Why what you think is important, probably isn’t
Or, what is Leverage on Learning?
Glad to see you made it here! My name is Adam and this is my first entry in a series of posts about my reflections on learning based on my personal experiences and some amazing books that can be found out there.
Now, of course, you might be wondering just why you should listen to me. Honestly, I don’t know. And it’s a pretty damn good question. (Yes I’m complimenting my own question I just asked myself)
What I do know is that I have been obsessed with learning for as long as I can remember. We are talking the whole range from breakdance to video games and then back to memory training with a few stops at things like French and programming. During this whole journey, there has been a lot of reflection going on. The idea of sharing these reflections with you makes me excited and a little scared. With that said. Hope you enjoy it, regards Adam.
It all starts with a graph
I thought a lot about which words to start everything off with. I sort of never found the right ones, but this graph probably says more anyways.
After taking the proper amount of time to reflect on the graph you will probably start to wonder what the hell it means. Let me walk you through it.
Leverage on Learning
How much better you will be at stuff by spending x minutes practicing.
Core
All the things you think you are good enough at after a few weeks.
Skills
All the things people tell you to practice.
Tricks
All the things you think are cool.
That might not really satisfy as a walkthrough so let me give you a concrete example. We’ll go with learning a language.
There are a few parts that language learning can be separated into
VOCABULARY — SEMANTICS — CONJUGATIONS — IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS
I’m sure that there are more, or that someone will say, wait a second, that doesn’t look right. But I think it’s a fairly accurate model. Anyways, if we translate this to the core, skills, and tricks from the graph we would get something like
Core = Vocabulary
Skills = Semantics + Conjugations
Idiomatic Expression = Tricks
Why you ask? If you want to learn to communicate in a language as fast as possible you need to think about what things you can strip away; most of the conjugations, no problem, most of the semantics, no problem, idiomatic expressions, definitely no problem, the words, big problem. Sure, you might sound like a caveman, but at least you will be able to say a lot more than if you can conjugate 10 words perfectly. This is where the concept of Leverage of Learning comes in. If you focus on learning words, if that is where you put all your energy, you will be able to speak your dream language several times faster than if you just try to learn idiomatic expressions, even if they will “make you sound like a native”.
Maybe you are thinking, okay, so if I want to learn a language this crazy guy is telling me to just open up a dictionary and start on page one. I would be impressed by your courage if you actually decided to do that, but, the best thing you can do is to just google “top 1000 words in language X”, go to the website, take the words, and learn them. Check out https://lifehacker.com/5962099/memorize-the-1000-most-common-words-in-a-language-before-immersing-yourself-in-it
A lot of the thinking in this blog post is inspired by the book The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin (Chess Master and Tai Chi world champion), a really amazing guy I recommend you guys check out. In this book, Josh presents a concept he calls “making smaller circles”.
This method is similar to my early study of chess, where I explored endgame positions of reduced complexity — for example king and pawn against king, only three pieces on the board — in order to touch high-level principles such as the power of empty space
Waitzkin, Josh. The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence (p. 118). Free Press. Kindle Edition.
I would not dare to summarize what he is writing because he is a pretty brilliant guy and has probably already done a better job at that than I ever could. But, my key takeaway is that you master complex things not by training complex things but by breaking them down to the core and spend all of your energy on perfecting them. It will create a ripple effect that propagates throughout your learning.
It ends with a framework
I could make this post several times longer, but you probably wouldn’t bother listening to me rambling on. Let me instead leave you with a condensed version of what we have done so far:
- Pick something you want to learn
- Find out by googling (or thinking) where is the core of what I’m trying to learn
- Try to make at least 50 % of what you practice focus only on the core.
- As you improve you will gain a deeper understanding and you might realize there is something that is even more core. Readjust, iterate.
Final note, 50 % is probably a good balance because focusing on the core can sometimes demand more discipline as it is not always as exciting. If you can stay motivated, a higher number, perhaps 80 % can be a good idea for even faster results. If you manage to maintain more focus on the core, you will improve faster, which will motivate you further, so it can be a bit of a hen and egg problem.
Good luck, Adam.
