Four stages to smart learning
Meta-learning - the art of learning how to learn - feels like a highly important and neglected skill. The scaffolding on which so much future knowledge depends. Why it’s not a mainstay of the school curriculum is a complete mystery to me.
Here are a four stages to smart learning that I’ve picked up from people who have thought deeply about this subject over the years.
1. Deconstruction
Identify:
The fundamental principles required to learn your chosen skill.
The minimum effective dose for each. For instance: if it’s a language, what are the most commonly used words or phrases?
The most effective order in which to sequence the learning steps. Put another way: which steps, when complete, will make the others easier to achieve or obsolete?
The biggest mistakes other people make when trying to learn your chosen skill, so you can avoid making these yourself.
2. Motivation
Make your learning commitments public. This makes it much harder to back out!
It really helps to have a macro-level enjoyment for the thing you are learning, and a sense of belief that there’s something you can do to improve.
Build learning habits, rather than relying consistently on motivation.
Be patient. We tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a week, and underestimate what we can achieve in a year.
3. Execution
Macro tips
Isolate a specific learning goal, rather than aiming for some vague overall improvement.
Get rapid feedback.
Integrate what you’re learning into things that you already know well.
Stretch yourself - just beyond your current abilities.
Review information at regular intervals.
Micro tips
Start slow. We have to be able to do something slowly before we can do it quickly. Practising something quickly and incorrectly is a false economy.
If you’re absorbing information, ‘chunk it’ - read a page, and then look away to summarise it in your head. This tends to be much more effective than re-reading, highlighting or underlining.
Turn it off, then on again. Alternate periods of pushing yourself to your limit with periods of complete rest and relaxation.
Learn from successes as well as from failures. You’ll likely be more receptive to the former.
End the day on a high. The most important turn on a ski run is the last one, since it’s the one you’ll be thinking about overnight.
4. Foster a learning mindset
Just shut up and listen. When you hear yourself saying something you’ve said before, don’t bother. Pre-rehearsed anecdotes will keep you dumb.
Avoid small talk. All house-price talk, route talk, diet talk, name-dropping and current-affairs clichés. Over a lifetime, this can save you years.
Don’t be afraid to try. The best language learners are those who aren’t afraid to sound stupid.
Treat books as disposable. Feel free to flick through them, and if a book hasn’t grabbed you in 15 minutes, put it down and try another one.
If you have a theory that explains everything, bin it.
If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
Further reading:
My life tips for graduates: embrace your ignorance - Simon Kuper
How to become great at just about anything - Freakonomics
Barbara Oakley: Learning how to learn - Farnam Street
So Good They Can’t Ignore You - Cal Newport
The Art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin