The Efficient Way of Learning
What’s wrong about learning in formal education
Why you can’t remember what you learned?
Did you still remember the concept about Newton’s second law of motion?Law of conservation of mass? Constitution of your country? Anything form the school?
No? how come? we all paying so much money and life to our education, why in the end we can’t remember a bit about what we learn in school?
Let’s recall those monotonous days, we go to school at morning, we learning knowledge by listen teacher’s speech, read the textbooks, do the homeworks, we trying so hard to store every knowledge that useful for exam in our brain, few days, few month, as time flows, when our exam is pass, then we forget the knowledge we learn last semester and move towards next education cycle.
We forgot what we learned before the exam because they’re not useful for our exam anymore! And one common sense that we all know about how our brain’s memory work is: Brain will automatically clean the info in our memory that no longer useful.
Some may say, ok then, so if I recall what I learned oftenly, then I can hardly forget those knowledge right?
Theoretically, yes, you can make you knowledge more solid by doing this, but what exactly are we learning all those knowledge for?
What you have learned is for what?
Formal education teach students tons of knowledge in wide field that truly important as much as they can stuff in textbooks, they don’t know what those students may become in future, what they talent are, what field is right for them, and this is correct, cause neither do students and parents have any idea, students must do a little try out to learn many things in order to find out what they interested in, what they wanna do, what kind of person they wanna be, and etc, no problem.
What problem is, the formal education didn’t stop in here, they become over enthusiastic.
They want make sure they students know everything in current subject before they can move on next one, they think the way of learning is like build the skyscraper, you must placed all materials in current layer before move to higher level, and they make they students believe it too.
So, naturally, they tend to judge students by they mistake, tend to ignore students interests and individuality, they always think students is not good enough and not ready to make they own decision on learning, they make students feel they are stupid, make students sick of learning, they care those flowers of the country so much, that don’t even noticed they almost blocked all the sunshine as well.
But the reason for formal education make student useless is precisely what formal education are trying to make student become all-know genius.
Compare to seeds, formal education treat they students more like beans, a clot starch waiting to be processed, instead of find the good soil with adequate nutrients and let it grow by it self, the formal education system like to using education machine to process it — cycle of processing and examine, and in the end they label on those beans, and put beans that alike in a jar, place in the market and waiting for the people who pay for it.
As those formal education machine keep running, and people get used to it, then things become pretty natural to everyone, as student we spend lot of money and time to go through this machine, and lot of energy for get all those fancy label, hope in the end can get in a good jar, as parents we do the samething to our child, which is very reasonable cause that’s how liberal capitalism worked, how today’s democratic society worked.
But learning should more than just for fit in the current society, and true purpose of education is not use students money, time and energy to exchange the various certificates. The purpose is help students to make most of they talent, help them turning they talent to the useful skill, is help the seeds grow and bear they own fruits on it’s onw way. Purpose of education should be feeding the possibility of students.
So, learn what for your future? you figure it out, don’t let formal education system to tell you that, cause your possibility certainly not in the list of what they care.
The efficient way of learning — learning for purpose
1.Purpose
Anything you want, build a website, make a short film, draw the person you like or just as simple as you want to make money, you need a target to move to, not learn anything that catch your eyes, that gonna make you run in a circle, if you want build something big, try to segmentation your purpose, toword it one section at time, it gonna much easier and emotionally more acceptable.
2.The way toward the purpose
Once you know what you want achieve, then you will meet the question come from your head, what is the website and how to build the simplest one? what you film is all about and what is basic element about film? how to draw the human body structure? what is my best opportunity around for make money? or just ask more exactly about what you really want?
Here it’s the key point, those question will tell you what things you don’t know, and those things you don’t know it’s the things you need to learn in order to achieve your purpose.
The problem that prevents you from achieve your purpose is your learning guide.
You don’t learning to ride a bike by spend few years in school learning the Newtonian mechanics and aerodynamics, you don’t live the comfortable modern life by read thousand of smart appliances instruction manual first. When you are heading for the purpose, you are learning the knowledge that useful to you alone the way.
If you know the basic knowledge that you gonna need it anyway then sure, go ahead and take your time to learn it, but remember don’t spend too much time to learn something you don’t necessarily need, cause our time is limited, so it’s not possible for us to learn all the knowledge first to prepare for future problems, knowledge is useful and we should learn it, agreed, but for achieve our purpose efficiently we should learn it only when we need it.
So the strategy toward the purpose is analysis the problem that prevents you from achieve your purpose, and find the things you don’t know, learn what you need, when you understand enough about the item within the problem, then you find a solution to solve it, solve one problem is one step toward you goal, step by step, if nothing unexpected happened, you will get there.
But thanks to the Internet, most of case you don’t even need to solve all the problems on you own, the path you taking toward your purpose maybe already been passed by others, so when you meet some difficult problem, you can always search online first see if it already been solved, and if not, then time to think. And even more convenient if someone already make whole tutorial that show the most of the things you need to know for achieve your purpose, for example like those coding tutorial you can find anywhere online that teach you to write the whole project from scratch.
Just make it clear, you need always remember your purpose, and always remind yourself: what you want is find the most efficient way to achieve your purpose, is not to learn knowledge as much as you can, is not to prove how good you are, I see lot of indie game developer write they own game engine before they make the game they want, unless their purpose is create a game engine, otherwise, this is irrational behavior, because there already had lot of free and open source game engine wait for them, and no way they can make better one on they own, they’re too busy to achieve their real purpose.
And make sure you understand this one: they way toward your purpose usually not straight forward, you want thinking twice to make sure you are on the right path before working on it, or you gonna waste your time.
3.Hard-working toward the purpose
We all heard too much theory about psychological comfort zone, willpower or whatever, I doubt how those theory can make people who listen it less lazy, I feel it more like excuse to be honest, I can only tell you whatever you want achieve, the self-management is necessary, Einstein have so much accomplishment not only because he’s brain have many genius ideas, as long as you can make yourself to do things you not necessarily like in oreder to get what you want, you gonna be just fine, if you know what you want achieve and know exactly what you need do but you just don’t do it, then you gonna waste your time and eventually waste your life, as simple as that.
4.You may fail and it’s not necessarily your fault
Something important need to be mentioned here is that, your purpose can be achieved or not, not necessarily only determine by your own efforts, but also up to how many factors that will influences success of your purpose are out of your control.
For example, if your purpose is write a novel to show a world that in your head, if time is enough and you have right tool to write it then there’re no problem at all, you know the only thing that can stop you to achieve your goal is yourself, however, if your purpose is not only write that novel but also want it selling well at book market, then most likely your novel gonna fail you like most of other novels on market and feeling disheartened, but it’s really not your fault, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t control what the free market likes.
What I’m trying to say is you should at least know the uncontrollable factors that will influences success of your purpose, so even if your plan didn’t work out as the way you expect, and you find out the reason of you fail is those uncontrollable factors, then you can still say “At least I tried”, and easily move on to your next plan, instead of crying, feeling disheartened or say something like “I shouldn’t do this at beginning”… Look, even if it’s really you fault, please, be easy to yourself, nobody know at beginning, everybody know at the end, all those emotional behavior after fail is waste of energy and time, we all learn through our mistakes, and we all bad prophet. So, clean your mind, lift up your head, and get on the road.
Conclusion about learning for purpose
What you want will give you the question, question will tell you what you should learn, understand enough about what you should learn then you will find the solution, implement the solution to solve the question, cycle those step, keep harding working with help of others experience and some extra luck on things you cannot control, eventually you will achieve what you want.
Learning for purpose is efficient enough for the things that you already see it, like several tasks in your work or turn your ideas into reality, it take less time to get your goal, but is not enough for the great possibility of your future.
Embrace the great unknown — exploratory learning
Learning for deeper understanding of things you doing
You have found some solutions that are useful for your purpose, but you do not fully understand how it worked, or maybe you are not sure if there have better way to solve the promble, then you need deeper understand of things you doing, trying to reason is the the only way to master one skill. it not only help you solve problems in the same field more efficiently, but also make you prepared for solving related problems in the future.
Taking coding as example, you may find some function online somewhere that solved you promble perfectly without explanation, so for deeper understanding you have to read the source code, or there have one framework you use a lot on your work, for use it more efficiently you have to learning how this framework works internally or maybe to read the part of this framework source code that you are interested in.
You could also achieve this by helping with other’s prombles, regardless of the results, you will have deeper understanding about what knowledge you use to conclude.
Do it and get used to it if you want become expert in a certain field.
Learning for contribute to the field that you are interested in
Contribute to the field basically mean you need produce something useful that solved promble no one else does, solved the some resolved issues in that field more efficiently, or you find a new meaningful question related to that field and you solved it. in short, find the new promble for yourself and try to solve it.
So, in order to doing this, you need digging even deeper about current what you doing, try to understand deeply about some interesting stuff, new hot stuff that many people start to using, or some stuff that difficult to understand but very important. if you don’t do this, then you gonna slowly feel nothing new to do with your skill, eventually feel boring about your field, the purpose here is to finding a new purpose that meaningful and interesting enough for you.
You never know what idea you have that may change the world, although it is highly unlikely to be probabilistically, but by keep thinking, keep creating, there maybe one become popular from tons of your useful works, and keep producing, then one may become a pretty good business from many of your popular works, you will make something useful whatsoever, because it’s also highly unlikely to be probabilistically if not.
This is a very energy-intensive process, many things you have learned will be forgot some point in future, and sometime you explored a lot but find nothing interesting, this won’t be easy for both your energy and feeling, don’t count succeed in one move, otherwise you gonna feel even more depressed when you fail, most important is keep this in mind while you trying: Perseverely work hard cannot guarantee success for you, it only increase your chances, increase it from zero.
I think the best example in the world is Open Source in the field of programming, they contribute the field for free just for promote the advancement of coding world. And surely you can see those small group of truly success peoples among in all those experts of programming, lot of people in that small group have greate success in both programming and business.
Do it and get used to it if you want to be successful in your field.
Learning just for learning
It’s amazing feeling if you think about it, just how little we know compare to what we don’t know, yet how little we don’t know compare to what we don’t know that we don’t know, if you feel what I feel, then it’s not only just feeling of wonder but also feeling of helpless within it, however, if we consider all mankind in human history as one person, then we all have one greatest mentor of all mankind.
If you prefer reading like I do, well, then just let your curiosity be your only guide, read the books you like, try link what you read with your own experience, if you feel bored then throw away what you read now and change to a new one, you never know what you may find helpful in those papers, maybe you find peace of mind, maybe inspire you an idea, sometime could be new door for your mind.
Do it and learn to love it if you want experience and enjoy your life at your maximize.
Summary
It’s time to abandon the old learning style and learn to use our mind efficiently! and It’s time for us to try to hold on the wheel of our own future!
The most precious capital is our time, so try to manage your own life by manage your daily time, most of it for achieve your purpose on work thats for certain, but don’t forgot to investing in your own possibility, because your future depends on this!
And most important is, embrace the possibility, when time is good be grateful, when time is bad be graceful, hope we all can enjoy the surprise it brings and don’t get hurt by it ruthless.
My best wish for anyone who see those words, have good day : )
