How I Made learning any topic easy, interesting, and quick
a lesson from sports betting (football), and why we should be like children.
Hello all,
I wanna share a story on how i made learning easy for me. But first, let me tell you a little something about soccer… football. I used to play it when I was younger, but unlike my friends, I never watched the sport. I had no clue about which teams to support, the rivalries, the intricacies. With UEFA Euro 2024 just starting, I found myself feeling left out. I had no historical context. So, I decided I needed to learn about football to enjoy the matches, especially on days out with friends, and join in on some of the conversations.
I went online, watched documentaries, and tried using AI to gain insights, but I found it all boring. This made no sense because I thought I wanted to learn. Then I realized the issue: I had decided to learn, but I didn’t want to learn. There’s a big difference between deciding to learn and wanting to learn.
When you decide to learn, you’re often forcing yourself against the natural inclinations of your brain. When you genuinely want to learn, your brain is engaged and curious. This difference impacts how quickly and effectively you learn.
A few days later, I stumbled into an app called Bet365, a sports betting app. With no real knowledge, I bet on intuition and started winning some bets. Suddenly, learning about football became easy and engaging. It felt like play. Now i know somewhat, and its exciting with the Spain vs England final about to start in a few hours.
So, what changed?
Was it the reward factor of earning money?
Not really. Most things we want to learn often have some link to potential earnings.
Was it the fact that money would be quick?
Perhaps, but it was more about gamification, play, and having a personal stake in the topic that sparked me, but what fueled it all was that these things created in me a genuine desire to learn.
The Key Insight: Desire Over Decision
I’m not suggesting you need to start gambling to get into sports. I used free bet offers to test my luck. What you need is a genuine desire to learn, not just a decision to do so, and this applies to learning everything. So how do create that desire, first we have to ask why learn.
The Learning Divide
We all know how important it is to learn, we know the benefits, so why is it easier to consume content for hours but hard to focus on learning something even for a slice of that time?
The problem lies in how we are raised. Since we are born, we are placed in environments that either encourage or force us to learn, like the education system. This system turns people into two types: those who love to learn and those who hate it.
It has flaws; it’s severely out of date and not personalized. However, keeping the education system aside, let’s talk about learning after school. Many assume learning ends with the end of school, college, or work (if you are retiring). However, learning is a continuous process. Just like our muscles, our brain needs exercise, and learning is that exercise that keeps our brain excited.
Studies have shown that continuous learning and mental stimulation can increase brain plasticity, improve cognitive function, and even delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s (Harvard Health Publishing, 2020).
Be a lifelong student.
Pretty basic info right, But I can’t just leave it at that. How do I learn? What do I learn?
The reason we can consume hours of content but find it hard to learn is that learning often feels boring, and consuming content is entertaining. But is it entertaining? Yes, movies are entertaining, but what about mindless scrolling? I tried to understand what keeps us attached to scroll, and I found some answers.
Comfort
Inclusivisity
Curiosity
We watch mindless shorts because we are comforted by them. We feel comforted knowing we are aware of what’s happening in the social media world, even if it holds no real significance because everyone else is watching it too. Hence, we feel included. We watch movies to satisfy our curiosity about the plot. You already know this: if you watch something that doesn’t raise any questions or suspense, you likely won’t continue.
Comfort and inclusivity aren’t entirely in our hands. We feel comforted by something if the opposite is making us uncomfortable, and we can’t choose what we feel comforted by. We feel included when we fit in the crowd, but we can’t choose what makes us feel included because it involves others. However, we can somewhat control our curiosity.
Curiosity — the desire to explore something.
Humanity has only achieved great developments in various sectors because the greatest minds behind these ideas were curious. They wanted to know the why and the how.
So, how do you approach being curious? Fortunately, for movies and content, it’s the creators’ job to make us curious. They understand its importance and capitalize on it by designing their products to constantly invoke curiosity. Think about the suspenseful music and the cliffhangers — it just works.
But when it comes to learning, unless we have teachers who try to invoke a sense of curiosity (which unfortunately is increasingly uncommon now). we are left all alone.
Firstly, to answer the question, “What do we learn?” Ideally, you learn what you are curious about as that's the easiest to learn but often, what we need to learn is not equal to what we are curious about.
the most important skill is how to invoke curiosity about what you need to learn.
and here’s exactly how we do that:
Unlearn What You Think You Know: If you feel like you know a little bit, unlearn it. Start fresh. Believing you know something takes away the desire to explore.
Create an Emotional Attachment: Create an emotional attachment to the topic if possible. Emotional engagement naturally creates inquisitiveness.
Work in a Small Team: From an evolutionary standpoint, communicating with people naturally invokes curiosity.
Be Specific in Your Learning: When you have clarity, you can raise better questions.
Ask more questions: When you ask questions? you may find a link to another topic you are interested in, and that link fuels curiosity.
Experiment and Personalize: Mix and match these tips, experiment, and create your own ways. Only you can make the best solution for yourself.
The Sad Reality
Unfortunately, even children these days are often discouraged from being curious. Parents often choose to shut down or ignore their kid's questions about the world, especially when they are asked questions that are beyond the parents' comprehension. Rather, we should let them explore the world around them and encourage their natural curiosity. A simple: Hey, I don't know the answer, why don't we try to find out does a lot.
So, be curious, be uncomfortable. Often what we learn might not comfort us, but there is growth in being uncomfortable.
Lastly, feel okay with not being included. What if you are learning something that no one is into yet? That is where you know you’re early, which is great to capitalize on. You know you are in a great sport if you are both early and good - which you become by learning – which you do by invoking curiosity. It comes full circle.
A little something more:
Don’t let your curiosity get the better of you, there are a lot of things worth being curious about, but also a lot not worth your time, so we have to identify and choose, We have to choose to choose.
Thank you,
Lee Fmerns
