"When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal...
For in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose."
- Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
We’ve heard it a thousand times as coaches:
“That move is harder because I am short.”
“That route is run-out.”
“My fingers are too weak.”
And although these sound like excuses, they might be better understood as judgments based on incomplete information. In Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, he introduces the concept of “What You See Is All There Is,” or WYSIATI. it's a basic human tendency… We want to make sense of every situation, and we want to make sense of it right now.
I used to listen to a lot of podcasts about successful business owners and entrepreneurs. One of the things that kept coming up is that these people had fairly basic habits and skills and yet were massively successful. Why was I not massively successful? I got up early in the morning, made a three-bullet to-do list, meditated for five minutes, and drank coffee made from mushrooms…
What I am not seeing when I get this glimpse into a life via a 90 minute interview is the survivorship bias that came into this person's success, their upbringing, their friend network, and the very random chance that they were in the right place at the right time.
Climbers tend to do this when they look at what an elite level performer is doing in a video. If I watch a video of Hamish MacArthur training, it's easy for me to just assume I need to copy that exact workout to bring my level up. Instead of assessing all of the possible places where he is a better climber than I am, I just start adding volume to my training, more high intensity single arm work, and super complex boulders. The result, of course, is that I don't progress the way I expected to. The reason is that I'm not considering all of the thousand other factors that might come into another person’s performance. Hope, it turns out, is not a strategy.
At Climb Strong, our incoming athletes are frequently put through a multi-part screen to help the coaches understand limiting performance factors. Although we understand the principles strength training and put a lot of effort into it, we also understand that an athlete's comparative finger strength (them vs. a database of other climbers) has very little to do with where they need to be spending their time training.
If the only piece of data I get as a climbing athlete is where my peak force numbers are, compared to other athletes, I risk over-focusing on trying to get my finger strength where those numbers say it “should” be. At the same time, I still go to the crag or boulders unprepared, do a terrible job of recovering between workouts, ignore my mobility training, and wrestle with fear. What I see is all there is.
In the WYSIATI trap, I tend to trust my first impressions and fail to consider that there are other possible explanations for my results. I tend to get talked into the wrong pathway simply because it makes sense based on the data I have.
This is partially why we created the Performance Wheel. This is a simple tool that our coaches use to remind themselves that there is more to training than physical fatigue. When we look at an athlete, we are looking at strategy and tactics, positioning, mindset, goal orientation, and the ability to move in a way that helps them climb up rocks. Yes, we like to have strong fingers, but that's not the whole game.
The wonderful thing about building out a complete training program that includes things like mindset, tactics, mobility, and positioning, is that there are multiple things we can work on simultaneously with them interfering with each other. If we are too focused on physical development, we can very easily end up in a situation where we truly are attempting to develop conflicting abilities, spending too much time in one area, or flat out doing too much.
Stepping back and using a tool like the wheel, a checklist, a trusted friend, or even a simple video analysis can make a world of difference.
When you are looking at your own training and habits, it's essential that when you get to a decision-making point, you ask what information might be missing. If you are looking at another climber and comparing yourself to them, make sure you consider all of the ways that they are different from you and not just one simple facet of their climbing. It is of great value to seek out evidence that contradicts what you are starting to believe. This single habit might change the way you progress and perform.
"You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it." - Daniel Kahneman