Learning how to learn
Get MUCH better at learning, even when you think it's already your superpower...
I was always one of the bright kids in school. Learning for me seemed easy until it just wasn’t easy anymore. In college, I hit the wall on several fronts. My natural unwillingness to study after class conspired with difficult material to learn, and no one to spoon-feed me knowledge. That put my problems with learning into sharp focus.
It didn’t occur to me that I had never learned how to learn. I blamed holes in my math skills on a high school Algebra teacher I didn’t like. I had no clue how to learn from large-scale lecture classes. I had forgotten all the things I learned “just for the test”. The only study I did was a cram session before a test. My problems with learning were someone else’s fault or just bad circumstances. I wasn’t failing exactly… but I wasn’t learning either.
I decided enough was enough and joined the Marine Corps. That is one of the best decisions I ever made, for a LOT of reasons. An important one was learning that I had to take full responsibility for my own learning.
I did learn there because they taught me self-discipline. At the time, the Vietnam War was raging, and the Marines needed people who could repair war-damaged electronics. They also had a very good incentive program. Five days a week you would study. On Saturday, you’d test on the previous week’s studies and your cumulative knowledge. If you passed, you remained in school for the following week. If you failed, you went to Vietnam.
I could learn complex and difficult things, but it was a ton of hard work. I learned electronics repair so well that they decided to send me to cryptographic repair school. I became valuable enough that the Marine Corps sent me to Japan and didn’t risk my one-and-only butt in Vietnam. I had to develop those skills by grinding away as if my life depended on it.
There are much better ways to learn. I eventually built my career by being the guy who would take on any job and learn how to do it fast. I am a committed lifelong learner. The difference for me is that now it’s much easier for me to absorb and deeply understand complex materials.
The ONE skill missing throughout my schooling was the skill of learning the best ways to learn (backed up by science and not just the theory of the day).
My approach to learning:
Our attention span is limited to about 20 -30 minutes so break up study sessions.
Get an overall basic picture of the thing you're trying to learn. This gives you a backbone to tie the details together conceptually. We understand things better when we can relate them to things we already know.
You remember things best when you have to work to fully recall them. The harder you have to work, the longer you retain the information. Do something unrelated for a while and then return to the original subject, forcing yourself to recall what was discussed.
Spaced repetition, repeating the information at different times and over increasing intervals, helps build long-term skills. I use the Readwise app to save my notes from books I’ve read. It automates my review process by creating questions and review cards from those notes and emailing me a selection daily.
Testing yourself helps build skills. Pro tip: When you are reviewing a subject or making notes about it, make up some test questions or problems and put them in Readwise or on a flashcard app such as Anki.
Get immediate feedback about your answers and keep the questions in your reviews until you have mastered the material - then review a few times later on to make it stick.
Pay close attention as the material is presented and then immediately after a class, review the material and summarize the key points in your notes. The work of recalling the lesson and summarizing it as if you were going to explain it to someone else helps fix the memory.
We must sleep to consolidate long-term memory. Sleep, or even just a short rest, is one of our best learning tools. The resting brain “consolidates” the memories Just as your muscles need sleep to repair, your brain needs sleep to build the physical connections between neurons that form memories.
Pro tip: Mentally review your subject just before bed. You'll remember more.
Teach someone else. As you get an understanding of a new skill, demonstrate it just as you'd do if you were teaching. This helps firmly set the memory skill and also helps you identify weaknesses.
LEARNING IS A LIFETIME SPORT
Resources:
“Learning How to Learn”: Oakley, Barbara, Terrence Sejnowski, and Alistair McConville. 2018. Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. New York: Penguin.
“A Mind for Numbers”: Oakley, Barbara A. 2014. A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra). New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin.
Khan Academy and Khanmigo - Free online classes on almost any subject. Khanmigo is an AI tool specifically developed as a tutor. I’m currently using Khan Academy classes in Algebra to fill in my knowledge gaps and strangely enough, it’s more fun than Sudoku. Who knew?
Coursera - Excellent online tools. Classes from all over the world done extremely well. Take the “Learning How To Learn” online class here for free.
Farnham Street - Why reinvent the wheel? This blog and books like “The Great Mental Models” form a wonderful framework for learning.
“The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts”: Parrish, Shane, and Rhiannon Beaubien. 2018. The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts. Latticework Publishing.
Readwise: A platform designed to help you get the most out of your reading by organizing and reviewing your eBook and article highlights using spaced repetition.
Anki: A free and open-source flashcard program that utilizes active recall testing and spaced repetition, drawn from cognitive science, to aid in memorization.