There are an astonishing number of things people learn through observation.
When entering a new group or different culture, many of us start by observing how people act, what they do, and what they don’t do. It provides ideas on how to do things one had not imagined beforehand just as it shows how people things are done in that group. In this context, a habit I regularly miss in other countries is the organized way people step onto an escalator in Great Britain. It’s done to help those who want to move fast just as much as those who want to have their peace. It displays an almost instinctive collaboration between people. Observing how others do things is also one of the many ways to watch videos on YouTube, that is if one doesn’t have the opportunity to stand behind someone who plays the piano for example or when watching a golfer swing in reality is too fast.
Observing others has led to at least two ways to enhance learning.
One is a focus on techniques. It leads to looking at how things are being done as if there was a kind of template one could apply. It also is the belief in routines as patterns that need to be learned and integrated. It is the idea that one can learn something allowing one to then execute an activity as expected. Self-confidence is thus established through the sense of knowing and the ability to repeat something.
The other is a focus on what is being done. While this might sometimes seem to point at the technique it isn’t really. What that does is make the variety of cause-and-effect relationships visible. What is being done describes the reality as it happens. Noticing this information allows, for example during a golf swing, to see what didn’t work in the movement and sense how this feels. It is a way to learn, that seems to be based on making errors and becoming aware of what they were. But it is just as much there to build self-confidence through the execution of something by experiencing how it worked. The funny thing here is that errors in the execution can also lead to a gain in self-confidence when one suddenly discovers a new way to do things.
An interesting difference between both is that when executing a technique, one needs to integrate what it is for on a cognitive level. When focusing on what is being done, it integrates what it is for in the experience.
