Beta for everywhere

on working smarter (not harder) as a rock climber and home-seeker

Wes tries, and fails, to climb up a wall

Rock climbing is mostly failure. And falling. This may come as a surprise to you if your vision of the sport is formed by flashy Instagram brag posts and films like Free Solo. Those are the highlights, the evidence of thousands of hours of effort and practice, the exceptions to the rule. What is the rule, you ask? Falling. We all fail and fall.

When I introduce how central failure is to climbing, many people exhibit surprise or concern. Which surprises me, to be honest. Failure is the hallmark attribute of any practice of a skill. If you could safely reach base by hitting a pitch in baseball in more than 1/3 of your plate appearances, you’d be a hall of fame candidate. If you’re trying to learn a language, then saying the wrong thing is actually more informative than lucking into saying the right thing. If learning is the goal, then failure shouldn’t be cause for concern. Failure is, of course, how we learn.

Studying failure

The question in climbing, of course, is how well you can learn from your failure. When you fall off of a route, will you be able to understand why?

If you watch other people rock climb, you might be deceived by how expert climbers make difficult routes look seamless and easy. Just like watching expert athletes in other sports — Serena at Wimbledon or LeBron with a chasedown block in the NBA Finals — the pros make the difficult seem easy. But talk to another pro about what you’re observing and you’ll start to realize exactly how much complexity is hiding in plain sight when a difficult feat looks “easy.”

As a beginner climber (myself, two years ago), my eyes were drawn to the essential elements of watching someone climb: where hands and feet were placed, how a torso swung or slid across the wall. As an intermediate climber (myself, now), I pay more attention to what direction a climber’s hips face, how close their hips get to the wall, the shape and angle of their arms and shoulders. Seeing as I am not an expert climber (yet), I don’t even know what expert climbers observe when they watch someone else climb.

So when someone falls off of a route they’re trying to climb, my observations as an intermediate climber are more detailed than they were when I was a beginner. Failure, in one perspective, is a binary state — either you finish (or “send”¹) the climb or not. But the more I learn about climbing, the more I notice about how some “successful” efforts use techniques and strategies that might be less efficient than some “failed” climbs. Sometimes I fall off the wall while carefully practicing “good” hip technique. And sometimes I successfully “send” that same route while utilizing more brute strength and “bad” hip technique. Between those two attempts, which was the “failure?”

In the long run, my improvement as a climber has far more to do with my ability to implement efficient hip technique than my ability to use brute strength to finish a tricky route. Accordingly, my improvement as a climber has everything to do with my ability to diagnose my failures and learn from them. In other words, not all “failures” are equally instructive: my perspective on and experience with a specific failure helps me understand that failure and adapt accordingly.

Brute strength

My point: being able to apply more brute force to solve or “send” a climbing problem can be counterproductive in the long-run. If you’re too used to just muscling through a difficult sequence, you won’t learn the techniques that will help you further down the road. Because eventually, you’ll encounter a problem that can’t be solved just with stronger grip or better core stability. And the stronger you are, the more likely you are to misunderstand failure and have an underdeveloped understanding of the fundamental techniques of the sport.

This isn’t to say that strength is not useful to climbers! Of course it is. Of course you need to improve your tendon resilience, contact strength, finger strength, etc. But simultaneously, the vast majority of climbing solutions depend on better technique rather than simply more strength.

Beta

I was once advised to ask myself, whenever I fall off of a climbing problem, why I fell off. Before I can get back on the problem and try again, I must have some kind of idea that I’ll then test when I try again. Rather than just relying on instinct and guesswork, this advice was to test hypotheses. Such a simple climbing technique that I wish I’d thought of it myself… but it’s harder than you might assume to actually stick to this advice. Why? Because you’re moving, you have momentum, the wall is right there, you’re ready to go, and you might as well just try! Pausing to reflect is hard and unnatural for most of us.

The collected answers to why we might be failing is called “beta.”² Knowing the “beta” of a specific climbing problem means knowing how to position your body and implement your strength or flexibility to “send” the route. Which hand to put where, whether to use momentum or move statically, how to pull with the toe or heel just so… Sometimes beta can be extremely granular and detailed (“use the left side of your big toe” or “grab a half inch to the left”), and sometimes it can be as simple as “use your other hand” or “place your foot on a higher nub.”

I’m 6’3” (~191cm) but climb with friends who are shorter than I am (one of them took the video of me embedded above!). My limbs are different lengths than theirs. So even though we may all be working on the same climbing problem/route, our “beta” might look dramatically different due to our abilities. Sometimes I’ll need to use brute force to account for my lack of flexibility, or my friend Tony will need to jump where I only need to reach. Our “beta” for the same climbing problem might be dramatically different. But it’s helpful for us to climb together because seeing how someone else solves a problem gives me insight into my own strategies and reflects my own failure back to me in a way that’s easier to understand.³

Beta for everywhere

And now maybe you’re starting to see how this slow curve I’ve been pitching to you is starting to drift back over home plate.⁴ Because learning how to navigate your home, your neighborhood, the physical world as we encounter it… It’s all about “beta.” It’s all about solving problems by understanding fit and flow, not simply brute force.

Money is the housing market’s brute force. For the vast majority of people, solving a problem around their house is a matter of throwing money at it. And that can be very effective, of course! Money solves all kinds of issues, no question! But as with climbing, is brute force the best or wisest solution to all problems? Of course not. In fact, those of us with large amounts of money tend to be especially stupid in understanding our fit into our environment. And what do you do when money/brute force can’t solve a problem? Where do you turn then?

In the process of finding a house to live in and call home, there’s no substitute for the patient work of attaining wisdom about how you fit into your environment. That is not a problem that can be solved just by buying the biggest and best house. Finding a home is a problem that demands good beta, and good beta means understanding both yourself and the environment you’re trying to fit into. Because we all fit just a little bit differently, right? And if you use someone else’s beta instead of testing out your own… it’ll get uncomfortable in a snap.

Just like with climbing, I think we all need a good coach in our corner when we’re trying to find a place to call home. Not just someone who can help us get a good deal or get to closing on time (all important things, of course!), but a guide who can help us pay attention to the things that matter that we might be overlooking. Someone who can help us use our resources wisely (not just efficiently). Someone who sees and understands our limits and failures, and helps us adopt healthy strategies for integrating them into our movement sustainably.

I can come up with millions of examples of bad beta in the housing world, mostly because they’re so glaringly awful. There are whole blogs dedicated to this. But good beta for homes works a bit differently. I have plenty of examples, of course, but they often are kinda boring. When people fit their environment, when they’ve found a home they belong in, they often simply appear to be… weightless. Being home isn’t a constant rush of endorphins and manic celebratory energy. Being home is, instead, like having a routine of watering your plants. It’s like keeping a blanket near your dog’s favorite spot on the floor of the living room. Being home doesn’t demand hurry. Being home doesn’t inspire shame. Being home is healthy equilibrium. Being home… you fill in the blank. Leave a comment with your example of good home beta!

What Wes is into

Three things, for now:

1. Non-DnD RPGs, like Microscope and Neon Black. I enjoy DnD, of course! But a friend of mine has been hosting a few sessions of these games recently and… wow, I’m amazed at the power of make believe all over again. To be surprised and even enchanted by a story we mutually share and tell together, live and in person, is nothing short of magical. Are the stories we produce particularly “good?” Who knows and who cares! I’m just hugely appreciative of the chance to create new, surprising stories with friends.

2. May in Philadelphia is nothing short of idyllic. The weather is warm in the day and cool in the evening, the mosquitos haven’t awakened yet, and the days are long. I’ve been grilling a lot, and shared my favorite NYT Cooking recipe with some friends who came to town for a visit on Saturday. Divine.

3. The Zone of Interest. The film was nominated for an Oscar or two, so it was on my radar. But the speech that the makers gave (!) after winning for Best Sound (!!) marked it as a must-watch, and boy am I glad I did. Can’t say I want to see it again (does anyone rewatch Schindler’s List?), but I’m still reeling from the weight of this film. Give it a shot, if you have some space emotionally to reflect on themes like complicity and aesthetic beauty and genocide.

I’m both energized and stressed every time I send one of these newsletters. I love writing, but also feel burdened by years of submitting papers for grading in school. It’s hard to learn to write just for the free joy of it, rather than to meet a standard. Hence it’s been hard for me to publish consistently. I hope to put more out there this summer. Hearing from you, dear reader, is probably the best thing in the world to me as a writer. I love hearing how this meets you and how you’re responding. Drop a line!

Thanks for reading!

-Wes

1. I don’t know why “send is climber slang for reaching the top of a route. Maybe it’s short for “ascend?” Hmm. If you have insight into the etymology of climbing terms, leave a comment!

2. I DO know the etymology of “beta!” According to Wikipedia, back in the 80s, climbers would videotape their strategies of climbing specific routes onto Betamax tapes and share them with each other. Ergo, now those strategies are called “beta.”

3. In that video of me climbing, the trick I’m trying to work out is how to slide over to the right over my right foot — the part where I fall off, lol. My ankles and hips aren’t super flexible, so I’m struggling to get my weight into a position that would allow me to use those tiny hand holds to stay on the wall. I still haven’t figured it out, send me your beta.

4. This is a “Capon-ism,” a turn of phrase I picked up from Robert Farrar Capon. I don’t think it’s all that poetic of a phrase, but it sure does describe my writing style sometimes… slow curves that eventually make it back to the strikezone. Also… “home” plate. Ha! Because this is a newsletter about homes.