I recently ran a workshop for Praxis participants on job interviewing. It was so so. I didn’t do a great job and wasn’t particularly pleased with the outcome.
I used to do workshops like that a lot. And I got pretty good at them. It’s been several years and I only took about 5 minutes to prep, assuming I’d pick right up where I left off. But apparently, running a workshop is not like riding a bike.
It got me thinking about different types of learning, different types of know-how and mastery. It doesn’t matter how many years it’s been, riding a bike and swimming are no harder. You learn them once and the know-how sticks, without decay.
Why aren’t workshops like this?
It can’t be due to the physical nature of biking and swimming. Because basketball is not the same. Even if the form of a jump-shot stay largely intact (only if you put in enough reps when you learned, even then the form can start to decay a bit), the shooting percentage plummets after long absences from the game. It’s true, getting the percentage back up to playing-days average is quicker than originally getting to that average, but not very quick.
And language is not a physical task, but seems more like bike riding. I can’t speak Spanish. Until I visit a Spanish speaking country. Then the same proficiency (not very, but enough to get around) I first learned as a teen comes back in almost an instant, maybe an hour or two. Same for accents and impersonations and parts of songs. If I learned years ago, it never really decays. Worst case, I forget, hear it one more time, and it’s right back.
I can’t spot an easy pattern in the, “Need to stay in practice to keep it sharp”, and, “Never really decays”, types of know-how (I’m not saying knowledge, because that seems more like info only, and I’m not saying mastery because I’m not a master at most of these examples). It’s like different kinds of know-how have different rates of entropy, and different refresh rates. It’s a lot easier for me to get back to up to snuff with running workshops than it is with basketball (even if I control for the physical decay of being slower with age. Shooting percentage alone is harder to re-acquire).
It makes me wonder about other kinds of know-how that I’ve never really ignored for long periods. What about social intelligence? What would happen if I was a hermit for half a decade? Would I lose my ability to work a room? How about writing? I’ve never not written regularly since I first learned. Is it more like bike-riding or basketball? If lost, how fast could I refresh and get back to where I am now?
I’ve always been fascinated with the process of learning, the act of creation, the art of obtaining tacit and explicit knowledge, the interplay of the conscious and subconscious in the brain, and the idea of “embodied” knowledge.
The more I think and dig, the less I understand the human brain (biologically) and human knowledge (epistemically and ontologically).
PS – It’s probably also true that I am not a perfectly accurate judge of my then vs. now skill levels. Self-awareness changes, and memory is imperfect. It’s likely I remember myself a better basketball player or speaker than I really was. It’s comforting to think after a lackluster performance, “It’s just because I’m rusty”, instead of “That’s about as good as I’ve ever been.”