What I've Learned about Learning
I have always been an avid learner. In school I was very studious and academically driven, and even after official schooling was over with college and grad school, I sought out numerous courses, programs, books, teachers, and resources on my own to continue learning various subjects that I was interested in (music, martial arts, and bodywork, among others). I have probably spent tens of thousands of dollars and hours over a decade or so of active exploring. Of course not all of those things have led to satisfying results, and I have made many mistakes, too. However, I have certainly gained valuable insights into what makes learning effective and what doesn’t, and what place learning has in our life overall, which I will share below.
[To clarify, what I mean by effective learning is a process where knowledge is fully absorbed and affects a significant change and growth in you in a desired direction. I did plenty of “learning” especially in my school years where I memorized a lot of information which ultimately did not make any lasting impact or have relevance in my life (i.e. the familiar phenomenon of forgetting everything right after an exam), and this is not the kind of learning I am referring to in this article.]
The 20:80 Rule: There’s only so much new information you need.
A lot of us, especially when we’re not making as much progress as we would like on something, tend to think that we need more information: something we haven’t seen yet, a secret method we haven’t been given, more books and articles to read, more courses to take, etc. These days, when more information than we can ever dream of taking in is available at our fingertips, it’s easy to fall into a trap of neverending information consumption without making real progress.
From what I have seen, though, new information per se makes up at most about 20% of the whole equation (it might even be less). The remaining 80% or more of the learning is achieved by doing: applying concepts, experimenting, exploring, and practicing. For example, whatever new insight or feedback the teacher provides the student during a lesson one day a week needs to be practiced and integrated by the student during the rest of the week, a minimum of 4-5x time investment. The most effective courses and teachers I’ve worked with have all followed this formula: they give the necessary piece of information, which happens relatively quickly, and then essentially tell you to “go play with it, do the homework, and bring back questions.” This means the student has to be willing to make a lot of mistakes, fail numerous times, and hold unresolved questions inside them with patience, a capacity we seem to be losing quickly in our age of convenience and quick solutions. Therefore, it is rare to find programs or teachers who teach this way, and they are usually not the ones with fancy marketing and a high cost (because the work is mostly done by the student, and the teacher isn’t focused on keeping the student as a customer). However, when I find one of these hidden gems, I cherish it, because this is the most effective (although not the fastest) way that I have seen that leads to deep, holistic, and transformative learning in the long run.
The Simple Formula: Master building blocks and create infinite variations.
Whatever the field, there are always fundamental concepts and techniques (the “building blocks”) that then get applied to various situations (the “variations”). If you are learning to cook, for example, you have to learn basic skills such as cutting, mincing, boiling, frying, steaming, and so on, as well as how basic ingredients such as vegetables, meats, spices, and herbs are used. Once the basics are mastered, you can apply them in different combinations to make various dishes, ranging from pasta to tacos to bibimbap. If you understand the building blocks deeply enough and have them at your disposal through a lot of practice, you can create delicious meals on the fly with whatever is available and without any recipes or measurements—a.k.a. you reach the “Grandma level” of cooking. And it’s not about learning a hundred different techniques and using exotic ingredients, but rather how artfully and masterfully you can work with the few basic things that everyone can understand.
Music, regardless of genre, also comes down to a few categories of building blocks such as scales, harmonies, and rhythms. Different cultures and styles organize these blocks in different ways to create their unique sound. Language, too, requires the building blocks of vocabulary and syntax to then create infinite patterns that express our thoughts. From this, we can infer that the bulk of the learning process should be dedicated to two things: 1) keeping the basics (the “ingredients” or “tools”) sharp and ready to be employed on demand, through regular drills and refinement over time; and 2) studying the ways they can be put together for maximum desired effect, through the study of rules, principles, and masterful examples by the “greats”. These are old-school methods: simple, repetitive, somewhat dry, and not particularly exciting or radical. They go against our tendency to look for the “secret golden recipe.” But they are tried-and-true methods of honing a craft, which then has a possibility of becoming an art (note, if the tools are not sharp, good art is not possible no matter how “creative” you are).
The Secret to Motivation: Love and discipline.
There seem to be two contradictory types of advice when it comes to learning successfully: 1) work hard, be disciplined, and do things even if you don’t want to; 2) enjoy it, play like a child, and only do what you love. I think both of these hold true but are incomplete without each other. If you have discipline but no love for the subject you’re learning, it will not last very long; as soon as whatever was forcing the discipline is removed (which could be parents, teachers, exams, awards, etc.), you will quit. On the other hand, if you have love for a subject but no discipline to do the hard—sometimes unpleasant—work that is required, your potential will not flower.
In the interview below, the amazing pianist Hiromi Uehara mentions that the most important thing for her as a musician is discipline, which is required to achieve her goals. For example, she has to practice every day no matter where she is, keep writing music, and keep a healthy lifestyle. When asked if she ever finds pleasure in discipline, she says yes, because every step takes her towards her goals. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to continue to play her music all her life, even into her 90s. In her daily discipline for what she loves, she finds true joy.
Often, we wait for “motivation” to show up from somewhere else, and then we say we’ll do the work. But true motivation comes from within: a goal, a dream, a love of something. This is the spark. But then you need to feed it continually to keep the fire alive: through discipline and daily small decisions, actions, and sacrifices that take you towards your dream.
A Personal Journey: Your questions matter the most.
A lot of us (especially the “good students” like me) are experts at giving answers. Especially through schooling, we take in facts that are given to us, memorize them, and reproduce them as accurately as possible when demanded. This is certainly useful; there are some basic things that just need to be absorbed this way. After a point, though, just giving the correct answer doesn’t take you any further on a deeper journey into a subject. What matter then are your questions and your willingness to explore them. Unlike an answer, which was determined by someone else in the past, a question is something that is relevant to you in the now, and something that has not been solved yet. It is a true motivator and a guide to your learning.
There is an art to asking questions, too, and your questions also evolve as you evolve. For example, in the early days of learning piano I might have asked questions like, “How do I get through this piece without making mistakes so I can please my teacher?” and this would focus my practice on getting the notes perfect and tune out everything else, leading to unrefined playing, typical of young students. As my learning deepened, I started asking questions like, “How do I produce the right sound to portray this particular emotion in this passage?” which got me to pay closer attention to details and seek out relevant resources, leading to more mature playing. No amount of teaching, even by the best teachers, could have hammered this in as effectively as I myself asking this question from within and seeking the answers. Questioning, then, works as a filter through which only the most relevant pieces of information are taken in, so that you can guide and unfold your own personal journey that matters to you.
The Power of Play: Let things get messy.
As someone who likes order and neatness, I find this one very hard, and learning improvisation in music and sparring in martial arts has been a great lesson. One of my teachers told me, “You have to be willing to get your hands dirty, like a child playing with Play-Doh. You try things, make a lot of mess, and see what works and what you like. You can spend hours doing this because it’s fun.” Another teacher of mine has said, “Make learning into a game and laugh a lot. Laugh at your mistakes. That’s when your body relaxes and you can learn best.” Especially in something like improvisation and sparring, there isn’t one right way to do things, which can be both liberating and intimidating. This is where the child’s mind has an advantage over the adult’s mind, because it is less inhibited by how things should be and more open to how things are and can be. Of course, sometimes a mess is just a mess, and without intelligent guidance, the play does not lead to any actual progress. This is where the adult’s mind can come in (either in the form of a teacher in a class or yourself during your own practice) to build appropriate containers for the exploration. With the right mix of play and structure, learning and joy can flow.
The Greater Ecosystem: Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
One mistake that I have made many times is trying to learn things that don’t have any relevance or context in my life, out of a desire to know everything, or just because I could learn it. Online courses, podcasts, and books abound in our world, and one can easily take a buffet-style approach to consuming information: a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a taste of everything and the next thing you know you have overstuffed yourself, and you did not even enjoy one particular thing. This happens when there is no clear goal and context for the learning.
All arts, crafts, and subjects were created in order to fill the need for something: martial art in order to survive; science in order to understand and gain better control of the natural world; architecture in order to make useful structures around us. Even things that are not strictly utilitarian such as philosophy, art, or music, have the function of nurturing and uplifting our mind and spirit for better living. Each field contains a rich history, institutions, customs, and numerous people involved, forming a complex and dynamic ecosystem. Traditionally, most if not all fields were taught in an intimate master-apprentice relationship within a community, with a specific use or outlet for the products of their labor (e.g. music was used in church services or village festivals, philosophy was debated in academies and agoras to address real-world issues, swordmaking produced weapons for real use). In our modern setting, however, the subjects we learn are often divorced from their original context and use; we learn them alone or in a classroom without interaction with the larger community (sometimes not even with any human), and mostly in order to pass an exam or fulfill a requirement, or as another extracurricular activity, etc. Each subject becomes just another moderately interesting dish at a buffet, easily forgotten and not as potent as it was meant to be. Real and clear purpose, belonging to a greater context, and active relationship with the community drives fruitful learning.
The Feedback Loop: Be both a student and a teacher.
In my experience, being a student and being a teacher are two sides of the same coin called learning. If you’re a teacher, being a student in something else helps you understand what your own students are going through. When you’re reading advanced literature, you forget what it was like to learn the ABC’s; likewise, when you’re at an advanced level in a field as a teacher, it’s hard to remember what it was like when you were struggling with the basic concepts or skills a long time ago. Learning something else, especially an unfamiliar subject, helps you stay humble and compassionate towards your students, and gives you better ideas of how to really help them. Engaging with other fields, teachers, and ways of doing things also broaden and enrich your perspective, making you a more effective teacher and a well-rounded thinker overall.
On the other hand, when you’re a student, you should also create opportunities to teach others what you know. There’s a saying: If you want to learn something well, teach it. Learning is not just about absorbing information; the information needs to become a part of you, and you also need to be able to use it and share it with the world. There needs to be absorption, integration, and transmission, which form a feedback loop, and starting with transmission in mind is an effective way to activate absorption and integration of the right information. Besides teaching others, being your own teacher is also an essential skill, because that’s essentially what you need to do when you’re not directly working with your teacher, which is actually the majority of the time. You also gain a better understanding of your own learning style and are able to ask better questions from your real teacher.
Overall, being a student and a teacher, and engaging in various modes and contexts of learning, help create positive feedback loops that can amplify your learning manyfold.
Humility: Belonging to a bigger and bigger world.
My dad, who holds a Ph.D in the sciences, once told me something rather curious: When you get to college, you think you know everything. When you go on to get your masters, you start thinking you don’t know everything after all. By the time you get your Ph.D, you realize everyone else also doesn’t know much. Of course, as you gain mastery of a subject, you “know” more and more. But after a certain point, an even bigger world opens up, and should you be courageous enough to throw yourself into it, you get to swim in the infinite ocean with the giants, where what you know becomes just a tiny drop in the bucket. All the great masters I have known, whether in music, martial arts, or other fields, have had one thing in common: they are excited to continue honing their craft and learning new things for the rest of their life. They generally don’t think of themselves as having “arrived” at mastery, although they might hold high-level status, titles, and fame in their field as a result of their extraordinary achivements. They are very humble, and if you just met them on the street you wouldn’t even know they are so-and-so or a “big deal.”
One of my teachers has said, become ever so ordinary in your search for the extraordinary. When you dedicate yourself to perfecting a craft (in fact, perfecting yourself through the craft) and surrender to the process with humility, a world of wonder opens up. I have perhaps seen a glimpse of it, and I believe there is so much more to come. So, I keep on going.
Happy journeying!