Want To Be A Master? Set Out Stupidly

The difference between the fool and the master? Time. You do have to be the fool, though.

When babies are learning to speak, they actually sound out every single phoneme humanly possible. As adults, we can’t even make every phoneme possible; As evidenced by people who struggle to make sounds from their non-native language. Eventually, the babies zero in on the right sounds after overshooting and undershooting the mark wildly.

I drew a little graph to illustrate the process:

Babies Are Damn Fools

Babies go from being basically balls of mush to learning complex human language in a matter of months. This has something to do with their biology, but it also has to do with their impressive willingness to be fools. When babies start babbling, can you imagine if parents were like… “Um, that’s not even close to what ‘bathtub’ sounds like. I’m so embarrassed for you. You should stop trying to talk.”

Sounds insane, but that’s how we treat ourselves when we set out to learn something new! Also, if anyone talks to us like that, clearly there is…