{"id":1637,"date":"2012-09-23T17:34:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T00:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2018-01-09T15:54:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T20:54:31","slug":"learning-to-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/learning-to-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Learn"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not good at many things.\u00a0 Let me rephrase that.\u00a0 I\u2019m not naturally<\/em> good at many things.\\n\\nThere are many people who are smarter than me, process things quicker and overall just have a better aptitude for almost everything I do.\\n\\nI\u2019ll freely admit, I\u2019ve been pretty successful in my field and in life in general.\u00a0 (At least according to my own measures of success.)\\n\\nYou might wonder how I can be so untalented, yet accomplish so much?\\n\\nI must be doing something right.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

The Key<\/h2>\n

\\n\\nI believe the key thing that has helped me to become successful and will continue to do so, is my ability to learn how to learn about a subject, self education.\\n\\n\"key\"<\/a>\\n\\nI\u2019ve found that it is only when you take ownership for the learning process and its result that you actually are able to accomplish the true goal of learning, which is the ability to put knowledge into action.<\/strong>\\n\\n<\/p>\n

So what is learning to learn?<\/h4>\n

\\n\\nBasically, it is figuring out the best way to learn about a particular subject.\u00a0 You can contrast this to the default mode of education, which is relying on someone else to teach you a subject.\\n\\nAs a society in general we have adopted the idea that attending institutions of education is the correct way to learn about a subject.\u00a0 And while schooling can be important and good, it is often not the best<\/em> method of acquiring useful actionable knowledge.\\n\\nA wise man by the name of Herbert Spencer<\/a>, who as an English philosopher in the mid to late 1800s, once said\\n\\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great aim of education is not knowledge but action.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\\n\\nNow obviously I\u2019m not knocking the idea of learning a subject matter through someone else\u2019s teaching.\u00a0 I make part of my living teaching<\/a>, and perhaps the reason why you are reading this blog is because you expect to learn something.\\n\\nMy point is simply that the most efficient way to learn something that you will actually put into action is to decide what must be learned and how to learn it yourself, rather than taking a complete prescription from someone else.\u00a0 Someone else may be able to break down subject matter and assist in your learning, but you ultimately are responsible for your own education.\\n\\nTake a moment and say that with me, because I think it is so important.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI am responsible for my own education.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\\n\\nIt is quite an empowering phrase.\u00a0 When you really let it sink in, you begin to realize that no one can give you a grade, but yourself.\u00a0 (And I don\u2019t mean this in the “all kids are special and everyone tries so it is not fair to give some kids As and Fs and lower their self esteem” kind of way.)\\n\\nI mean this in the sense that it doesn\u2019t matter if you got straight As and a perfect 4.0 GPA in college, you ultimately have to decide if you learned something, or if you just did the work.\\n\\nIt is only when you take ownership for the learning process and its result that you actually are able to accomplish the true goal of learning, which is the ability to put knowledge into action.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

Why learning to learn is important<\/h2>\n

\\n\\nHave you ever considered how expensive education is?\u00a0 Is there some magic formula that a college or university has that gives them the ability to define and bestow an education better than you could do yourself?\\n\\nWhen you consider the amount of money and time that is spent on traditional classroom education, you really have to ask the question of whether or not you are getting the maximum benefit for your precious resources.<\/strong>\\n\\nI think you\u2019ll find that most of the time, the answer is \u201cno.\u201d\\n\\nThe problem with systematic education is that it isn\u2019t very efficient.\u00a0 The process of learning something is very tailored to an individual.\u00a0 It is not something that is easily distilled and applied like a balm or an ointment to the foreheads of eager young students.\\n\\n\"boy.\"<\/a>\\n\\nNot only do different people have different learning styles<\/a>, but what is important for them to actually learn varies as well.\\n\\nLet’s be completely honest here, in most formal educational systems the majority of what you do is read and regurgitate things, but not really learn them.\u00a0 Perhaps you remember them for long enough to take a test, or to graduate to the next level of that subject area, but do you really learn most of the things that are taught in a textbook?\u00a0 Do you really need to?\\n\\nOverall, with traditional spoon-fed education, you are typically not really getting your value\u2019s worth for your money or your time.\\n\\nStill, I hope we can all agree that education is important.\\n\\nAnd because education is so important and we don\u2019t want to waste our money or our time acquiring it, it is essential to learn how to learn.\\n\\nEquipped with the ability to teach yourself anything you need to know, you suddenly lose the constraints that are binding you to a particular area of knowledge or skillset.<\/strong>\\n\\nWhen you can teach yourself more efficiently about a subject than any institution can, you have given yourself perhaps one of the most valuable gifts a human being can receive to be successful in life.<\/strong>\\n\\nYou have given yourself the ability to do just about anything you want.\u00a0 (Within the constraints of time-space and physical reality of course.)\\n\\nAnd once you have this ability yourself, you will also find that you will be in a great position to teach others what you know.\\n\\nSince most of the world is not very good at this skill, you have a genuine value that is in short supply.\u00a0 If you can take a subject matter, figure out a path to learn that subject matter, and be successful in doing so, you can help others along the way who may not yet have mastered that ability as well as you have.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

How to do it<\/h2>\n

\\n\\nAll this talk about the value of learning to learn is worthless if we don\u2019t actually learn how to learn how to learn.\u00a0 (Say that three times fast.)\\n\\nRather than title this subject as accurately as I could put it, which would be to learn how to learn how to learn, I decided “how to do it” approximates closely enough my point.\\n\\nEnough blabber, let’s get down to it.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

Scoping the subject<\/h4>\n

\\n\\nThe first step in learning about a subject and perhaps the most critical is to determine the scope of the subject you want to learn about.\\n\\n\"scope\"<\/a>\\n\\nSo many people skip this step and wander aimlessly though the vast halls of knowledge never really knowing what they are looking for.\\n\\nIn determining the scope of the subject you want to learn about it is very important to consider first the granularity.\u00a0 The granularity at which you wish to learn a subject will very greatly influence the size or overall scope of the subject matter to be digested.\\n\\nSpeaking plainly\u2026\u00a0 you can\u2019t lean a lot about a large subject in detail. (At least not in a practical amount of time.)\\n\\nYou basically have to balance the details of the subject to the overall size of what you want to learn.\\n\\nFor example, since this is a programming blog, let’s say you want to learn about a particular technology.\u00a0 Let’s say C#.\\n\\nYou could learn about the topic with a broad brush and learn the basics of the language and how to generally construct logical statements and write programs in that language.\\n\\nYou could also decide that you want to learn exactly how C# works and how exactly each keyword behaves under certain circumstances.\u00a0 This level of detail can of course be found in the C# language specification<\/a>.\u00a0 (If you didn\u2019t actually click that link, it takes you to a 505 page book with almost all of the technical details of the C# language.)\\n\\nAnd while you could of course learn the language at this level of detail, it would probably be a lot more beneficial to pick a particular aspect of the C# language to learn about at this detail based on why you want to learn it rather than attempt to understand every aspect of every situation of the C# language.\\n\\nTaking another simpler example.\u00a0 If you wanted to learn about world history, you are either going to want to learn about the entire history of the world at a very high and summarized level, or you are going to want to pick a particular era and location.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

Having a goal<\/h4>\n

\\n\\nThe next thing you need is a goal.\u00a0 There is no point in learning something just for the sake of learning it.\\n\\n\"goal\"<\/a>\\n\\nYour goal might be to build something with the new technology or to be able to write about it competently or even just to be able to speak fluently on the subject matter.\\n\\nI\u2019d encourage you though, in choosing a goal, to make sure that your goal is something that can be measured and qualified in no uncertain terms.\u00a0 If you are learning a new technology, make a goal of building something with it.<\/strong>\u00a0 Even if it is something that will be thrown away after it is built.\u00a0 It will both serve to reinforce what you have learned and to validate the subject matter and scope you have chosen.\\n\\nAnother important goal I always try to have is to teach whatever I am learning.\u00a0 I have found that the only way to truly learn something (and by this I mean to have that true in-depth knowledge of a subject, one that does not fade with time) is to teach it.\\n\\nPresent at a local user group, write a blog post, tell your spouse about it.\u00a0 (My wife loves hearing about programming languages and technology.\u00a0 Sometimes she’ll even drop what she is doing just to make sure she is paying full attention and not missing one intricate little detail about all the exciting things I am telling her.)\\n\\nWhen you define a goal, it is also important to define a deadline.\u00a0 Doing this will help you refine the goal and recheck the scope of your subject.\\n\\nIt does no good to learn something without the ability to practically apply it.\u00a0 By having an actual deadline, you ensure that what you are trying to accomplish will fit into the timeline which will be required to make it useful to you.\\n\\nThe important point is to have at least some goal for your learning endeavor.\\n\\n<\/p>\n

Finding resources<\/h4>\n

\\n\\nAfter you know what you are going to learn and you have a good idea of how you will measure your achievement of the learning, you will undoubtedly need to find some resources for proceeding with your plan.\\n\\n\"Pile<\/a>\\n\\nAt this step, you\u2019ll also want to start creating an outline or mind map or some other way of organizing exactly what things you decided to learn about when you defined your scope.\u00a0 I\u2019ll talk more on that in a moment.<\/em>\\n\\nDepending on the subject matter you are trying to learn there may be a large amount of resources available or very few.\\n\\nUsually, the best way to get started on finding resources is a search on the internet.\\n\\nOften we are trained to only turn to one type of medium as a resource for learning when there are so many more.\u00a0 Consider all the types of resources that may be available on a subject:\\n\\n<\/p>\n