EverydaySpy Podcast - The Reason Kids Perform Better Than Adults

Episode Date: September 1, 2020

We all say that kids can absorb a ton of information quickly, like a sponge absorbing water. But what exactly is it about children that gives them that superpower? And can an adult have it? In this episode, Andrew explains the science behind how kids learn and gives you the secret to how you can get that magic back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. Since coming back to the United States, I've decided to start engaging in new learning activities. And one of the learning activities that I've jumped right into is surfing. Now, I tried surfing when I was with the military. I was young. I was fit. I was living in California. Surfing was just kind of the thing to do. And I remember the first and only time that I ever went surfing in the military was a total disaster. I was horrible at it. I couldn't catch a wave. I couldn't read the ocean. I couldn't

stand on the board and out there freezing in the California ocean. The best part of that day was when the sea lions started to stick their head out of the water as if they were watching how terrible I was at surfing. Now fast forward from then when I was about 22 years old to today when I'm 40 years old and I pick up surfing again. And I've got a really good friend of mine here in in Florida who has started to take me under his wing to teach me how to surf. And he's been surfing for a while, about 10 or so years. And I went surfing recently with him and his eight-year-old son. Now, when we arrived on the east coast of Florida, which is where a lot of the surfing

is good in Florida, we jumped right into the waves. And I got a couple of pointers from my friend. We ended up sitting next to a nice surf shop where there was a guy from Hawaii who was giving me some more pointers. And I just went out there and started doing what. everyone said to do. Or so I thought. Because while my buddy was surfing great, and while the Hawaiian guy running the surf shop was teaching other people how to surf great, and even my friend's eight-year-old son was out there killing it on the surfboard, I looked like a complete train wreck. I was chasing after

every wave. I was getting exhausted, paddling in the water. Even if I could get the board onto a wave and then get my weight onto the board, I never seem to have the right balance to keep myself from slipping and falling either headlong or backlong into the wave. I had a great time. It was a fantastic workout,

but I couldn't seem to master even the fundamentals of surfing on that first day. Now, I've gone out there more times and I've gotten progressively better, but I'm still nowhere near the place where I can consistently jump on a board and ride the way.

Now, the story that I want to share isn't about me. It's about my friend's eight-year-old son. Because his eight-year-old son has really only gone surfing one time more than me. That's it. One time in addition to every time that I've gone out there. But consistently, when I watch that kid surf at eight years old, he is awesome. He catches the waves. He jumps up on the board. He rides them all the way in. And then he smiles and jumps off the board. He gets his face wet. He falls and rolls in the sand, turns everything around and goes right back out to get some more. He doesn't seem to get tired. He never seems to get discouraged or frustrated. And even when I watch him have a nasty wipeout, even when I worry that maybe he's been underwater for just a few

seconds too long, the kid pops up, shakes it off and goes right back into the fray. The reason that I'm so impressed with this eight-year-old kid is because he is showing something that is such a powerful lesson that I learned at the agency. It's something called a teachability index. The reason I'm so bad at surfing isn't because I'm not interested. It isn't because I'm not curious about it. And the reason that that eight-year-old boy is so good has nothing to do with his interest or his curiosity either. What's happening here is that we are seeing how human beings learn.

Now, humans learn in three stages. From zero to three, we have an uncontrolled learning stage. It's a discovery stage. It's why we say that infants and babies are like sponges. Basically, everything that they come in contact with is something that they have to learn. They have no ability to control it, whether it's a new temptation, whether it's a new color, a new texture, a new temperature, some kind of new sound or some kind of new light, whatever it is, they can't help but engage it and learn from it. It's why they sleep as heavy as they sleep,

but it's also why they go through such painful growth spurts in those first three years as their brain just doubles and doubles in size over and over again because it's constantly absorbing new information without any kind of control, without any kind of governor. From three to seven, children enter into a more controlled stage of learning. Here, they learn through experimentation. They can control all of the variables, all the information around them better than they could when they were infants, and that gives them the ability to dig deeper into areas that they are very interested in. So while they can still learn almost anything, while they're still sponges in many ways, they have the ability to control which information they let in the most and which information

they hold at bay from three to seven. From seven to thirteen, things change significantly because we start to enter into a selective learning stage. And you have been through these stages, I have been through these stages, I'm watching my children go through these stages. From seven to 13, we start to develop communication skills, advanced communication skills. And behind those communication skills, there are habits, there are preferences, there are tendencies. Instead of leaning on discovery and experimentation, we start to lean exclusively on curiosity. We learn the things that we're curious about. We ignore the things that we're not curious about. It's why you don't hear many seven-year-olds say that they're excited to learn about history

and why you don't run into many 11-year-olds who are super amped about going to phys ed, because if they're not curious in whatever the content is, then there's a chance that they have no interest in learning it, and they've developed an ability to selectively learn. From 13 to 25 is when we start to see our learning potential actually reduce. So from 0 to 13, we always have a very high ability to learn. We just graduate from an uncontrolled learning stage to a controlled learning stage to a selective learning stage, but from 13 on, we actually see our learning capability reduce. And that's because social norms start to set in. But even while those social norms are setting in, we still don't

understand risk benefit to ourselves because that risk benefit judgment is still immature. As a result, we start to dig in to our own existing beliefs and values. To compare that to the seven to 13 year old, in that selective learning stage where curiosity rules, you're not digging in, right? Those seven to 13 year olds aren't digging in to preconceived notions yet. They're just saying that they have no curiosity in one area and more curiosity in a different area. I want to play video games. Therefore, I'll spend my time playing video games. It's not that they feel like they are entitled to video games.

That happens from 13 to 25 when we dig in to our existing belief. and personal values. Scientific studies actually show that at the age of 25, we have officially stopped learning. Left to our own devices, the brain's tendency is to simply stop learning at the age of 25 and choose instead to rely on established neural pathways in our head rather than build new neural pathways that come from new information,

new experience, new friends, new knowledge, etc. That's an amazing thing to think about, that by the age of 25, we have essentially stopped learning unless we choose to continue learning. Now, we're here to talk about the Teachability Index. And the way that the Teachability Index kind of comes in on top of what we've talked about already

is that the Teachability Index comes in two parts. It comes through one part that focuses on your will, willingness to learn, and a second part that's focused on your willingness to change. So willingness to learn and willingness to change. Those two parts together create our individual teachability index score. Now, the way that you come up with that score is that you look at someone's willingness to learn. You basically put it on a scale of, let's say, zero to 10, and you do the same thing with their willingness to change.

When you look at my friend's son, he is a child with a very high willingness to learn. You can see that he loves surfing, he loves being out in the water, nothing seems to get him down. He has an extremely high willingness to learn. And he has a very high willingness to change because anytime he sees something work, he tries it again. Anytime he sees something not work, he changes it up. It's this maximum willingness to learn and this maximum willingness to change that makes teachability index out of this world. In comparison to that, you look at almost any adult out there, and if you have a conversation with them, you will quickly start to run into roadblocks where they

express their unwillingness to learn something new, their unwillingness to try a different news source, their unwillingness to listen to someone else's opinion, their unwillingness to have dinner with someone they disagree with. And you'll also run into their unwillingness to change, because they have a comfortable pattern. They have a comfortable process. They don't want to wake up early. They don't want to go to bed late. They don't want to miss their favorite show.

They don't want to miss their favorite drink. So as we grow older, we naturally see our teachability index start to shrink. Not because we can't learn, not because we can't change, but because we become unwilling to learn and unwilling to change. even while the children of the world out there, like my friend's very impressive son, continues to have maximum willingness to both learn and change. So scientifically speaking, if you can judge your willingness to learn on a scale of 0 to 10, and you judge your willingness to change on a scale of 0 to 10,

you take those two scores and multiply them together, and you essentially get your personal teachability. Now, I can tell you all day long the same thing that people tell me, me all day long, that we love to learn. I love to learn. I talk to people all day long who tell me that they love to learn. But just because you love to learn doesn't necessarily mean that you are willing to change. And if you look at the way that teachability is calculated, it's the willingness to learn multiplied by the willingness to change. So let's just say that we have that person who honestly loves to learn. They would do anything to learn new knowledge. But,

that same person is not willing to change. Essentially, what you have now is a person who would have a 10 in their learn category and a zero in their change category. And when you multiply 10 times zero, you get zero. That makes that person not teachable. No matter how much they want to learn, it makes them not teachable. And if you take the same score, somebody highly willing to learn, and maybe they're just a little willing to change, like a one. or a two or even a three, right? If you take that 10 times three, that's still only 30, that's less than one third of the teachability that a child has as an adult.

When you start to look at it through that simple mathematical calculation, you start to understand how it works, you realize that teachability really is something that is difficult to attain without a lot of focused consideration and focused work. Now, I did this exercise for myself, and here's where I landed. I gave myself a willingness to learn of eight and a willingness to change of eight with a total score of 64. The agency, CIA range that I could come up with for teachability is somewhere in the area of 48 and up. So essentially, if you naturally score yourself and get a 48 point score or higher,

then you're about in the same place that I would say most of the people that I served at CIA were with. If you're below 48, that doesn't really mean anything. It's just giving you a thermometer, kind of a pressure test on your current teachability. Now, there isn't enough science out there to tell us what the average teachability of an American is. But if you want to do a quick assessment of yourself right now, here's a simple way to do it. Okay, first, we have to assess your willingness to learn. Here's the one question I want to ask you to help you assess that willingness to learn. The question is this, what will you give up to gain knowledge?

What are you willing to give up to gain knowledge? Time is going to be on that list. Money would be on that list. You've got to be willing to give up your entertainment, maybe even give up parts of your ego. One thing that should not be on that list is your willingness to give up anything that keeps you healthy. You shouldn't give up water. You shouldn't give up sleep. You shouldn't give up friends in order to gain knowledge. Now, once you think of your willingness to give things up, to gain knowledge, based on that willingness, score yourself from zero to ten. Zero being,

I don't care about knowledge, therefore I'm not going to give anything up for it. And ten being, I would give up everything just to learn something new. So score yourself from zero to ten. And that's telling you your willingness to learn. Now, the second half of this is your willingness to change. So here's my question to help you assess that. What discomfort are you willing to tolerate in order to change? What discomfort are you willing to tolerate in order to change? This might include changing your daily habits, changing things that make you comfortable,

changing daily routines, daily patterns. Maybe it includes embracing a new belief, a new religious perspective, a new personal value set. It could even mean the discomfort that comes from leaving behind friends that you've had for years. The question is, what level of discomfort are you willing to tolerate in order to change? Again, score yourself from 0 to 10, with 0 being, I don't want to do anything that will make me uncomfortable. and 10 being, I would change everything just to try something new. And that's it. That's the assessment. Now you have your score for your willingness to learn. That was the first number you calculated. And your second calculation is your willingness to change.

Multiply those two numbers together. And you have essentially come up with your own personal teachability index score. Now, if you think your number is low, I don't want you to beat yourself up. Remember, I'm saying that the agency average in my experience is about a 48 and up. And I myself am only at a 64. So if you're a perfectionist and you're thinking you should have a 95, you're thinking that this is like you're back in middle school and you're supposed to get an A plus on the paper. That's not what we're talking about. We're just trying to go through a very simple exercise to come up with a number that helps us understand our personal teachability. Now, if you feel like your number is low, remember,

that teachability isn't based on your capacity to learn. It isn't even based on your capacity to change. It's based exclusively on willingness. Remember, we cover that right out of the gates. It's your willingness to learn and your willingness to change. So if you want to increase your teachability score, if you want to increase your potential to learn, all you have to do is be willing.

willing to exchange something of value for knowledge and willing to make changes that take you out of your current comfort zone. That's all it takes. You can have an incredible teachability index. You can learn to surf like that eight-year-old boy who impresses me every day. You can have that same level of achievement if you are willing to put yourself out there, to give some. something of value up for knowledge and to take yourself and put changes into your life that take you out of your current comfort zone. What we know is that we are in total control of our ability to learn. You are in total control of your ability to learn, but so is everyone else around you.

So the question becomes, are you willing to learn more faster? Or are you simply not willing to try. That is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at Everyday Spy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.