Many now Benchmark physical progress...Benchmarking Mental Models?

Benchmarking Physical progress

Billed as "the easiest way to track your performance on benchmark workouts for CrossFitters, weight lifters, runners, rowers, and other serious athletes. Get some!," the website Bnchmrk.me let's people easily track their physical performance over time.

Capitalizing on the CrossFit Games Open's first workout (and some sparkling photography courtesy Ali Samieivafa), Bnchmrk created a nice graphic arguing for the power of data collection. When a person can take a look across time at how they perform at various workouts, they have real access to a and are in a position to take a critical look at what's working and what isn't. Variables in performance can be isolated and meaningful changes to work, rest, nutrition can be implemented.

Knowledge, indeed, is seeing how much you've improved between 11.1 and 14.1. The CrossFit Games Open included a workout it had previously demanded of its competitors. I'll bet most of the people who did both workouts will do better this next time around. And I'll also wager that CrossFit selected that workout again as a way to make the not-so-subtle point that it works as an exercise regiment.

Setting the bar high.

One philosopher has asserted that, in philosophy at least, to know only the gist is to know nothing. That's a pretty high bar to attain. And, I'll admit it was a little daunting, though not really discouraging, to consider what he meant. The CrossFit Games Open workout 14.1 doesn't set the bar too high in terms of the work it demands: 75 pound power snatches and jump-roping double-unders (when the rope swings under the feet twice each jump) are attainable by a large segment of the general population. Of course, each person set her own bar quite high in trying to reach her maximum potential in completing these exercises.

Recently, a man I admire set the bar even higher regarding what it would take to have a handle on what I've taken to calling CharlieMunger's Mental Models. This very smart man counseled me that I shouldn't focus "so much on the individual items of your checklist as on the general idea behind them." So far so good.

Like the philosopher I cited above, though, knowing 'the gist' of the general idea isn't nearly enough. Instead, my friend cited the Japanese proverb (he also cited Wittgenstein, but this post is already a little heavy on philosophy): “The frog in a well knows nothing of the mighty ocean." He offered the New York Times Crossword puzzle as a good metaphor for the real multi-domain, holistic fluency mastering Munger's Mental Models requires. "Those [who] can complete it must have massive knowledge across multiple domains: the English language, literature, pop culture, etc. Bring anything less than that broad domain base of understanding, and it can’t be done." He thought this a good metaphor because it's easily recognized as a yes or no proposition: one either has sufficient knowledge or one doesn't. "If you don’t," he added, "no dice."  

Across many domains & disciplines.

My friend described the challenge of attaining what Munger would call 'worldly wisdom' this way: "understanding life realities requires actually knowing the mighty ocean, at the NY Times crossword level or 'no dice'."  Learning the mighty ocean isn't easy. Doing so demands that we digest "the big ideas from all domains." 

Yes or No. And BroReps are no.

The idea that you either have the capacity or you don't might have been penned by Greg Glassman. His definition of fitness was radical in that it was a) empirical, and b) aimed at comprehensiveness. 

Contrast Glassman's notion of fitness with this: "true levels of fluency required -  across broad domains -  in order to genuinely understand the world’s complex systems is well beyond the scope of structured courses within an educational institution.  Rather, a full commitment of one’s entire life, within and outside of school years, is required."

One thinker puts the matter this way, "'Judgement', the ability to think, appears first not in merely being aware that information is to be used, that it is a capital and not a stock, but in the ability to use it — the ability to invest it in answering questions."

To have any hope of grasping complex systems as Munger has requires us to "agree to approach [our] learning in a way fundamentally different than the rest of the world, i.e, not by the usual route of being devoted to one main specialty, with some things thrown in on the side, but rather holistically, and committing to that journey for a lifetime." 

The way people benchmark in CrossFit is pretty clear. And pretty amazing. I'd love to hear how people working with Munger's mental models benchmark their intellectual progress. Whatever it looks like, I'm sure the intellectual equivalent of BroReps are 'no dice.'