🪴\zansh.in\blog

5 min read

How to Learn

• 📖 Read/watch the lesson to the end
• ❌ Do not take notes during the lesson
• 📝 Write down what you remember at the end of the lesson
• 🗑️ Discard notes, start over
• 💤 Go to sleep

Don’t be afraid to write "wrong" things. Just write.

If you get to a point where it feels like you've hit a wall, it's time to dream about it. Anything worth learning is going to take more than a day anyway.

Repeat the above steps until you do not need to adjust your notes anymore. Write fresh notes each time. Do not refer to the previous ones or "correct them" against the source material. They are your material.

That's it.

This is one of the quickest ways I know of solidifying a concept or lesson. It also happens to be very effective for committing song lyrics to memory, which your bandmates will thank you for.

To further bolster your memory, try to explain the topic to yourself in your own words. Some call this the Feynman Technique.

You can throw out your notes. You don't need them outside of these exercises. The point is to recall things, not store them for later.

Yes, I've tried it with:

• Song lyrics
• Martial arts
• Programming languages

Whenever I apply the strategy of "Do now, reflect later" I notice myself retaining more than if I continually stop-and-start with the aim of trying to be "perfect."

It does take discipline to not refer to lessons while trying to remember their content. Often more discipline than I have. Mileage varies on how much work I need to put in to structuring sessions in case they're too long or short for the time I have to work with.

But the impact is worth it. My own most recent example is learning the basics of Golang using the Go by Example website. This was a great experience because the site seems almost to be built for it.

I can certainly vouch for the method when it comes to martial-arts. "Do your thinking off the mat", is something I heard over the years and have come to appreciate cross-discipline.

I've learned dozens of song lyrics in this way. If your band wants you to sing a track you've never heard of before, you'll have it down in a couple of days by following the above.

In martial-arts what you want to know are the principles underlying the techniques. Knowing only principles, you should be able to rediscover the fundamental techniques and spontaneously create your own.

But it's a Catch-22. Even if you have a great teacher who is able to verbally explain the principles in a weekend, you won't be able to turn them into actual techniques.

This is because you have not embodied anything yet. There is nothing in your being to connect the principles to. You have no experience to draw from, which is another way of saying you haven't made any mistakes yet.

Mistakes are data, and the dojo is the place to gather the data you're going to process while you sleep or daydream.

That agitation you feel when you ruminate on how badly you did something? That's exactly what you want. It serves to prompt your brain to figure things out by itself, motivates you to attend the next session, and makes the lesson more impactful when you finally get it. You're supposed to do things badly.

There's no learning to be had in doing something right. Continually building up a reserve of frustration that you eventually blast-through is the only way a lesson is going to stick.

"Do the lesson first, write the notes later" is essentially a method of controlled mistake-making, which I believe is a process that can be applied regardless of the complexity of the discipline.

Perhaps you have to break it down into smaller steps, but that's it.

• Study the teacher, then try the technique on your own.
• Read the article, then recall as much as you can without referencing it.
• Listen to the song, then write down all the lyrics in silence.

Watch yourself get pissed as you fight-off the temptation to take a peek at the answer, then get the impact of the revelation when it finally clicks.

You will have embodied something and you will have the battle scars to show for it.

Okay, so "mistakes are data" isn't a complete truth. It's a bit of hyperbole to bring you into the article. Mistakes are not all data, but they are some data. A better way to phrase it could be "mistakes winnow data."

It is very different to be told about mistakes than to experience them yourself. Mistakes nudge you a little more out of the darkness and into the spotlight. You almost can't help but make mistakes. Talking to any child will show you how keen they are to wander into the darkness despite your telling them not to.

Obviously there are limits. Trusting the advice that "driving into a brick wall is bad" rather than trying it out for yourself is a sound idea. Your empathetic response to someone else getting into trouble is the right stand-in for mistake-making in the limit.

At the same time, learning what's good can't be too easy or it won't stick. I believe frustration is the tool that helps identify this, because it is what helps cement the message when you "get it."

Yes, check out these videos:

• The 4 things it takes to be an expert
• The best learning tool in history
• How I learned to remember things easily
• How to remember everything you read

24 Nov, 2022