hard. Very hard. And it was hard in very specific ways.

And it has already highlighted two key aspects of learning for me: One conscious, one unconscious. I’ll get to those.

• It was not hard because of the timing of the notes. I knew how long to hold the individual notes because I know the piece very well. Despite this, the teacher harped on holding the individual notes for the ‘right’ length of time. Indeed, she still was at our last lesson yesterday
• It was not hard because of the biomechanics – with the exception of a four-note chord right at the end, it was pretty easy for my fingers to move to move.
• Even the note order wasn’t really that difficult. While being a rich piece of music, it isn’t too fast and doesn’t involve wide variations in the note locations.
• What was difficult for me was figuring out where to put my fingers! And for me that wasreally hard. My teacher would throw terms at me like “B” and “D” and “Fa” and “Do” – that might well have a meaning related to the keys for her other students, but for me they meant nothing. But when she physically showed me which key to press next, I was right to go for the next part. And, after a while, I started to put these parts together, so that now it almost sounds like a real piece of music.

A strange experience was discovering that I could play several relatively complex parts – with some of those weird black keys! Looking at the notes on the page, I couldn’t follow the notes, but if I just followed my fingers, I realized that I had ‘absorbed’ the sequence by watching and copying my teacher’s fingers. And what was most strange was that these were some of the easiest to play – where I made fewer mistakes, while concentrating less. When I was learning these, I had very much ‘surrendered’ to my teacher’s demonstration rather than trying to consciously understand what was going on: What we might call an “NLP Modelling” state.

Here are two things that I want to highlight from this:

1. What is your Learning Rate Determining Step? What has stopped you from learning quickly and easily is as unique as you are – being able to identify those obstacles and tackle them is a profound skill that is remarkably effectively ignored by most of us. When you are learning something, whether it is a status skill, a professional skill, or an intellectual pursuit, you can focus on finding the constraints, the bottlenecks in your learning, the “Learning Rate Determining Step” in the process. Once you’ve found it, find a way to overcome that LRDS (like putting notes on the keys) and align the way you’re doing things to overcome the LRDS.
2. You can absorb and learn unconsciously. We can absorb information presented to us quickly and easily if we can access an appropriate state. To do this, we can just let go of our need to feel like we know what we’re doing, and become like a child again – curious, open and willing to make mistakes.

I’m curious as to the extent that I can stop trying to learn consciously and deliberately so much, and focus more on that unconscious assimilation style… it sure is more fun!

(Of course, I’d love to have educators who focused more on removing the constraints to my learning rate than they did on how to design a powerpoint presentation… though let’s start with small steps.)

He ends his presentation at TED earlier this year with these words from W.B. Yeats:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

As I watched Ken reading, I couldn’t help but think of Elton John’s Your Song, a song that the late John Lennon described as “the first new thing that’s happened since we happened”. Just in case you don’t remember the lyrics, here are the first two verses:

It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside
I’m not one of those who can easily hide
I don’t have much money but boy if I did
I’d buy a big house where we both could live

If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it’s not much but it’s the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one’s for you

So was Your Song original? Or did Elton read a little Yeats to Bernie one night before bed after a few bottles of wine, and have Bernie wake up the next morning with a flash of “inspiration”?

Perhaps Elton and Bernie have acknowledged the inspiration of Yeats in the past or perhaps the connection is only tenuous. Or maybe they came to this idea independently. Even if the ‘idea’ was from Yeats or even someone else, it was Sir Elton John that brought such a sentiment to the world in a form that we could embrace, love and enjoy today.

Creativity is sometimes strikingly divergent from the status quo. Sometimes it is a refinement. Other times, creativity might be more like a renaissance – a rebirth of older ideas so that they can find new life for another generation. This leaves the challenge for us to cultivate those conditions and contexts where those around us can find a way to express their uniqueness. And where we can express our own uniqueness.

Here is Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation at TED from earlier this year. I hope you enjoy it.

That’s the point of this post – and I’ll get back to that in a minute…

I have been reading Common Wealth, economist Jeffrey Sach’s take on how to make the world a better place. This morning, I came across his chapter on the economic proposition justifying social welfare – how increased taxation with a corresponding increase in social services can be fiscally responsible and yield quantifiable social benefits. While his argument was quite one-sided – after all, it’s his book – it got me thinking how we can use a bit of mathematics to make better decisions. Sachs was asking this sort of question:

If you were in government and thought that you had too much money, would you cut taxes or increase social welfare?

But I was thinking about my everyday decisions.

In the next few months, I have a number of flights scheduled though not yet booked. For example, I am due to fly from Sydney to Brisbane sometime after 7pm on the evening of 28 January. That route is mainly serviced by Qantas and Virgin Blue at that time. So how does one decide which flight to take?

At first glance, Virgin Blue is the easy winner. Virgin Blue’s DJ999 is available at $79 fare while Qantas comes closest with the QF556 is $98. That’s $19 difference.

But when you look closer at the Virgin Blue fare, you find that $79 doesn’t give you any check-in luggage. If you want to check-in luggage, that will be an extra $10 for a total of $89. So we’re down to just $9 difference.

Virgin Blue still gives better deal.

What if we take into account the quality of the experience?

HTC HD2 - my new phone

That’s hard to do, but let’s try. Having flown this route dozens of times, I find the 90 minutes passes very quickly. I have my wonderful noise cancelling headphones and my HD2 to entertain me, and magazines to catch up upon. However, Qantas offers refreshments – Virgin Blue does not. If you’re the sort of person who likes to have a snack onboard, lashing out the extra $9 to fly Qantas seems a really good deal – and I love that fancy fruit juice that they have.

So this is where some judgment is required. If you value the muchies on board, the meal might be worth $10 or so. But even if you don’t value them much, having a drink and some snacks is probably still worth $5 or so. Of course, if you’re just going to sit down and sleep or something, maybe it’s really worth nothing to you.

After all, this is public transport, isn’t it – just a fancy type of bus with acceleration that can really blow your hair back, right?

It is nicer to fly Qantas though. Don’t get me wrong Sir Richard, Virgin Blue is great. But Virgin Blue is clearly a ‘cut price’ or low cost operator in this field and the service standards that you get from Qantas are generally at least a little bit (and often quite a bit) higher. How much is that worth? For a 90 minute flight, for me it’s not really worth too much – but it is worth at least $5.

Does that change things?

Well, we started with the Virgin at $79 and Qantas at $98. If you want to take some luggage, it’s $89/$98. With the deemed value of the food ($5) and general service experience ($5), Qantas has a better value proposition, remaining at just $98 with Virgin’s effective cost at least $99… unless you are just going with carry-on luggage, in which case Virgin Blue still has a $9 advantage.

So fly Qantas when you have luggage and Virgin Blue when you don’t?

Not so fast. What about Frequent Flyer Points? Now I don’t know the Virgin system too well – I tried to sign up for it five years ago but after they lost my application, I never got around to applying again. But I do have a (very) active Qantas Frequent Flyer account. If you have a Velocity account, let me know how much the points are worth and I’ll think about updating this.

That same flight on Qantas would yield 1000 Frequent Flyer points.

Good to know, but how much are they worth?

I’m glad you asked. And the simple answer is, “it depends… but at least $8.50, and probably more like $13.80 for me.” (I’ll explain the messy details at the end of the post)

And THAT in turn brings the effective cost of the Qantas flight down by at least $8.50.
So we have the following value propositions:

Virgin Blue: $79 (without luggage, without food, with cheaper service experience)
Virgin Blue: $99 (with luggage, allowing for the food and service experience deficit)

Qantas: $84.20 (with luggage)

So, Qantas is only $5 more, even if you don’t check-in luggage!!!

For me, the extra comfort and convenience of having some food on the flight and traveling in just a little bit of extra comfort is clearly worth an extra $5.20. And if I’m checking luggage, it’s actually about enough cash saving to cover my Irish Nut Creme from Gloria Jean’s at the departure gate…

Most of the time we don’t make rational decisions.

Much of the time we can’t – there’s too little information and too much uncertainty. But if we can start to use some numbers, we can make the comparisons simpler, less subjective, and give us more of what we want, more often.

For example, I want my son to have the best education – but it’s pretty tough to say where he’ll even be attending school, never mind where the best place for him to attend might be, nor what schools will even be like when he is due to start high school in 2023! Emotionally, I’d love for him to go to State High like I did – I think he’d enjoy being a fourth generation State High student. Yet I put him on the waiting list for a private school earlier today.

On one level, our decisions reflect our values. For some people, all that matters is price. But someone with strong brand loyalty to Virgin Blue might never even consider flying Qantas – no matter what the price. Someone who vehemently opposed private schools might never even consider their child attending one. Most of us have these biases but values are easily left tacit and their impact overlooked and unacknowledged.

Many of our decisions are irrational.
So often, we do things that won’t get us the best outcome, no matter what our values, no matter what our intentions. It’s easy to see why – there’s just so much information that our brain can’t process it all at once. But if you can break down a complex problem into the different components, you might just have a chance to put your own price on something that has no price… and give yourself a chance to make better decisions.

If you’re interested, we can look at the value of those frequent flyer points…

It’s kinda complicated because you need to deal all the different uses that you might have for the points that you generate. But for me, I’m most likely to use points to fly either between Shanghai and Brisbane or Brisbane and Sydney. You’d think that they’d be worth the same either way, but they’re not.

Let’s start with the same Sydney to Brisbane flight. Booking it through points will cost 8000 points plus about $11 in taxes. If we compare that to the Qantas flight, that gives $98-$11=$87 for 8000 points, or $0.01875/point or 92 points/dollar. If you were after the worst value use of those points, you would have to compare that points flight against a luggage-free Virgin Blue flight. There, it’s just $79-$11=$68 for 8000 points, or $0.0085/point or 118 points/dollar. Hence, at a minimum those 1000 points are worth $0.0085*1000 or $8.50.

Using points to fly between Shanghai and Brisbane will cost you 72,000 points – plus about $200 in taxes. Paying cash for the same flight might cost around $1200 (including taxes). Based on those figures, it’s pretty easy to work out that 72,000 points is worth about $1000. At that rate, you’re looking at points being worth $0.0138/point or 72 points/dollar, making 1000 points worth $13.80.

Thus, the value of your points will vary by at least 62% depending on how you use them!

I was a little disappointed. Turns out they’re charging ¥240 ($42) per 45 minute class… and you still have to be there. The walls are pretty colours and the leaders are very animated, though the children didn’t seem at all engaged. And I can’t quite call the staff ‘teachers’ since they’re mostly just English majors who did a 2-month in-house course.

Yet what are the options?

The sales guy suggested that Shanghainese parents don’t know how to play with their kids so they bring them there instead. Ouch!

Maybe I had an enlightened childhood but it just looked like the kids were on the set of a second-rate version of the television show, Play School.

Maybe we’ll be looking elsewhere for a place that has a stronger pedagogical foundation than “let the kids play and they’ll learn something”.

Still, what is important in child development?

And it’s a good question to ask. A book costs a lot less than a training course – and is far more convenient to read – so if you could get the same thing from a book, it would be a much more convenient way to learn. So why do we teach our children in schools and our corporations through training courses when we could just give them books to read? Anyway, I gave an answer like this:

When I was younger, I read books about martial arts. I looked at the pictures and ran through in my mind the exercises and explanations. And it looked really cool! It got me excited and interested so I kept reading.

One day, my parents allowed me to start martial arts training. It was the same – and yet totally different. While I already knew in theory much of what we were learning, training in a class with other people like me meant that I learnt much more than ever before. I realized that I didn’t really know as much as I thought that I did. And I had the experience of really learning. If I had kept reading books, I could become very knowledgeable, but I could never have become a Master.

If you want to learn about a topic, reading books is great. If you want to develop some serious skill, you will want to find the right context for your to explore, experience and expand yourself in ways that you might have never realized possible.

If you want to develop real skill, you’ll want to find the best training opportunities around.

Only you know if it’s the right time. But that you’re asking about this suggests that some part of you believes that you would benefit from some training. If so, we look forward to having you join us.

So are training courses worth the money?

• Values
• Attitudes
• Skills
• Techniques

Several other models exist. Some educational theorists delineate between knowledge-based, skills-based and affective goals (incorporating values, attitudes and interests), which is essentially the same as the VAST framework that I have used. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Goals provides a very sophisticated framework, highlighting the appropriate assessment procedures that might be adopted as well as the helping frame the learning outcomes themselves.

How much better could our schools and parents be if they had clear outcomes in mind? How much more effective could we be as people if we clearly had in mind the messages that we wanted to communicate to those around us?

Each level is critically important, though different in nature. Educational experiences often focus upon some of these outcomes more than others; sometimes deliberately, othertimes not. UNICEF has created a list of what it considers to be “Life Skills”, a list that I think is valuable, interesting and worthy of consideration by our educators. As you look at this list, consider how many of those skills you were deliberately taught – ever – and how much more powerfully you could live your life and impact upon the world if you had been…

Communication and Interpersonal Skills

• Interpersonal communication skills
  Verbal/Nonverbal communication
  Active listening
  Expressing feelings; giving feedback (without blaming) and receiving feedback
• Negotiation/refusal skills
  Negotiation and conflict management
  Assertiveness skills
  Refusal skills
• Empathy
  Ability to listen and understand another’s needs and circumstances and express that understanding
• Cooperation and Teamwork
  Expressing respect for others’ contributions and different styles
  Assessing one’s own abilities and contributing to the group
• Advocacy Skills
  Influencing skills & persuasion
  Networking and motivation skills

Decision-Making and Critical Thinking Skills

• Decision making / problem solving skills
  Information gathering skills
  Evaluating future consequences of present actions for self and others
  Determining alternative solutions to problems
  Analysis skills regarding the influence of values and attitudes of self and others on motivation
• Critical thinking skills
  Analyzing peer and media influences
  Analyzing attitudes, values, social norms and beliefs and factors affecting these
  Identifying relevant information and information sources

Coping and Self-Management Skills

• Skills for increasing internal locus of control
  Self esteem/confidence building skills
  Self awareness skills including awareness of rights, influences, values, attitudes, rights, strengths and weaknesses
  Goal setting skills
  Self evaluation / Self assessment / Self-monitoring skills
• Skills for managing feelings
  Anger management
  Dealing with grief and anxiety
  Coping skills for dealing with loss, abuse, trauma
• Skills for managing stress
  Time management
  Positive thinking
  Relaxation techniques

Link – UNICEF website.