How to Actually Learn Things

productivity Oct 22, 2022
How to Actually Learn Things

Due to how school conditions people, many treat learning as a one-and-done type of thing. Nobody knows how to actually learn things, since the only relevant question in school is, "Will this be on the test?"

After dropping out of college in 2019, I started to learn about things I was actually curious about. I studied psychology, human behavior, & fitness. I learned more in 3 months of that self-study compared to my 5 years of high school and 3 months of college put together.

From all the things I've learned, I noticed patterns when it came to how effectively I learned. 

If you're looking to learn more effectively, here are my 3 tips for more effective learning.

1. Relevance > Rigor

Does anyone here remember those summer school commercials? The one where they say that kids forget about 80% of what they learn from school over the summer?

This is not because they're having fun in summer. Kids forget almost everything they learn because it's irrelevant to them.

I was never a fan of social studies growing up. I always found it boring & didn't see the point of it all. My logic was, "I'm never gonna use this for a job, so why bother?"

My teacher's and parent's logic for it was, "So you can discover what you like!" Well, I discovered from the first class that I'm not interested, & fast forward to today the only history I can remember is the major events of world war two.

When learning something, make sure it's relevant to you in some way. The reason I was able to actually learn so much in 3 months of self-study was that I wanted to learn that stuff.

To figure out if it's relevant, ask yourself, "Is this something that I either want to know or will benefit me in the future?" If you can't answer yes to either of those, then it's irrelevant.

2. Proper Repetition of Materials

If we were to ignore relevance for just a moment, the other big reason kids forget so much of what they learned is because the repetition of school material is jack-shit.

For humans, there are two effective ways for repetition to occur.

The first is seeing the same wisdom from multiple sources.

The first topic I learned about in the fields of psychology & human behavior was how to be better with girls. I wanted to get as good as possible, so I dug up as much information as I could.

As I dug through & found more information, I noticed a lot of the same lessons cropping up over & over. Things like being confident, being fun & relaxed, & being a challenge.

Seeing these things over & over from different perspectives solidified the information in my brain, so I remembered it the next time I put it into practice.

The second way of effective repetition is by making mistakes. 

School kids are conditioned to fear failure. They don't want to get bad marks on their tests, or else mom & dad will get angry at them for not studying. Couple this with the fact that 90% of the time, tests are a one-and-done thing, and you get hordes of children who are failphobic.

When I was learning how to be better with women, I rolled over a lot of toes (metaphorically speaking). I didn't want to have to go through that, of course, but it was necessary to smooth out the rough edges. I was able to actually learn because my mistakes exposed what I needed to work on.

If you don't make mistakes, you'll never know where your rough edges truly are. By making mistakes & not getting the result you want, you get information that pinpoints what you need to work on. 

3. Actual learning is done faster with intensity

Why is it that students learn their ABCs & numbers so quickly? The answer is simple: they're applying what they're learning, in this case right away.

Learning is so much more effective when the intensity is high. Memorizing vocabulary, for example, is so much faster when you have somebody quiz you on it than if you were to just repeat it in your head.

This is the guiding principle behind mistakes.

Mistakes create a moment of intensity that you'd rather not repeat. That intensity creates a motivation to become better so you can avoid potential embarrassment. 

My reason for wanting to become better with women was because of the mistakes I made in my romantic endeavors. Getting cheated on combined with three rejections was how I learned that I needed to change my approach.

Proper intensity makes learning faster by lowering the threshold for memorization.

Intensity makes memorization easier through relevance. "If you're putting that much energy into it, then it must be relevant", your brain concludes, not questioning why you're using a picture of a goose to memorize basic Japanese vocabulary.

By subjecting kids to standardized tests in school, they acquire dysfunctional learning habits. They become conditioned to only learn something if it's approved by the higher-ups.

This is why so many people end up in jobs they hate. They're conditioned to learn about the things that are approved of instead of what they actually want to learn.

Whatever way you do it, make sure you don't end up just another cog in the machine. Take the time to learn the things you're actually interested in.

- Karl