What Bruce Lee taught me about Experience
Traditional martial artists spend years perfecting a punch. Bruce Lee became fascinated by something else. He stopped concentrating on the actual punch and became fascinated by what created a punch. At first, that sounds like a small shift. But, I don’t think it is. Traditional martial artists trained in techniques. They drilled the same punch […]
What a Wheelchair Ramp Taught Me About Experience
Recently, I posted an article on LinkedIn, What an Assassin Taught Me About Experience. In the comments, Nicola added that she notices wheelchair access wherever she goes, not because of her work, but because her sister uses a wheelchair. Like Jason Bourne, her experience had trained her attention. I replied that this was a great […]
What a Glassblower taught me about Experience
It takes years to become a master. But is the amount of time the crucial element? As US artist Rick Strini said, ‘You don’t get good by doing anything once.’ Rick has more than sixty years working with glass but for the first 30 years he made the same thing. Then Rick went to a […]
What an Educator Taught Me About Experience
Most people assume education is the transfer of knowledge. But in my On Experience conversation with educator and facilitator Linda Gidlund, I realised I may have misunderstood education altogether. After four decades as a teacher, facilitator, instructional designer and community leader, Linda rarely spoke about information. Instead, she kept returning to something much deeper. Most […]
What AFL Football taught me about Experience
When I was studying in the US, after my friends went to bed on Friday nights, I would head to the TV room to watch Australian Rules Football on ESPN. One night, Brian stumbled in. He was from Baltimore, studying for a PhD in either physics or chemistry. He sat down and we watched together […]
What Alone Australia taught me about Experience
Ten people arrive in Arctic Finland. Before the first episode even begins, I started trying to predict who will win. I looked at their experience: military, survival, fishing, hunting, endurance, bushcraft, even previous Arctic experience. Who has the best preparation? But as the series progressed, something strange happened. The more I learnt about the contestants, the less […]
What Travel Taught Me About Experience
Several decades ago I was on a bus trip winding through the Black Hills of South Dakota on the way to Mount Rushmore. On board were twenty-four students from eighteen different countries. It was my first time travelling overseas and my first time spending extended time with people from so many different cultures. I found myself […]
What Mick Jagger Taught Me About Experience
I was listening to David Marchese interview Mick Jagger for The New York Times Interview when one word stopped me: Inhabit. Marchese didn’t ask whether Jagger could still perform songs he’d written fifty years ago; he asked whether he could still inhabit them. That caught my attention because it felt like an unusual but very […]
What an Assassin taught me about Experience
In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne has no idea who he is. He has amnesia, which means he doesn’t remember his past and can’t figure out why someone wants to kill him. Yet, when he sits down in a roadside cafe he casually says: “I can tell you the license plate numbers of all three cars […]
What a Doctor taught me about Experience
Most people think experience gives us answers, but what happens when our experience fails to answer our questions? When it makes it impossible to continue believing what we know. That’s what happened to Dr Patterson Stark. Patterson was a successful physician in La Jolla, California. He had a waiting list, money in the bank and […]