Learning new Stuff

Now that I am an adult, I find myself really enjoying the ‘learning process’. it’s fun for me; but it dod not used to be. When I was in school, learning took an effort - an effort I did not enjoy. 

When I first travelled to Indonesia (at age 18) it was rather effortless for me to learn the language because I had both context and motivation. I was living in an area where absolutely no-one spoke English; so I had to learn. And I did, and quickly and without effort. Like a child learns I guess.

Nowadays, when I have to learn something new, I first try to establish the ‘big picture’ - I want to see where this new knowledge is going to sit in the larger scheme of things - it really helps me to have ‘context’. I need to create a kind of ‘filing cabinet’ for the new ‘file’ I guess.

Then I break the new idea down into a series of steps or smaller ‘chunks’ - and I try to set those chunks into an optimal sequence (the right order) - so I can ‘unpack’ it at a future date, without losing many of the bits.

When we learn stuff, we need to take ownership of it. To do that, we need to find ways to apply the idea, as soon as we can in the real world. This is a huge step up from mere intellectual ownership. it’s one thing to understand the concepts of buying an investment property and renting it out - it’s another thing entirely to actually do it. We can learn a new language at school or from a book - but to speak it in the back blocks of a foreign country - is a different thing.

We can learn a new technique and drill it until we are comfortable with it and understand it - but again, we take our sense of ownership to another level by applying it in live-rolling.

learning how to learn is one of the best things I have ever learned.

_ JBW