Learning How To Learn | A Skill that can help you master any other skills.

Learning is a meta-skill.

During one of the enrichment sessions with my learner the other day, when the learner asked me about “How can I plan better, be it my weekly personal and work plan, and how about my house renovation plan…” It made me ponder, what is it before planning and executing? my answer to that is THINKING. and where does THINKING comes from? What we need is to rethink about where do we get our input. Very often, we rushed to jump into finding and working out a solution, even the way we manage our day to day life. There is that moment — if we would give ourselves more time to rethink the way we do things, that’s where we gain better clarity in doing things.

Input → Process → Output

(One of the most important takeaway for me while taking up Operation Management in my MBA journey two months ago. To understand this simple and most important equation, what is my input, how do I want to process, and what kind of output doI want.)

Learning how to learn is about reassessing and reevaluating where, what and how am I obtaining the information and knowledge.

Input : information and knowledge (this is the learning input)
Process : thinking (processing) how do we process the information and knowledge that we obtained
Output : Outcome, Decision-making, Strategy formulation.

I was thinking this is a time to time critical self-check question, how often we ask ourselves how can I do this better and how can do that better, I think we do asked ourselves quite often be it at work or in life. and also clarifying the purpose why do we want to do this better or that better.

How often do we ask ourselves how do we learn?
How do we assess our own quality of learning?
Do we learn about ourselves on how do we learn?

I asked myself this most of the time, how can I learn better and faster?
I am a kinaesthetic and visual (words-sensitive) kind of person, I will usually take a lot of notes while absorbing new information and new knowledge. It helps me to integrate the learning inputs and connecting the dots better, and therefore I can understand better about the subject matter I am learning.

What drive me to think about how do I wanted to learn about myself, especially on how do I learn

— because fundamentally I understand that the better I learn, the better I can think, and hence, I would be able to generate greater ideas. Another aspect would be — curiosity.

I am curious about the potential of human brain. Probably the movie [Lucy] has truly inspired me how the human brain could unleashed its100% utilisation and we are going to be everything, everywhere and anything.

If I could learn differently, I can think differently.

When I asked myself, how do I learn?

I have these few key findings about learning how to learn:

Finding#1 : Setting a learning intention helps to focus on the purpose of learning.
Learning intention is crucial to determined the overall learning quality and outcome. For example, I used to set a personal win every time when I am learning something new. I clearly define to myself what is my gain while learning and understanding about this particular topic or subject matter.

Finding#2 : Let the learning flow flows
While learning about something new, I think the most important part would be to put aside and keep a distance of what we think we already knew, or else, we are not learning anyway. We are just trying to justify whether what we already think we understand is reasonable or sound to us or not. Most probably we are not expanding our map then, we are merely trying to fit what we are learning into our existing map. As I personally think the whole point of “learning” is to expand our existing “mental map”.

Finding#3: Allow yourself to make mistake and enjoy being foolish!
I know it might sound stupid but that’s exactly where you will have that aha! moment when you allow yourself to make mistake while learning and being foolish. I do have those moment where I laughed at myself “ah! how come I could not get that earlier? and ah! I understood wrongly before”… and more. I think the more aha! moments we have while learning means we are exercising the self-check muscle while learning, to keep ensuring “yes, I think I got it” moment.

Finding #4: Keep Digging Deeper, Keep Drilling, Don’t give up while learning — the-constantly-wanted-to-understand-mentality
I have had quite a lot of moments while I totally do not get certain thing.
Well, there were moments I thought I would have never get that. But always the understanding level turned out to be not as bad as I thought before, don’t believe in that particular moment when your mind refused to work.
Take a short break. Seek for help. But the persistence and tenacity must be there until you finally get some points at least. When I said get it, you do not have to get it all AT ONCE. Celebrate that little win when you finally get it or understand certain things out of that entire topic. It is good enough to start that way. and you will pace yourself after that.

Finding #5: Share what you understand from what you learn, it is okay that you did not get it all because others will help you get there.
Teaching others is the best way to ensure you yourself understand a certain topic. I have tried it several times. There were the doubtful moments where you hacked it and you got it!

Finding #6: Understand yourself — Learn from yourself how you learn
For me, it’s about just scribbling, sketching, linking and writing notes. I liked to use numbering, shapes, arrows and all to link and note down my inspiration. Be aware of how your brain understand new subject matter and how does it respond to new learning.

Finding#7: Ask Question — Raise Question in your own mind while learning
By having questions in mind help us to think. By simply asking how does this happened? where does this comes from? how is it relating to my experience? how can this new knowledge could be applied? surprisingly, this helps me to stay focus too, when I have questions in mind, my mind tends to link and connecting the dots.

Finding#8: Have fun! having fun is one of the key factors to foster effective learning :)
Learning is fun to you. In 1–10, please rate. I would give myself 7 out of 10. New knowledge excites me. Find ways to make your learning fun. for example, using colourful sticky notes, having fun and experiment new ways to make note. When you feel good, you learn better.

Finding #9: Finding ways to apply the new knowledge you just learned
By journaling learning and realisation is a way of application.
Be curious. apply the learning in whichever way that is possible for you.
Putting your knowledge into experimentation mode, observe, don’t judge and there will be the new finding.

Finding#10: Continue to build up the learning momentum!
I think one of the drives I enjoyed learning is that I enjoyed exploring the unknowns. And how can we constantly get uncomfortable with the unknowns. Daily reading helps to build up the learning momentum.

Final Thoughts:
We learn from ourselves mostly, being either are we aware or not aware of it. We learn from our own experience.
We learn from our own thinking, behaviour and habit.
Trying to understand why are we doing what are we doing helps us learn most about ourselves. We will have the aha! moment ourselves. As we seek, answers are always in within.
What did we observe of what we learned about ourselves, learning to understand what were those thoughts that emerged, write it down, draw it out, you do not need to figure it out, there are enormous learnings everyday, question is how aware we are.

By end of the day, we are learning to understand ourselves in this lifetime way before we learn to understand this world. Because the reality we are experiencing is how we learn to construct our inner world, how we programme how do we want to experience about the world.

Thinking is the operational process and strategy to plan and execute.
Learning —> Thinking →Planning →Action/Execution

Watch this — Learning How to Learn by Professor Barbara Oakley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O96fE1E-rf8

Now a final questions to you — Do you enjoy learning? How much did you enjoy learning? How do find yourself learn best?

Reach me at pennyleong.enrich@gmail.com to share your thoughts on how you learn.