Thoughts about How to Learn

I've spent a lot of my life thinking about how to learn as fast and thoroughly as possible. In my eyes, there are a couple of different stages that are involved when learning almost any new thing. The first step to learning is assessing the challenges that face you. This usually means understanding just how difficult what you are trying to learn is and how you plan to accomplish it. This first step is often overlooked because people are impatient and want to be amazing at something too quickly. It's as if their excitement impulsively overpowers their ability to rationally attack the problem before them. Learning is not a simple or easy problem (despite the human brain making it look super easy). Planning your learning can help reduce its complexity, turning initially impossible goals into smaller manageable goals.

   The main problem with slowing learning down for most people is that they lack patience and/or foresight to stick with it. I cannot explain how important foresight is to me personally. Foresight is something everyone should spend time developing. Foresight (the way I'm using it) allows you to understand the patterns of reality enough to predict your own future. You develop your foresight from studying the beginning and end of different tasks. There comes a point where your prediction (exercising the foresight part of your brain) matches the outcome. If you're anything like me, this moment is basically an epiphany. This is the turning point where you start to think about things on a larger scale trusting your foresight and using it to construct your own reality. Foresight helps to build your confidence in the future which transfers to cool patience in the present. Start trying to think ahead of your own timeline everyday.

   With that said, I'd like to talk about a couple techniques I personally employ on a daily basis for learning. The first of these things is reading. The problem nowadays is that very few people actually read anything that isn't strictly required of them, that challenges them. Reading was one of the doors I unlocked a few years ago that knocked me off my feet. I simply couldn't believe how much control I felt I had after starting to use reading as a tool for learning. It started off small but soon grew out of control. I actually began to feel as though I had access to something much greater then myself. I felt like I could learn anything through reading alone. Although reading is a huge irreplaceable part of learning, it's not the only part of it at all. In fact, if one spent all their time reading they would have a lot of difficulty taking the words on the page and applying them to anything. This brings me to my next point. To learn something, you have to use it as immediately as you can. You cannot learn to DO anything (aside from read) from reading alone. You must become a master of applying information you have temporarily inserted in your mind from reading. The two actions of READING and DOING together become a formidable learning tool indeed.

   Open up a book and try to challenge yourself. You can't wait for someone else to challenge you for yourself. Besides, what else is there to do on the planet but solve puzzling problems?