HshsGrab one tennis ball with the right hand and another tennis ball with the left hand. Imagine a horizontal line a little above your eye level. Throw the ball from the right hand towards the height of the imaginary line so that it would fall in your left hand. When the ball reaches the imaginary line, throw the left ball towards the same imaginary line height crossing in front of you to land in the right hand. For a short period, both balls will simultaneously be in the air crossing in front of you. After a split second, you will have to catch the right ball with the left hand and the left ball with the right hand. Throw, throw, catch, catch.
That is an explanation on how to start juggling 2 balls. It is a reasonably good explanation, however, what usually happens is that the person being instructed starts juggling the wrong way. The explanation is complicated and ends up being a waste of time. There is no way anyone could learn to juggle by listening to such a detailed explanation. And that is an important acknowledgement related to any learning. The learning doesn’t come from the explanation. It comes from the doing. Matthew Syed in his book “Black Box Thinking” refers to this interdependence between doing and learning, failing and succeeding as being the paradox of success. Often, we incorrectly believe that we first need to learn something to do it properly; however, in most cases, the exact opposite is true:
We need to do something to learn it properly and, we need to fail to become able to succeed.
This is a paradox worth considering.
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