What is Learning How to Learn, and how to learn it.
Learning how to learn starts with three basic concepts: Lifelong Learning, Drive and Growth mindset.
— Lifelong learning —
Learning should not stop after we graduate from school, we have to be learning constantly and not concentrate on what we already know. Lifelong learning is the pursuit of knowledge, it magnifies your technical skills, but also your soft skills (social skills, creativity, teamwork..).
Lifelong learning can grow our understanding of the world, it can layout better opportunities and improve our quality of life and it can help in our personal and professional life.
— Drive —
Drive and motivation is the urge and excitement to accomplish a goal or satisfy a need. This two words come in very important when we are talking about Learning How to Learn. Without motivation you can´t achieve anything, is this feeling that gives you the strength to work towards your goal and help you achieve your dreams. I´ll share with you these two philosophies to help you keep motivated.
Jeff Bezos´s Day 1: Treat every day at a new job/company as if it was the first day, it comes with excitement and full of potential, Day 2 is filled with decline and sluggishness.
1% better by James Clear: at the beginning, there is no difference, but as time goes on, this small improvements compound and suddenly you have a 37% improvement and a huge gap between the people who settle into a routine.
— Growth mindset —
I LOVE cycling, it allows me to sleep better, have more energy, release stress, socialize and many other things. Throughout the months I have noticed certain changes to my physical appearance, especially my legs they are getting big and really strong. At the beginning I was able to do about 5 to 10 km, now I´m able to do more than 80km. So when they say practice makes better, it certainly does. It is basic knowledge that when you exercise a muscle it gets bigger, what happens when you see your brain as a muscle? can it get bigger? stronger? This is a concept called Growth mindset.
Your intelligence is not a fixed trait, it is something you can improve and work on, the more you train it to learn new things the bigger and better it will get, just like any muscle at the gym.
To make it easier there are meany learning techniques that can facilitate the learning process, you can find one o more that works for you by experimenting and combining different methods, eventually, you´ll realize which one works better for you. Here are my top 3:
Feynman technique: “if you want to understand something well explain it”-Albert Einstein. As easy as that, after learning a new thing try explaining it to someone in the simplest way possible.
Exercise, meditate and converse: these activities lead to the creation of new neurons and therefore grow its potential. It is also a distraction and after a study or work, any of these activities can clear your mind to start again.
Pomodoro Technique: set a timer for 25 to 30 minutes where you only focus on what you are doing, when the timer stops take a 5 to 10 minute break. If you want to keep going, just set the timer again. The small breaks in between keep you relaxed and motivated to keep going.
Equally important to the three concepts above we have habits, because you won´t always be motivated.
“When motivation ends comes habit and discipline.” — James Clear.
Habits are the actions you tend to do regularly, like brushing your teeth, waking up to go to work, taking your dog on a walk, exercising. There are good habits like the ones I mentioned before and there are bad habits like drinking, smoking, watching too much TV. For our luck we get to choose what to do and when to do anything, if you are successful in building good habits, then you are a step closer to achieving your goals.
To build better habits and break bad ones we can use James Clear´s Habit loop to create long lasting habits, it is very simple:
- Make it obvious: leave your workout clothes in front of your bed.
- Make it attractive: set time & place with a friend to go workout (have a commitment)
- Make it easy: set up an alarm to wake up
- Make it satisfying: better health, more energy, etc
You can apply the habit loop any habit you want to create, and after a while, you´ll do it automatically. You can also use the habit loop to break bad habits following the same steps.
Recommendations
If you are interested in learning more about learning how to learn or any of the concepts mentioned above, here are some books and people you can follow: Learning Methods, The starfish and the spider, The Originals, The 5AM Club, James Clear, Farnam Street, Jim Kwik,
