The bicycle approach to learning — a guide for timeless skills
While in life we all learn many things and as we grow older and learn multiple things we start to forget the fundamental of it.
Yes we are still learning may be a new hobby, baby-care, technology or something else. But somewhere after all these years of schooling, college, graduation and working for many years we forget what’s the basic behaviour of learning. How it gets progressed and how to keep the process in mind so that whenever it’s required we don’t get demotivated to stop it.
In the end last year I was trying to purse my old hobby that left hanging in midst for so many years just because I din’t knew where to start with. In the middle of no where a thought came and I realized if I keep hanging this I might not be able to start it ever. So, I started with all my efforts and for few day the beginning looked difficult but i was able to cope with it.
As few weeks passed I was still learning the pace changed, attitude changed still I was learning.
The only problem when you get older and try to learn something new without formal path is you don’t know how much time it’s gonna take, if there’s courseware available that’s great but not necessary that’s the limit where you want to stop learning it.
Even if you decide the timeline and keep up with it it’s not necessary you are gonna learn it within that time frame for some skills like riding a bicycle.
You don’t know in the start how much time you are gonna take to become a beginner or pro. Or for sake you don’t know within how much time you can learn just to ride it.
While learning to ride we have a mentor available to keep us going to guide, to push and to make sure we get it exactly the way it should be. In reality we should follow the same approach when we reach certain age instead of thinking how can I find a mentor at this age or may be it looks weird to still have a teacher at this age for something etc.
The truth is sometimes human connection is required to fill certain gap that no technology can fill.
That’s where the fundamental of learning works. While we are learning for the bicycle in start we never decide timeline. The only thing we decide is I wanna learn riding it.
Few can learn in week, few takes months just to ride properly. But we never think whenever we are learning to ride “am I gonna complete any ride?”. You might get demotivated when you don’t get right for few weeks, still what’s the fixed point here is I wanna ride.
The same approach is required whenever you wanna learn something new on your own.
This is the fundamental we miss after so many years of learning that not every skill is equally attainable but that doesn’t mean it’s not attainable it’s just the learning approach that needs to be understood.
While your thought process might differ, it’s always good to let other’s know through generous comments.