Josh Waitzkin On Being A Prodigy

Josh Waitzkin is widely considered a prodigy. He's Two-time US Junior Chess Champion, Two-time Tai Chi Chu'an Push Hands World Champion, and a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under BJJ Phenom Marcelo Garcia (He plans to be a World Champion in BJJ by 2013). He also have written two books: Attacking Chess: Aggressive Strategies, Inside Moves from the U.S. Junior Chess Champion (1995) and The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance (2008).

That's some pretty impressive stuff if you ask me. Most people struggle to excel at anything, some become world class at a single activity, but others somehow finds a way to become great at anything they do. You can definitely add him among the Renaissance men of our time. But he doesn't want you to call him a prodigy. He absolutely hates that term. Why, you ask? Well, it'll be better if you hear his reasoning straight from him:

                     

Do you find yourself agreeing with him? I do. When you constantly hear yourself being labeled as a certain type, as much as you try to prevent it, it somehow creeps into your subconscious and tweaks your attitude a bit. Being labeled as smart, genius, or a prodigy, would somehow dampen your thirst for knowledge, if you start believing that you are actually as labeled. Believing that you already know everything because that is how smart people are, will cull your thirst for knowledge. And that's never a good thing.

If you want to listen to the whole interview, here's the link.

Memory Training Before Anything

That is me at 2010 UK Open Memory Championship

We have less than three months before the 2012 World Memory Championships and much of the athletes now are knee deep, some neck deep, in training. To get anywhere near a successful run at such an elite competition, huge man hours are needed to be at par with the world's best.

I have the same thing in mind.

That's why I've dedicated most of my time to memory training. Eat. Sleep. Train. And train some more. I have set a very high bar for me that I expect a lot from myself come championship time.

And before this piece gets out of hand and eats up my time, I'll be ending it here for now.

Have a memorable day!

As Promised..

As I mentioned yesterday, here I am again, trying to make this blogging thing a more regular one. I'll be writing this short updates as I get used to the task of a regular blogger. And the posts that I'll be making might not have a general theme as I haven't figured out how I'd go about this. But I should be making a list soon that zeroes in on the topic or topics that I'll be covering here. As of right now, this is sounding more like a personal journal than anything else. As a Mnemonist, RN, and sports/fitness enthusiast, I'll be churning out posts that is in or around that three areas. And if you have any ideas on what to do, please help me out here. Just to prevent this from becoming a wall of words, I'll stop here for now. 

Welcome Back!

Wow! It's been quite a long time sonce I posted here. I definitely have to deal with my procrastination. There are many things that happened since I last post here and it would take too much space to list everything. But one thing is for certain, I WILL be doing this a lot more frequently. But.. yes another but, I have to cut his post a bit short for today because I have to go back to training. Facebook ate almost three hours of my training time, so I'll write something more interesting tomorrow. Adieu!