Learning how to learn
If we're going to be more productive, we have to learn new skills and get better at the skills we have. Knowledge is important, but we get paid for producing results. This requires skills.
I see people with limited desire to learn. And when learning does happen, it is usually more about knowledge than skill. I decided to think about why and what to do about it. So I picked up a skill. While this happened, I learned some lessons about learning and want to share them here.
"I know how to learn. I learned how to learn in school." Well, maybe not. I'll give evidence from my interaction with university students.
Plus, I believe it's very different as an adult – motivation, resources, etc. I think most college and younger feel that they "have to". We typically don't feel that way.
Regardless of where you are, you need to be learning Why?
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Career - What got you here won't get you there
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Productivity - As you gain experience, you should be spending less time on things you have lots of experience with
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Attention compass – most people already 'know', they still need to learn to 'do'
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Hobbies/activities – get on with new things, you won't be working forever
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Note most of these are more 'skills' vs. 'knowledge'
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I think we struggle with implementing this idea
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Are we 'bad students' – well, we got good grades
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Are we afraid of looking foolish
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Another issue: much of what we learn in college is knowledge-based.
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Learning skills is less common in many disciplines. More about this later
Learning how to learn
Learning as an adult – I'll share four experiences and some of what I've learned
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MBA – no prep, I relied on my previous academics
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Ph.D. – lots of study about how to learn, not much result – I couldn't find much. Later, I found Cal Newport's books on the subject, which would have been great – highly recommended
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Bass and podcast – hired coaches
The goal of both kinds of learning: change the way your brain operates
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How brains work (neuronal chains)
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Plasticity (chains connected in different configurations)
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Habitual (fire together, wire together)
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Any kind of learning, we're changing old and/or creating new patterns/chains
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Ideally, we set those chains by having them fire multiple times
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As a bass player, I want physical things to fire in chains
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Learning, then is to get a chain to fire multiple times, so it 'sets'
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Skills are a little different, they involve nerves and muscles, but it's still repetition
I think we fear being bad at it the first time
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We feel like we look and sound stupid. It hurts our egos.
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our expectations are really high and it's frustrating to us
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to me, skills are more visible in the… bad at it the first time sense
Case: developing this podcast and learning the bass
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Story of the bass
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No real background
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Good motivation, solid goal, but not money on the line
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Plenty of time to 'get ready'
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In retrospect, I feel I did some of the right things here, so I am trying to apply that to the podcast
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The podcast
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Learning to do a podcast is a practical exercise.
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The podcast is something that takes lots of different skills and lots of different techniques, and I've got to be patient with myself and willing to go through that learning.
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From the bass learning, I realized that "DIY" here is inefficient now, let's use those lessons to develop a template about learning a new skill
Attention Compass
How would we approach that? What to do about new learning?
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Figure out how to quit exploring whether to do it –
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Have a naïve approach, the "beginner's mind"
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Be prepared to be bad at whatever it is (reality)
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Figure out how to get feedback
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Get a coach
Recap
