learning | On My Canvas

Cracking The Art of Learning with Josh Waitzkin

The right learning could make you or break you — and the one who understands that stands above all.

Josh Waitzkin — a child prodigy, an international chess master, and a Tai Chi Push Hands world champion wrote a book called The Art of Learning. In this book, he penned down his inner and outer journey to success while listing the various techniques he applied to master chess and martial arts.

I picked up his book — not to learn from a chess master or a martial arts champion — but to learn from someone who has cracked the art of learning.

a pen sketching showing process of learning

When we wake up, how many of us think of what we want to do today? Almost all of us.

How many of us think of improving at what we do or focus on personal growth and development? Not many.

The presentation should be ready at 2. The code should get deployed. The author’s biography should come under every article. Let’s put in a hack. Grammarly shows that this pronoun doesn’t make any sense in the sentence. I don’t understand why but let’s get rid of it. Spaghetti over boiled again. But at least we have dinner.

As Josh Waitzkin, the chess and Tai Chi Push hands world champion, said in his book The Art of Learning, “We focus so much on the outcome that the intrinsic details of the learning process are lost on us.”

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Are you wondering how to learn a language by yourself? Or finding the best way to learn a language?

Then you have come to the right place.

Table of Content

My story of learning Spanish in Chile, South America
Why should you learn a foreign language
What is language learning? Is it hard to learn a new language?
My 24 best tips for learning a language by yourself
Download pdf
Further Reading

First, let me tell you my story of learning Spanish in Chile so that you know you can learn a language on your own.

Before traveling to Chile, I couldn’t speak Spanish and wondered how I was going to survive in a predominantly Spanish continent. I assumed that Latin Americans would make my life easy by talking to me in English.

But neither the Latinos nor the foreigners living in Chile spoke English, at least not as much as I expected. That’s when I realized I had to learn Spanish. Reality hit me hard, and I prayed for survival.

Learning Spanish in Chile, a country notorious for bad Spanish, wasn’t easy. I struggled to make my way around Chile from morning until night. I couldn’t understand the conversations on the dining table and longed to participate. I missed cracking jokes. I wanted to cry.

Words fell on my ears but my brain couldn’t comprehend them.

Rather than pitying myself, I decided to learn enough Spanish to understand the people around me and reply. So that’s what I did. From speaking incorrect Spanish unabashedly to practicing Spanish grammar with workbooks, I tried all ways to learn a language.

Fast forwards a few weeks, I started speaking Spanish fluently. I was still a foreigner in Chile, but as I began to understand more Spanish, I became a part of the Chilean host family. We woke up, greeted each other by kissing both cheeks, ate toast with avocados and Nescafe coffee, and talked about life at supper or the evening Once.

I had a second home now just because I could converse in Spanish.