How to Train Your Dragon? Part-1 - Habitual Excellence

How to Train Your Dragon?

Part-1 - Habitual Excellence

On the eve of Christmas in 2013, near midnight I was alone in the laboratory at a sprawling industrial campus. I got there after a great evening and wanted to continue the tradition of ending great days with science.

I was perhaps the only engineer at the campus other than the security. As luck has it, the first life from a promising device was measured that day. My senses were filled with joy, as the bet on a new setup and a long conviction process with the sponsors paid off. As the scans were showing signs of life, I asked why I was there in the first place. .

I also had this question, how do I get this scientific euphoria to the next generation, especially my yet unborn child. I quickly scribbled some ideas and wanted to experiment with actual students. I wrote a list of 10 questions that probe a child's curiosity and sent them off to listserv that emailed a few thousand engineers. I offered to teach physics to any kid who passes the test.

This started my 10 year long experiment to find the answer to "how to train your dragon?" - an ambitious project to find a method to teach (physics to) young minds

Below is the summary of my findings on the project ‘how to train your dragon’. Dragon being the extraordinary miracle of a curious child's brain that absorbs everything around them with an appetite that no engineered system has come close to. You may find that child is a metaphor since many never stop being a child.?

The learning is from teaching 12 students of high caliber and well-adjusted by age 9 into a learning process. They are only selected for curiosity. In fact I like to work with curious children rather than effortless ones. The ones who ask questions rather than simply ace the system. So far, the ‘children’ have entered CS/Physics/Math programs at Cambridge, Princeton, Caltech, Berkeley. Each student spends nearly 5-7 years in the program, working 4 hours a week on physics/math/algorithms.? They went on to publish 4 papers in international conferences in photonics and spintronics, and wrote a total of ~20 patents in electronics. To my astonishment, they have continued the classes even as the world around them shut down in COVID, they attended classes on a new year eve and also on thanksgiving because they find immense joy in learning. Watching them grow from learning basic algebra to dragons that take on might problems is a joy to experience.

The framework I came up with is a simple model that peels the onion on how a child/person goes on the journey from a normal (inner) child to one of routine excellence, habitual excellence, intentional mastery & to a passionate purpose driven transcendental individual.

The framework has a series of progressive stages with ingredients namely Routine, Habits, Agency and Autonomy, Values, Passion, Purpose and finally the transcendental teacher/learner.

Stage 1 : Routine Formation

Step 1 of this process is what I call, the step of routine formation. There is a strong component of the lottery of human birth and being raised by his/her growth-parents. This is a core inner spark humans are born with, one of curiosity. Sometimes this is augmented by parents or influencers who teach a routine. Humans benefit from the long gestation period that usually really only ends near ages 4-5, and are constantly watching the emotional, intellectual and spiritual makeup of their parents and home. Many times this is inbuilt into the person’s thought patterns. These are mundane things like making your bed, daily cleanliness, but they have the power to set the stage for what comes next. Some great examples are Lincoln after he met his mother (birth mother has passed away in his infancy) [1] who raised him, Teddy Roosevelt and his father, Obama and his grand-parents [3] . This phase creates a routine, the routine can be one of mundane daily work (physical, sleep hygiene to simple habits such as making a cleanly tucked bed).

Routine formation gives the greatest reward one can get on this planet. This is one of time, the only resource that cannot be changed, controlled, traded, mined or created ! A routine creates a lot of free time. Free time where the child is bored and unengaged in a structured activity creates the “gift of time to think and play”. Time and constraints are often described as the root of creativity. By creating the first resource in abundance, a well formed routine sets up for a lifetime of creativity. Routine creates a boring vacuum where the child's mind can play with ideas. Bertrand Russell used to climb a birch tree and watch the world hanging upside down. Childish play time has a profound impact on the openness and elasticity later on.

Stage 2: Habit Formation?

Step 2 of the process is the formation of Habits. These are habits that can last a lifetime. Some become habitual singers, some habitual questioners, some habitual readers or habitual scribblers. These habits last a lifetime like a net of background pixels to which the child (or inner child) goes when she/he has time to spend. Habits can become hobbies but hobbies change with time and curiosity. But the habits that evolve out of a good routine last a lifetime.?

Gandhi for example was a habitual walker [5] who went for long walks during free time in his childhood. It is not a miracle that he went back to his oldest habit to take a walk to the sea to make salt. That walk known as ‘Dandi March’ [6] shook an empire since it showed the hollowness of the imperial rules which denied basic human activity. Often great scientists fondly remember the habits they had as children. This may not be an accident, but early childhood habits can help with how an individual solves a problem later in life.?

Would not doing fewer things make children lazy ? isn't that against modern teaching/parenting ? In the modern world free time is rare. Parenting has become an art of filling the entire time with activities.

One of my long term mentors, a habitual walker (and a pioneer in computational lithography), Dr. Vivek Singh summarizes the prioritization process as "Do one thing and do it well". Embraced also as the guiding principle [7] behind the UNIX movement, the teaching is to pick fewer things to do but do them extremely well.

The kid picks what he wants to do next, read a book on x, make a cartoon, make a complex Lego set and so on. Early childhood education essentially needs to drive the creation of this agency. This is one of the salient things emphasized in the Montessori system.

An agent, a child who sets his own agenda and goals is a miracle. This is the real step where a guided learner acquires "Natural General intelligence". In our technological pursuit for AGI, we ought not ignore our biggest gift as a species, our natural intelligence.?

Stage 3: Formation of Agency and Autonomy create Habitual Excellence?

The next step, Step3, is a Natural agency. A key feature of this agency is it is purposeless. Ask a child, “Why are you reading comic books ?” Usually the reaction is one of perplexment. “Do I need a reason to read ?” is the answer. These are things done for intrinsic happiness and not with an expectation to receive a material goal. This agency has nothing to do with goals or specific purposes. This step is often skipped by education by motivating children through fear of exams, fear of competition. Forcing agency can produce results uncorrelated with later active life of the person. We all know that wonderkid who dropped out of X because the champion figure was satisfied with the outcomes. It's therefore key to create a natural spark in the child. Encourage self-drive even at the cost of slower progress. Creating the Natural agency is well worth the extra time it takes.

The child with agency starts setting goals that are at the edge of her ability. Often pushing to that extra level of a game, extra complex drawing, that more complex problem set. This unlocks purpose drive learning. But before we jump to purpose, there are two key stages. Agency and autonomy, allows a child to set his goals (much like agents in AGI), she/he also has the time that’s created by good routines. She/he also has habits such as reading, painting, questioning, and physical activity which create inner happiness. Agency and autonomy, provide a gift to create goals and also the ability to work hard to achieve them.

The first three steps (Routine, Habits, Agency and Autonomy) when practiced are often sufficient for reaching “Habitual Excellence”.

A habitually excellent child/person does things because she/he has a habit of doing well whatever they intend to do. For them excellence is a habit, it is not an accident.

World needs habitually excellent people to maintain its own habit of continuous progress to operate better. A habitually excellent engineer or a teacher or an ICU nurse over their lifetime will save/create/help lives of numerous people. This is the foundational bedrock of education.

Stopping at stage 3 is often the end goal of education in many cultures. A successful teacher, coach, analyst, doctor, engineer or politician is what normal education targets. Since education has been a mass medium for most of the length of human civilization barring the guru-shishya tradition of the east.?

From the ancient success of Venice to Taxila, modern miracles created in Silicon Valley, Singapore and Bangalore, habitual excellence is what the world counts on for its progress. We hope and expect that a fraction of the students become habitually excellent, self motivated, agents of learning and change.?

However, the arch of technology and humanity is profoundly impacted by the next two stages of learning, namely the Intentional masters and Transcendental masters. These learners change the arch of history by creating enduring change. Consider the contributions of Arnold Sommerfeld [8], Joseph John Thomson [9] and Madam Curie [10] who between them trained 16 (4+9+3) Nobel laureates and more than 20 physicists who collectively contributed to physics as much as entire civilizations have in their hundreds of years of prosperity.

Personal Values and universal purpose are the secret ingredients for the Intentional and Transcendental mastery. Successful “Habitually Excellent’ folks make a great economy, perhaps even a caring society but not a great thriving civilization. One needs personal values, passion and universal purpose to from "Habitual Excellence" to "Intentional Mastery".

The missing ingredient is a set of personal values evolved from self-direction and a passion and purpose addressing universal goodness. I will cover the next two phases, in the next article.

[1] https://www.history.com/news/the-two-mothers-who-molded-lincoln

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Turbulent-Doris-Kearns-Goodwin/dp/1476795924

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_from_My_Father

[4] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Autobiography/SlMrmmrNuEoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Bertrand+Russell+climb+tree&pg=PA33&printsec=frontcover

[5] https://www.amazon.com/Gandhi-Autobiography-Story-Experiments-Truth/dp/0807059099

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Sommerfeld

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Thomson

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie