How learning works
8 principles you need to know to master any skill. Plus, why Duolingo is overrated, and the author of this article gets stung by a bee.
Leonardo Da Vinci was good at everything. He was a legendary painter, inventor, engineer, architect, and scientist, among other things.
The Mona Lisa still hangs in the Louvre today and people travel from all across the world to see it. And he conceptualized the airplane, parachute, helicopter, and tank. And he figured out plate tectonics. And his studies of human anatomy are still used by scientists today. (I’m just scratching the surface.)
How’d he do it? How’d he master tons of difficult things? And more importantly, can you master tons of difficult things?
Today there’s a handful of modern-day Da Vincis — people who are good at a whole bunch of things. A great example is Tim Ferriss, who was once the Chinese kickboxing champion, a professional breakdancer for MTV Taiwan, and a Guiness world record holder in the tango.
He also speaks at least 12 languages, built a supplement business that he sold for several million dollars, is one of the most successful angel investors of all time, has written 5 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and hosts one of the world’s most popular podcasts.
Or, take Josh Waitzkin, an 8-time national chess champion who once drew a game with Garry Kasparov — and also a bestselling author and a 2-time world champion in tai chi.
What’s their secret? They’re good at learning.
Both Ferriss and Waitzkin have written books about the way they learn stuff (The 4-Hour Chef and The Art Of Learning, respectively).
Learning is the ultimate skill. Because if you’re good at learning, you can get really, really good at whatever you want to be good at. Whether that’s drawing, coding, kickboxing, chess, riding horses, shooting rifles, dancing tango, speaking French — you get the picture.
How do you get good at learning? The first step is understanding how learning works. Once you understand how learning works, you can design curriculums and study programs for yourself that focus on the most effective learning methods.
That lets you learn stuff way faster than everyone else can, allowing you to master tons and tons of difficult skills during your life.
So how does learning work? Here are the 8 things you need to know.
Principle #1: We Can Learn Anything We Want To.
A while ago some psychologists found that London cab drivers had way more gray matter in the part of their brain that we use to navigate through space.
Why? London’s a pretty twisty and windy place, so London cabbies need to have some pretty impressive navigation abilities. It seems like their brains grow to meet the challenge.
The same thing happens with blind people. The part of their brain that processes vision shrinks away, and the parts of their brain that process the other 4 senses grow.
What’s going on? Well, the human brain is “plastic”. That’s fancy psychologist speak that means, whenever you practice something a lot, your brain shifts itself around so that you get better at the thing you’re practicing.
That means if you wanna get good at something, you just gotta practice!
It’s true that some people’s brains are more geared for certain stuff than others. There’s a genetic component to how smart you are. But not as much as you’d think.
The psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, who studies how people become experts at stuff, finds that becoming really, really good at any skill is less about your inborn talent and more about how much you practice. (And how well you practice.)
The only caveat about this is that in order to learn something, you have to believe you can learn it. Otherwise you won’t put in the effort.
And speaking of practice, let’s get into Principle #2:
Principle #2: We Learn When Our Brains Are Active
Think back to when you were in high school. Remember listening to your teachers drone on and on?
Now, do you remember anything they said?
Studies show that when we listen to lectures, we only retain about 5 to 20 percent of what we hear. Everything else goes in one ear and out the other.
There’s a reason for that. When you’re sitting in a classroom, your brain isn’t really “on”. It’s just sitting there doing nothing.
Learning is kind of like exercising. You learn the most when your brain does hard work.
Trying to learn by watching a lecture is like trying to get shredded by watching someone else lift weights!
So if you need to learn something, don’t rely on just listening to people talk about it. Instead, get active. Do some practice problems, and then challenge yourself to actually use the skill you’re developing.
Now obviously, sometimes you do have to read stuff and listen to lectures. When you do, how do you make sure you remember what you hear?
The best way is to teach other people about what you’re learning about. Why does that work? Because when you explain a complex idea, you force yourself to put the pieces of that idea together in your head.
For example, writing these Medium articles has helped me learn a lot faster. That’s because it forces me to think through the stuff I’m writing about.
The point is, learning is hard work. So get active!
Principle #3: We Learn About Things We Care About
There’s another reason why we don’t learn from boring high school lectures: because they’re boring.
Think back to the class in high school that you hated the most. Can you remember anything you learned in that class?
Now, think back to something you really wanted to learn when you were in high school. Maybe that was how to impress girls. Maybe it was how to throw a curveball. Maybe it was how to bake chocolate chip cookies. Chances are, you more or less remember how to do that today.
You need to understand that the human brain doesn’t want to remember stuff. Remembering stuff is cognitively expensive. So your brain forgets every little fact that enters your head unless it has a really good reason not to.
This is one of the reasons why you should pick a career you genuinely enjoy. You’re never gonna be that good at something you don’t like, because you’re never gonna care enough about it to learn it well.
Now, let’s say you have to learn about something really boring. How do you learn about it? Well, first, you have to make yourself care about it!
The YouTuber Elizabeth Filips is a medical student at King’s College London. She says that whenever she studies a new subject, the first thing she does is read news articles about it. That way, it’s not just a bunch of cells and organs and body parts, it’s actual people’s lives. Then, she can connect the stuff in her textbook to real life problems.
Principle #4: We Learn When We Get Feedback
When people play a musical instrument, they usually get better pretty quickly. But when people play poker, they usually make the same mistakes over and over again.
Why is it easier to learn the violin than poker? Because playing the violin gives you feedback. If you play the wrong note, then you hear it right away. You know how you messed up, and you know what to do differently next time.
Whereas if you’re learning to play poker, you usually have no idea when you’re making a mistake. You can make the right move and lose money. You can make the wrong move and make money. It’s a wicked environment where rewards are often disconnected from the quality of your decisions.
This is why video games are so much fun. Video games are designed to be easy learning environments. A good video game is set up so that a) you get rewarded for making good moves and punished for making bad moves and b) when you screw up, you know exactly how you screwed up, so you know how to not screw up next time.
Unfortunately, life isn’t like a video game. Tons of important real life skills don’t offer you good feedback. Sometimes you have no way of knowing whether you made the right or wrong move. Which makes it really hard to get better.
If you’re trying to learn something and you don’t have good feedback available, you gotta figure out how to get feedback.
For example, chess players review their past games with computers. The computer tells them whether each of their moves were good or bad. That way chess players can spot their mistakes and figure out what they need to do differently.
On the same note, businesspeople are obsessed with measuring every little thing they do. This is so they can continuously evaluate whether they’re screwing up or not.
If there’s something you’re trying really hard to learn andyou’re hitting a plateau, you’re probably not getting good feedback. So figure out how to figure out what you’re doing wrong!
Principle #5: There Are 3 Different Things We Call “Learning”, And You Have To Know The Difference.
In his book Ultralearning, Scott Young — who learned French, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Korean from scratch in the same year, and learned the entire MIT computer science curriculum in a year — says there are 3 different types of knowledge.
The first is stuff you have to understand. These are fundamental principles of the subject you’re trying to study.
For example, if you want to learn Einstein’s theory of relativity, then you have to be able to picture a curvy universe in your head. Just memorizing his equations isn’t gonna cut it.
Generally, a good way to build your understanding is to explain why things are the way they are. For example, Richard Feynman used to prove every math theorem he had to learn. By proving the theorem, he forced himself to spend time learning the theorem’s ins and outs — which helped him actually use it in his research.
The second is stuff you have to memorize. A good example is vocabulary words in a language you’re learning. You don’t need to understand the linguistic origin of every single word. (I mean, it would help, but it would take way too much time). As long as you can remember it in conversation, you’re golden.
If you just need to memorize something, you should use spaced repetition flashcard tools like Quizlet. This is the scientifically best way to drill information into your brain.
And the third is stuff you have to practice. Just knowing it isn’t enough. You have to actually build the muscle memory.
A good example is riding a bike. You can’t learn to ride a bike by reading books about riding bikes, or by studying the way Lance Armstrong rides a bike. You actually have to get on a bike and ride it.
If you get these 3 different types of knowledge mixed up, you’re gonna fail. For example, most people who need to language study flashcards and use Duolingo — which is great for learning grammar, but terrible for building the muscle memory that you need to hold a real conversation. Then they head to a new country and they can’t say a word. (If you really want to learn a language, you gotta go out and practice!)
Principle #6: We Learn Best When We Study Every Day
Studies have shown that the best way to improve at just about anything is to practice it every day.
That means you can’t just study whenever you have free time or you “feel like it”. You gotta build it into your routine.
Why do you have to practice every day? Because if you take too much time off, you’ll forget a bunch of the stuff you just learned, and you’ll have to start all over again.
I’m not saying you’re never allowed to skip a day — but if you’re gonna skip a day, you need to have a good reason.
The best way to make sure you practice every day is to make practicing a habit. I recommend scheduling off a block of time every day to practice, or pairing practice with another thing you already do every day. (For more on building good habits, I highly recommend James Clear’s book Atomic Habits).
Principle #7: We Learn Most When We’re Uncomfortable
When I was 4 years old, I got stung by a bee.
I was at a barbecue at my parents’ friend’s house. A bee was messin’ with me. I decided to show that little bastard who’s boss, so I swatted at him.
Next thing I knew, I was inside the house crying, begging someone to come treat my throbbing beesting. That thing hurt, man. (I don’t know why, but beestings pack a nasty punch.)
I don’t have a ton of memories from when I was 4. But I remember that beesting like it was yesterday.
I’m not the only one who remembers painful stuff more vividly. In one study in 2004, researchers found that people were more likely to remember something painful than something neutral.
What’s going on? Our brains assume that anything that’s painful is important. We remember pain so we can avoid it.
This doesn’t just apply to physical pain. Poker players generally remember the big pots they lose more than the big pots they win. That’s because losing a big pot is painful.
So if you wanna learn something, I strongly recommend pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.
You don’t have to go get stung by a bee. But do something that scares you. This is the best way to grow.
The same principle applies to taking risks. Put yourself in positions where you really have to get things right, or else there will be consequences. The higher the stakes are, the more you’ll remember.
One way to do this is to make friendly wagers. When poker players want to lose weight, they make “weight loss bets” with their friends.
This is a great way to learn better because it increases the pain of failure. If you lose $50 because you didn’t lose enough weight, you’ll remember what you did wrong, and you’ll try harder next time.
Principle #8: If You Wanna Learn, You Gotta Set Aside Your Ego
Once, an American martial artist went to China to study with a legendary kung fu master.
When he met the master, he started bragging about all the stuff he had done. “I’m a black belt in taekwando,” he said. “And I’m also one of the best Brazillian jiu-jitsu competitors in the world.”
As he blathered on and on, the master started to pour the student a cup of tea. He poured and he poured and he poured, until the cup was overflowing, and hot tea spilled in both their laps.
“Ow!” said the student. “What’d you do that for?”
“Your cup is too full,” said the master. “If you wish to learn, you must empty your cup.”
The point of this story is that whenever you learn something, you have to go in with a beginner’s mindset. You have to approach everything like you know nothing. Because if you think you know everything already, then you can’t learn anything.
Taking a beginner’s mindset is extremely uncomfortable for people because human beings are status-driven creatures. We care what other people think of us. And we assume that if we act like a beginner, people won’t like us.
If you want to be a great learner, you gotta get over that. You have to assume there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know. Then you have to set aside your ego and learn it.
(I wrote a whole article about this if you’re curious.)
So you want to be a great learner, huh?
If you wanna get better at learning, your best bet is to practice learning stuff. So I recommend picking a skill — something you’ve never done and you’ve always been curious about — and try to learn it.
Ideally, you should give yourself a tangible, real-life goal.
For example, if you wanna learn how to program, you might try to code a Snake game. This is an easy way to get started.
Or, if you don’t know how to speak Spanish, you might try to have a 30 minute conversation with a native speaker.
Or, if you don’t know how to draw, your goal can be “draw a realistic self-portrait”.
I know, doing this stuff sounds scary. That’s how you know it works!
Here’s an important thing to understand: your goal should be doing-focused, not learning-focused or completion-focused. For example, “learn Spanish” is a bad goal because it’s too vague. How do you measure it?
And “finish all the Spanish lessons on Duolingo” is a bad goal, because finishing all the Duolingo lessons doesn’t necessarily mean you can actually speak Spanish.
Instead, your goal should be “hold a complex conversation in Spanish for 30 minutes.”
Giving yourself a real-world goal has 2 benefits. First, it’ll force you to shift learning tactics when what you’re doing isn’t working, rather than sticking to your original learning plan. And second, it’ll give you a major sense of achievement when you’re finished.
I also recommend giving yourself a timeframe. If you force yourself to pull off something difficult in just 2 months, it’ll force you to try harder and cut out the stuff that isn’t working faster.
Once you pull off a difficult goal, you’ll get the feeling that you can do anything you set your mind to. That’ll give you the courage to try even harder things. Eventually you’ll feel like you can do anything!
Hey! Thanks for reading.
Some news from me: I started a YouTube channel breaking down the books that I read. I’m making 7-ish minute summaries of the big ideas in them, so you can learn everything I learned without actually reading the book yourself.
My first video is about Scott Young’s book “Ultralearning”, which I mentioned in this article. You can check that out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBdRIcmScVg
If you’re new here, my name’s Theo and every Monday I publish an article like this one about whatever was on my mind the week before. Usually that’s related to learning, social sciences, or long-term trends in society.
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Happy trails!
