Material vs Method

One of my new mentors is a brilliant young man by the name of Tim Ferriss. Time does not permit me to talk about Tim. You can Google or You Tube him. I was listening to one of his TED talks. Tim has learned twelve foreign languages in just a few months. He has become an expert tango dancer and has mastered long distance swimming. Until recently he had been terrified of water. Part of what he preaches is rejecting in part the acquisition of material knowledge for learning something, and adopting instead a method that works and that can bypass this knowledge. Tim learned Japanese not by buying books on Japanese but by learning a table that had the 1000 Japanese characters on it. This is an instance of a method bypassing a well known method of learning through materials. This happened to me today. It is simplistic and stupid, yet there is a greater lesson to be learned. I was in a Starbucks in NY. Both bathrooms were occupied. I was busting at the seams, if you know what I mean. The woman’s bathroom became free and I stood there. Three more guys came to use the bathroom as well. Four guys waiting to use the mans bathroom which was occupied while the girls was free. I remembered what Tim said, to use a method that works and bypass what is supposed to be done. I turned to one of the guys and asked him to guard me as I went to the girls . Finishing up the other guy followed my example. Problem solved. This was a simple case of using a method that works over material knowledge that should have been used. Now try it on something bigger.