"Know Thyself”…and thy Goals

The Role of Meta-Cognition in your Striving Life

In his book Maximum Climbing, the author, Eric Hörst, talks about metacognition as the basis of every correct, informed decision (about anything, not just climbing). Without it, he posits, you can’t make good decisions. Some may turn out okay, but that’s entirely because of luck rather than your choices.

Cognition (from Latin) is another word for learning (from German). Metacognition means learning about learning (awareness of one’s own learning or thinking processes — Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Examining how we learn about ourselves and the world. If you understand how you do something, you’ll do it better, because you’ll know how to proceed — what to do, what to avoid.

Know thyself. It’s the oldest recorded human advice, and still worth heeding. Archaeologists found it carved on a tomb in ancient Egypt. Plato (of ancient Greece) used to say it; Socrates quoted it often. It’s about process. Learning about learning. Knowing how to know. Know thyself. Learning about yourself is the first step towards a new goal; the more you know about yourself and how you process learning, the better things will turn out for you.

After WWII, New York City, my hometown, was filled with Displaced Persons (people who had fled the war). Languages abounded, everywhere! When I was two years old, I started using meta-cognition as I figured out the languages around me. (I didn’t know that, of course; all children just do this instinctively, but we often lose that skill later in life.) I honed my understanding of the process I was using to grasp one language, and then tested that process as I learned another. And another. And another. Over the years, language learning became easy for me – because I understood what I was doing and how I was doing it.

You can apply this to any goal in your life. Whatever you want to accomplish, you need to know how best to go about it. You need to know how you process things. No one else can tell you how to proceed toward your goal, since no one else on the planet processes things exactly the way you do. Every brain is different. You need to understand which process has been successful in the past for you, and which has not. Without that knowledge, you might wander around, trying this or that, never quite sure why things aren’t going the way you’d like.

If you learn best, for example, by moving and doing (kinesthetic learner), then anything you try to master by just sitting and reading directions is never going to end well.

If you’ve never been very good at reading comprehension (understanding and processing what you read), then trying to accomplish something by just reading the instructions will be a totally frustrating experience. And frustration is often what convinces us to give up on a dream. No one enjoys feeling that way. We may say to ourselves that it’s too hard, too complicated, too whatever — but what we really mean is that our approach isn’t working and the frustration of battling that is just too demoralizing. We give up.

When it comes to getting things done, I’m a multi-tasker. I can juggle lots of jobs at a time, go from one to the other as I move from room to room, get multiple jobs done in the house or at the college (where I taught) all day long. But in order to write, one must be completely focused. So when I sit down to work on writing, I turn everything off but the soft, inspiring classical music. Everything – internet. E-mail. Phone. Even unnecessary lights. And the job gets done. I know what I need. I’ve learned that about myself, learned which process works for me and which ones don’t.

You can achieve any goal — any goal — by baby steps, but the order in which you tackle those steps is equally important, if not more so. The steps toward each dream will be completely different, and will vary from person to person. Everyone thinks differently. But if they’re organized into the correct logically-progressing layers, those tiny steps will lead you slowly, inexorably to the results you dream of.

I call these organizational layers Categories. Today we’ll explore the first one; the others will come soon in subsequent thoughtletters.

Category #1: What you need to know.

You can’t pursue any goal if you don’t know anything about it. This is obvious, but sometimes our enthusiasm overtakes our logic and Category 1 gets overlooked, in favor of a more active approach. We’re eager to get on with our task! We want to run a marathon this year, so we go right out and buy running shoes and start running. Running is physical, right? We don’t need to know anything, we just need to run.

Wrong. This is why, so often, our exercise machines at home become clothes hangers, or our running shoes become our running-to-the-store shoes. Enthusiasm has its place, but only if based on a foundation of information.

Running is a good example. I had ‘dabbled’ in running, or jogging, many times when I was younger. Any time the kids were otherwise occupied, or not at home, whenever conditions allowed for it (our kids were almost entirely my responsibility), I would eat some crackers, lace up my K-Mart sneakers, pull on a flannel shirt and go jogging.

Any time I tried to increase my distance, I would, as runners call it, ‘hit the wall.’ Bonk. Run out of energy. My feet would hurt. Everything would be wrong. I always just assumed that running was not for me. I wasn’t built for it. I came up with many reasons that fit the frustration — except the real one: Category 1 — what you need to know.

Walking and running are what the human body is built for, I thought. Why bother with research? I already knew what I needed to know.

However, I did not — and that’s what was keeping me from making any progress as a runner. What does one need to know about running?

For starters:

• Distances involved in the various races (and which is best for you)

• Nutrition info — what various foods do for you; which ones will keep you moving, which are useless, which weigh you down

• Hydration info — how much do you need, how often? Just water? Salt? Commercial drinks?

• Costs involved — do you have enough in your budget for the marathon you dream of doing, and all the accruing gear?

• How to increase your distance / increments (have you ever made a training schedule? Do you even know what that is?)

• Appropriate clothing — running in jeans will get really uncomfortable really fast….

• Shoes - pronation, ankle strength, etc (So MUCH to know here!)

and on and on…

If you don’t know any of that, you might just be lucky and find out that running is easy. But if you’re like most people, that lack of information will set up roadblock after roadblock to a comfortable, successful running experience. You’ll wonder why running is so hard, and eventually you’ll quit in frustration.

When you begin to list your baby steps for Category 1, your list might seem very vague, even childlike. That’s because when you start toward a new adventure, you are a child. A newbie. You might not even be able to come up with any steps, yet. This is normal, since you don’t yet know what you need to know. It will grow organically as you learn more, do more research, make contacts, find mentors. That’s the way our brain works — the more we learn, the more we find out that we don’t know, so we learn more….

My decision to become an independent publisher wasn’t entirely mine. The company that was going to publish my first book went under. Belly up. As my anger and disappointment faded (took quite a while!), I began to think about how else to get my book out there. I had already done the pre-marketing research and knew it had great promise; but all the other (bigger, NY) publishers I offered it to said the same thing: “Great book!… Well done!… But we market to the whole country / the whole west / the whole whatever.” My book, Sacramento with Kids, appealed to a small region that no nationwide publisher would consider.

My only options were to put it back in my drawer as a learning experience, or publish it myself.

I had no idea what a publisher’s job consisted of. So I got a book. And another. (The internet was just getting started, back then.) I sought out information wherever I could find it, to learn what I needed to know (Category 1) before I could actually do anything. I contacted people who might know — and learned that people we consider ‘experts’, even the very famous ones, are usually eager to help others who are also interested in their passion. And I learned that research librarians in your local public library (get to know yours) are absolute gold!

Over the next few years, Sacramento with Kids sold out several printings. And it set me in a direction I would never have taken otherwise, that of independent publisher, public speaker, businessperson… and then on to be President of the regional independent Publishers’ Association — all of which has led me on a wild, unexpected, years-long ride.

Whatever your goal — in life, sports, work, any endeavor — it must begin with finding out what you need to know. Meta-cognition is your best guide in that quest. Meta-cognition, the ability to think about your thoughts – which improves your learning – puts you in charge of your brain.

Go tell it what to do!