Learning how we learn

This year we started a team challenge to read one new book every month - any genre, any format. For January, I picked Essentialism by Greg Mckeown [1].

I wanted to make this article about the book, but as I started gathering my ideas, I realized that the concepts in this book are not new at all. Creating boundaries, cultivating self-awareness, listening intently, staying focused, and taking care of your well-being - none of this is earth-shattering knowledge or newfound wisdom. And yet something about it made an indelible mark on my psyche. It changed my behaviors and actions quite a lot - without me having to try hard or try at all. I thought deeply about why it worked so effortlessly for me, and I finally figured it out.

As my ideas evolved, I chose to write about the learning and internalization process instead of delving into the content of the book. To best describe what happened here, I will borrow the words of Joan Didion [2]: "I don't know what I think until I write it down." This write-up started as a book abstract/ review but ended up being something entirely different.

In this article, I explain three aspects of internalization. ‌

‌Taking this book reading experience as a case study, I explore learning about learning, aka metacognition. As I continue to develop a deeper understanding of myself, I figured I would share my reflections with the world in the hope that it helps someone. Or even just one. ‌

‌#1: The Beautiful Confluence

Connect your dots looking backward.

In the book, the author strings together a myriad of effectiveness concepts and orients them all in ONE direction --> how to operate at your highest point of contribution. No, it's not some productivity hack or a new habit that lets you do more. It's instead the opposite: shifting mindset to do less but better. The book takes you through the basics of choosing, discerning, and then making trade-offs that can ultimately put you in a position where you can make the highest contribution.

Choosing: Exercising the power of choice; saying yes to things that align with your agenda - Am I living my values? Am I doing what makes me happy? Does it align with my purpose?

Discerning: Separating the vital few from the trivial many - What's important? What's important now? What's important to me?

Trading-off: Which problem do I want to solve - because I cannot do it all. I should not be doing it all.

For quite some time now, I have been learning about discrete subjects ranging from self-awareness, regulating emotions, leading with strengths and personal aspirations, and living one's values to mental models, behavioral psychology, and overall well-being. All these concepts have value to offer in isolation. But the effect is pretty remarkable when you orient them all towards that one eventual goal of self-actualization.

And that is precisely the aha moment that book created for me -  I could look back at these discrete learnings and connect them like the proverbial dots. Almost felt like I am panning out to see the big picture. As if everything I have ever learned is leading me up to my ultimate goal - to realize my full potential.

This book served me a beautiful confluence - by bringing together everything I already knew and creating a lineage to all things past and future.

Suddenly, everything made sense.   ‌

#2: The Perfect Timing

Learn what is relevant to you at this moment.

In the first chapter, the author has a paragraph that goes something like this -  Essentialism is a movement whose time has come. I did not think much of it when I first read it. But as I internalized it, I realized how accurate that statement is for me and my environment.

I have an enormous number of things vying for my attention - more than ever before. And it's only growing as I advance in my life and career. Which means I have to make just as many deliberate choices on how I manage my energy. And I haven't prepared for this. The book landed a few harsh truths on me:

• I can try to avoid the reality of trade-offs, but I cannot escape them.
• While I know my principles, constraints, and boundaries, I do not employ them to make decisions for me.

All my life, I have chosen to do more, be more, and deliver more, as if I have a point to prove. This inner drive helped me in the early years of my career, but now, the-pursuit-of-more is dimming my shine. You see, there is no way I would have had this reckoning a year ago when I did not have as much on my plate as I do now. In essence, I would have learned nothing from the book had I read it last year.

The time has finally come for me to embrace the idea of doing less but better. And there is nothing more powerful than the idea whose time has come. I know what I learned from the book will stick because it's relevant, and it's relevant to me now. ‌

#3: The Ripe Mind

Practice Mindful Reflection.

Learning is about actively making sense of the world around us by taking in new information, comparing it to our current understanding, and negotiating meaning out of those interactions. It is how we 'construct' our knowledge through our lived experiences. Thus the act of learning is personal and individual.‌

“Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb, 1984)

Looking at this learning cycle from David Kolb, I realize, I was ripe for learning from this book - I have a critical mass of concrete experiences from my career and life in general, and I reflect and try drawing inferences from them. I am capable of putting the teachings from the book in perspective. I can "internalize" the learning only because of where I am in my learning cycle.

Our minds are best equipped to learn the world by operating in a real-life context as opposed to reading about it, hearing lectures on it, or studying abstract models of it [4]. The ideas and concepts make logical sense when you read them, but they only become emotionally true after you have lived an experience and reflected on it.

Mindful reflection made my brain fertile for constructing knowledge and internalizing my learnings.‌

In Summary

After the reflection, here is what I know about my learning process:

1. I must keep gathering the little nuggets of discrete learning every day. Even if I cannot see the big picture in the moment, I have to trust that the dots will connect somehow in the future.
2. I have to pick what is relevant to me now. Not tomorrow, not the day after.
3. To internalize things, I must complete the learning cycle: do --> reflect --> learn --> apply.‌

Okay, I learned about my learning process. So what?

Acquiring new skills and knowledge quickly and continually is crucial to success in a world of rapid change. To stay at the top of the game, we must push ourselves to acquire new capabilities fast.

And that is precisely why we need to cultivate a deep understanding of how we learn - our learning habits and preferences. This level of self-awareness can open up a world of possibilities when it comes to skill-building, growth, and leadership potential. We can construct our knowledge way faster than before. We can be fast learners, better leaders, and more effective individuals.

Don't wait; start learning about how you learn and build a sustainable advantage for yourself. ‌

In the words of Arie de Geus, a business theorist, “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

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Disclaimer

I am not compensated by companies for promoting, reviewing, or recommending their products or services.

References

1. Essentialism by Greg Mckeown: https://gregmckeown.com/books/essentialism/
2. About Joan Didion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Didion
3. Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall  https://simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html
4. Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork. Learning Styles Vol 9, Number 3 (Dec 2008) Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf
5. Harold J. Morowitz and Jerome L. Singer, Editors. The Mind, the Brain and Complex Adaptive Systems. From the summary of findings by the Sante Fe Institute. Westview Press; New Ed edition, 1995
6. https://hbr.org/2016/03/learning-to-learn