Made in Humane Club
Lily the skunk used to practice karate every day. But after she learned the basics, she felt like she wasn’t getting anywhere. To improve, she kept pushing her body, but she kept injuring herself. One day, she would get an arm ache; the other, her skin would peel off due to the punching; and on yet another, her leg would over-stretch.
Lily was very frustrated with this. Lily’s mom noticed and asked, “What’s going on?”.
Lily said, “Hmmm…. I am feeling stuck. I am going round and round without progressing”.
Her mom replied, “What you just defined right now is called a Loop. To break out of a loop, you need an exit condition”.
Lily thought for a while, then she got an idea. She ran to her room and wrote a plan on a piece of paper:
- Loop:
- Do push-ups every day
- Do Mae Geri in order to get your legs stronger
- Do the three-in-one combo punch on the punching bag
- Do the three-in-one combo kick on the punching bag
- Try to be deft in movements when practising fights
- Exit condition:
- Do this until you are good at blocking and ducking
The next day, Lily tried her best to follow the conditions. But by the end of practice, she ended up doing 200 push-ups and got an arm ache. She realized her loop tasks weren’t well-defined. She updated her plan:
- Loop:
- Do 100 push-ups every day
- Do 20 Mae Geris in order to get your legs stronger
- Do 50 of the three-in-one combo punch
- Do 50 of the three-in-one combo kick on the punching bag
Lily tried again. For the rest of the week, she did exactly 100 push-ups, 20 Mae Geris, 50 punches, and 50 kicks, and then she cooled.
Then came Friday—her kumite fight night. During the fight, she wondered if she was blocking and ducking well. Just then, a kick hit her face! After the fight, she thought, “I need better exit conditions too. Being able to block and duck better isn’t knowable”.
She wrote:
- Exit Condition:
- Do this until you can win a fight against a black belt
Things to learn: Loops are things that repeat until a certain condition is met. But the condition needs to be clear and measurable. A fuzzy condition means the loop never knows when to stop. Some loops count a fixed number of times. Some loops run until something becomes true. Both are useful and can work together.