The Amateur's Mind #2 - Self Awareness
Before we begin our journey to self-improvement, we must first be in tune with ourself. Without this important prerequisite knowledge and awareness, we cannot hope to achieve the level that we desire. New learning that we undertake without strong self-awareness will merely be a pot of spaghetti thrown against the wall to see what sticks. Improvement may happen, however it would be more coincidental than conscious.
I would like to expose the readers to 3 things that can make us more aware of ourself and what we are doing. Understanding these concepts will take time, and must be done deliberately and consciously at first. After some time and practice, these will become subconscious actions which will allow our mind to more fully attend to the task at hand.
1. Metacognition
Metacognition can be defined as “knowing about knowing” or “understanding what we know”. This concept should be a cornerstone of all improvement, be it games, music, or a career. To improve what we know, we need to understand both what we know and what we don't know along with a level of confidence. For example, in SC2, I know that I need to improve my scouting, map control, and countering enemy units, while my overall macro and opening until about 4-5 minutes is pretty solid, although it isn't great. Once we know what needs work the most, we can dedicate our time to working on that one facet that will bring the most improvement per unit of time spent.
2. Self-reflection
This may seem obvious, but objective self-reflection and critique can be very difficult for people who are aversive to criticism, have low self-esteem, or are otherwise delusional. For starters, one could think of one thing good and one thing bad they did in the last game/event/test etc. The next time the same situation arises, one can then be aware that “Last game I needed to do X so I'll do it this time”. After the second trial, we can reflect on whether we did better or not and repeat the process going forward.
3. Blind Spots
This is what separates learning from education. Learning is a personal cognitive process, while education is a systematic set of instructor facilitated events. Both have the same end, but an educator provides a second set of eyes for the student to point out both strengths and shortcomings. We can read the entirety of TeamLiquid.net by ourselves but never reach masters because there are certain traits of our play (especially negative) that we are simply not aware of. This is both normal and natural. Humanist philosophers believe that reality can only be defined by the person experiencing it. When we play with others, especially with PMS/H2O members, we have the special opportunity to have others experience our play. Even players multiple divisions below us could potentially point out weaknesses that we did not know about.
While this is no manifesto of how to be fully self aware, these three things should help any players who feel 'stuck' at a certain point to break down what is going on, both good and bad, and have an educated idea as to where to go from that point.
Next time...Action Plans!
I would like to expose the readers to 3 things that can make us more aware of ourself and what we are doing. Understanding these concepts will take time, and must be done deliberately and consciously at first. After some time and practice, these will become subconscious actions which will allow our mind to more fully attend to the task at hand.
1. Metacognition
Metacognition can be defined as “knowing about knowing” or “understanding what we know”. This concept should be a cornerstone of all improvement, be it games, music, or a career. To improve what we know, we need to understand both what we know and what we don't know along with a level of confidence. For example, in SC2, I know that I need to improve my scouting, map control, and countering enemy units, while my overall macro and opening until about 4-5 minutes is pretty solid, although it isn't great. Once we know what needs work the most, we can dedicate our time to working on that one facet that will bring the most improvement per unit of time spent.
2. Self-reflection
This may seem obvious, but objective self-reflection and critique can be very difficult for people who are aversive to criticism, have low self-esteem, or are otherwise delusional. For starters, one could think of one thing good and one thing bad they did in the last game/event/test etc. The next time the same situation arises, one can then be aware that “Last game I needed to do X so I'll do it this time”. After the second trial, we can reflect on whether we did better or not and repeat the process going forward.
3. Blind Spots
This is what separates learning from education. Learning is a personal cognitive process, while education is a systematic set of instructor facilitated events. Both have the same end, but an educator provides a second set of eyes for the student to point out both strengths and shortcomings. We can read the entirety of TeamLiquid.net by ourselves but never reach masters because there are certain traits of our play (especially negative) that we are simply not aware of. This is both normal and natural. Humanist philosophers believe that reality can only be defined by the person experiencing it. When we play with others, especially with PMS/H2O members, we have the special opportunity to have others experience our play. Even players multiple divisions below us could potentially point out weaknesses that we did not know about.
While this is no manifesto of how to be fully self aware, these three things should help any players who feel 'stuck' at a certain point to break down what is going on, both good and bad, and have an educated idea as to where to go from that point.
Next time...Action Plans!
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