Improvisation

On January 15, 2009, in an event that would become known as the “Miracle on the Hudson,” US Airways Flight 1549 collided with a flock of birds, losing all thrust over the middle of New York City. There was no checklist for what to do next. No standard operating procedure existed for weaving an Airbus full of passengers through skyscrapers to ditch it in the Hudson River. And yet, everyone survived. So how did Captain Sullenberger and his crew know what to do? Were they simply “making it up” as they went—just shooting from the hip?

In aviation, we often disguise the answer to these kinds of questions with a host of euphemisms like airmanship, situational awareness, aeronautical decision making, or thinking outside the box. But the reality is that what the crew of Flight 1549 did was improvise. And it turns out that in aviation, improvisation isn’t just for emergencies—it’s woven into everything a pilot does on every flight. It exists on a spectrum, from the micro-adjustments for a gust of wind on final approach to the fluid, dynamic problem-solving required to navigate an unfamiliar airport’s traffic pattern for the first time—or a catastrophic loss of thrust over America’s densest city, where the only open space is a narrow river.

Improvising does not mean flying by the seat of your pants. True improvisation is the opposite of guessing; it is a deeply trained, neurologically grounded hallmark of expertise. It is the ability to rapidly reassemble previously mastered skills into a novel solution that perfectly fits a unique and unfolding situation. This article explores the neuroscience of this adaptive ability—and how we can cultivate the fundamental skill of improvisation to its highest form, creating pilots who are true masters of their craft.

The idea that true expertise lies in the ability to move beyond rigid structure is not unique to aviation. It is a universal principle of mastery, echoed by the greatest performers and thinkers across diverse fields. Military strategist Colonel John Boyd taught that victory belongs to those who can rapidly “destroy” their old orientations and “create” new ones to fit a fluid battlespace. Martial arts legend Bruce Lee implored his students to “be like water,” adapting to and flowing around any obstacle.

Similarly, a master jazz pianist isn’t just banging on keys at random; their improvisation flows from a deep, internalized understanding of scales, chord theory, and harmonic structure. This knowledge is so profound that they can break the rules beautifully, creating novel melodies that are surprising yet perfectly coherent.

In each case, these masters discovered the same fundamental truth, a paradox that lies at the heart of all advanced skill: one must first achieve total mastery of form before one can attain freedom from form. This freedom is not chaos or guesswork. It is an earned ability, built upon a foundation of countless hours spent mastering the fundamental structures of a craft. Before you can deconstruct the rules, you must first build them into the very fiber of your being—literally. 

The path from novice to master is not a straight line of gradual improvement, but a series of distinct cognitive shifts – with fundamentally different brain functions and processes at each stage. When we witness expert performance, we are seeing the final result of this journey. What appears to be a single, fluid response to a situation is actually the improvisational high-speed assembly of countless, previously refined sub-skills. To illustrate these cognitive shifts, we can look at the process of becoming a Master LEGO Builder.

A beginner in any domain is like a young child who has just been given their first LEGO set. Initially, they struggle even to follow the instructions. Their ability to create a coherent structure is entirely dependent on the manual, and they have no collection of spare bricks to pull from if a piece is lost. Any deviation from the instructions makes the final build weaker or incorrect, and they lack the understanding to fix it. Over time, they learn to follow the instructions precisely, but their skill remains confined to that single build.

With more experience, the beginner evolves into an apprentice. They have now mastered several different LEGO sets and can build each one efficiently, often with minimal reference to the instructions. Through this process, they have inevitably started to accumulate a “bucket” of spare bricks that they can pull from if needed. However, their ability to use this growing collection is still limited to applications from instructions. They might be able to build a simple, original creation, but it lacks the sophistication and complexity of a designed set. They still think primarily in terms of pre-designed models and have difficulty creatively combining pieces from different sets to solve a novel building challenge.

The Master Builder operates on another level entirely. They no longer need instruction manuals. They possess not only the automated skills of the apprentice but also a deep, abstract understanding of the underlying building principles—the architectural framework for how bricks connect. They have access to an entire collection of individual bricks and an understanding of the near-infinite ways they can be combined. Their knowledge is antifragile; unexpected problems are not threats but creative opportunities. They can deconstruct any model into its fundamental components and reassemble them into any shape the situation demands—creating something novel, complex, and coherent entirely from scratch.

This journey—from relying on a single instruction manual to building with an unlimited bucket of bricks—is the very essence of developing improvisational mastery. It illustrates how a pilot progresses beyond executing rigid sequences to being able to assemble novel solutions in real-time. This cognitive leap raises a critical question: What is happening at a biological level to drive these fundamental cognitive shifts? How does the brain physically transform itself to build the capacity to masterfully and coherently respond to nearly any situation it encounters? 

The journey from a clumsy beginner to a fluid expert is not metaphorical; it is a physical process of rewiring the brain. The LEGO bricks that a master uses for improvisation are not abstract concepts but tangible neural circuits, forged and maintained through specific biological processes.

When a pilot first learns a new skill, like a pre-landing checklists, the task is slow, clumsy, and requires immense conscious effort. This is because the brain is building a new electrical circuit from scratch. This construction happens in distinct phases. First, through a process called dendritic arborization, neurons grow new branches, creating an initial, messy web of potential connections as the brain explores which pathways are needed for the skill.

With focused practice, the brain begins to optimize this network. The specific pathways that are repeatedly activated become stronger and more reliable through synaptic strengthening, while unused connections are simultaneously weakened and removed through a process called synaptic pruning. This dual process ensures that the resulting neural circuit is both highly efficient and precise. Finally, and most critically for expert performance, the brain wraps these well-traveled circuits in a fatty sheath of myelin. This process, myelination, acts as a biological super-charger, insulating the neural pathway and allowing electrical signals to travel up to 100 times faster and with near-perfect fidelity.

The result of this process is the creation of what is known as a skill chunk—a single, consolidated, lightning-fast neural circuit that executes without conscious thought, achieving a state known as automaticity. This is the biological process that turns a student’s clumsy, multi-step flare into an expert’s single, fluid motion. For the purpose of our analogy, this myelinated skill chunk can be represented as a single LEGO brick.

Additionally, this neural architecture is not permanent. The brain is ruthlessly efficient and does not waste metabolic energy maintaining circuits that go unused. If a skill is not practiced—meaning the specific neural pathways that form the skill chunk are not repeatedly activated—the process reverses. Synaptic connections weaken, and the myelin sheath begins to degrade. This is the biological reality of the “use it or lose it” principle. The once‑solid LEGO brick becomes brittle, harder to find, and may even disappear from the bucket entirely—shrinking the library of “bricks” available for improvisation.

A bucket full of individual LEGO bricks is not enough to build a masterpiece. The Master Builder also needs a deep understanding of how those bricks can connect—an architectural blueprint. In the brain, this blueprint is what cognitive scientists call a mental representation, or what neuroscientists refer to as a schema.

A schema is not a single thing stored in one location. It is a vast, distributed network of interconnected skill chunks—the building blocks for everything we know how to do, recognize, and recall—all linked by strengthened neural pathways. You can think of it as the brain’s internal mind map showing how all the LEGO bricks fit together. These networks are highly domain‑specific; for example, the intricate schema behind a pilot’s understanding of aerodynamics is stored in a different neural network than the one for playing a musical instrument or sport.

This elaborate network enables the brain to function as a powerful Predictive Processing engine. Instead of passively waiting for information, the trained brain constantly uses its schema to generate sophisticated predictions about what should happen next—the sound of the engine at a certain power setting, the feel of the controls in a turn, the sight picture on final approach. These ingrained expectations let the brain quickly judge whether a prebuilt, proceduralized response will do the job—or if a novel solution must be assembled.

The brain’s predictive engine is constantly checking: “Is this what I expected?” When the answer is no—as with unexpected traffic, unforecasted weather, or a sudden runway closure—it generates a powerful prediction‑error signal, an internal alarm that something new must be addressed.

This biological “mismatch alarm” triggers a crucial shift in the brain’s large‑scale networks. It suppresses the Default Mode Network (DMN)—whose rigid, routine‑based processing is like following a specific LEGO instruction—and activates the Executive Control Network (ECN). This allows the pilot to access their entire LEGO bucket, the full library of skill chunks that can be drawn on to assemble a novel solution. 

The rapid neurological shift from the brain’s default, procedural network to the executive control network is the mechanism of improvisation. The pilot does not feel this complex neural exchange. Their subjective sensation is one of “flow”—time slowing down, the feeling of just knowing what to do. Sometimes it’s a small, rapid shift to grab a few “bricks” for a minor deviation from the flight plan. Other times, it’s a massive, system‑wide response demanding immediate, decisive action to stay alive.

It logically follows that the more skill chunks—or “bricks”—in a pilot’s cognitive bucket, the more raw material they have to build a solution. The master aviator can handle a vast array of unexpected or novel situations precisely because their bucket is so extensive. In contrast, when a novice is presented with a deviation, their smaller collection of “bricks” limits their options, slows their reaction, and increases the likelihood of taking the wrong action—or simply not knowing what to do.

But having more “bricks” is not simply a matter of being exposed to more situations. The “bricks” themselves—the skill chunks—are physical collections of neurons that have been repeatedly activated with sufficient intensity and attentional engagement to drive biological processes like dendritic arborization and myelination. This biological hardwiring requires the continuous, focused effort of deliberate practice. Without targeted effort, simply logging flight time does not guarantee any new, durable “bricks” will be created.

Now that we have an understanding of some of the neuroscience behind improvisation, the question becomes: how is it actually developed? The conventional approach is to accumulate flight experience. For example, to receive an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate, a pilot must log at least 1500 hours of flight time. Yet this requirement is hardly more than a “statistical prayer.” The underlying assumption is that if a pilot reaches this number without a significant violation or crash, they should have gained the experience and judgment necessary for safe airline operations—in other words, this time in the air will automatically fill their cognitive bucket with enough LEGO bricks to handle any situation they might encounter.

The time requirement itself seems to recognize its own weakness: pilots from university programs only need 1200 hours, and military pilots just 750. There’s something about these different training pathways that has been recognized to fill the LEGO bucket with fewer flight hours—undermining the entire premise of the rule. Obviously, there is something else at play, and it is clear that the nature of the activity itself is what determines how effectively those “bricks” are developed.

Instead of waiting for improvisational abilities to emerge from the passage of time, we can adopt targeted methods that maximize the rate and breadth of acquiring the LEGO bricks. The objective is to deliberately engineer a vast and diverse collection of automated skills and the deep schemas that connect them. The larger and more varied the collection of “bricks” in a pilot’s cognitive bucket, the greater their capacity to deconstruct novel problems and improvise effective solutions. 

To achieve this new goal, we need a framework designed specifically for engineering these neural structures. One effective method is the application of what I call Training Loops, a concept I detail in my paper, “The Right Stuff: Redefining How to Train Pilots.” This framework systematically builds skills by moving through distinct phases—from active observation and rehearsal (Follow-Along), to isolated refinement (Drill), and finally to integrated application (Do). This structure provides a deliberate path for skill acquisition, carefully managing cognitive load while targeting the construction of individual skill chunks.

For the goal of rapidly expanding our LEGO brick collection, the Follow‑Along phase is uniquely powerful. The use of cockpit video can accelerate the acquisition of skill chunks with unmatched efficiency because it taps directly into the brain’s innate learning mechanisms.

First, when a pilot watches a pre‑recorded task, their mirror neuron system activates motor regions of their brain, creating a neurological template for the skill before they ever attempt it. Second, the ability to isolate and loop a short video clip provides the exact kind of high‑quality, focused repetition needed to drive myelination and forge a durable, automated skill chunk. Flight footage essentially offers “experience by proxy”—allowing a pilot to study correct execution, recognize mistakes, and analyze unique challenges—building their library of “bricks” and enriching their predictive schemas far more rapidly and broadly than through direct flight experience alone.

This understanding naturally leads to a permanent shift in how we think about “experience.” Most people assume an experienced pilot is someone who has “seen it all” and knows what to do in different situations because they’ve been through them before. While that outcome is true, neuroscience shows that what we call “experience” is actually the result of an extensive collection of neural skill chunks and a well‑developed schema—the LEGO bricks in a pilot’s cognitive collection—that enable rapid, adaptive improvisation. And because these structures can be deliberately engineered through targeted methods, the traditional definition of experience as accumulated flight time becomes obsolete—replaced by a new standard: pilots whose ability to improvise in any situation can be intentionally built, one neural circuit at a time.