Learning How to Learn I. Views on learningA. Learning

Learning How to Learn
    Good evening. Today’s lecture is about the phrase "learning how to learn". I remember reading that learning how to learn is one of the best skills you can develop. That phrase "learning how to learn" got stuck in my head and I turned that concept over and over in my mind and asked myself: "Do we have to learn how to learn?" After thinking about it, I’ve realized that learning is something so natural that we don’t even recognize that we’re doing it because we get so caught up in the process of it.
    Most of us associate learning as something difficult, something reserved for extremely intelligent people, but that is not the case at all. I think the biggest indicator that will tell you how much you will learn is what makes you want to learn in the first place. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but that single factor is very important as you’ll soon see. Take for example, learning the latest accounting rules because your job requires it as opposed to learning about cars because that’s something you like. If you have to learn something, you’ll only learn as much as you’re required to—in other words the absolute minimum, but if you want to learn something, the sky’s the limit.
    There are some basic overall methodologies to learning.
    It really begins first with choosing the right subject. This is key. This choice alone can determine how much you are willing to learn. You have to develop a love for learning and that becomes really easy when you love the subject itself.
    After the right subject is chosen, then comes the education. When education comes to mind, we tend to think of books, tapes, videos but there’s one element that a lot of people seem to miss and that element is the human being. People who are experts in any particular subject can filter through everything and tell you the information you need to read, the actions you need to take, etc., and by doing so, can cut your learning curve in half. That’s the whole logic behind mentors and their students.
    After the knowledge, comes action. You have to apply what you’ve learned. This stage is where most people fall into a trap. They want to know everything before they take any sort of action. That’s the wrong mentality to have because by doing so, you effectively block yourself from the most important stage of learning, that is refinement. The stage of refinement is where the majority of learning occurs because refinement acts as a filter to guide you to the knowledge you need to get again from books, tapes, videos, people, etc., to further your learning experience. This puts you back to the second stage, education which then leads to the third stage—application, which leads again to the fourth stage, refinement and on and on and on. This cycle is where the majority of learning takes place. After the action is taken, they want to learn how to do more so the refinement is showing them what they need to know and they go back to learning, applying what they’ve learned, refining, in essence, loop themselves from educate to apply to refine and as they do so, the knowledge plus experience starts compounding on one another until their learning starts to grow exponentially. The refinement stage is very important because that will determine whether or not you really learn because anybody can learn something and apply it, but few will go the extra mile and get caught up in the cycle of learn to apply to refine. Again, people who are knowledgeable about a subject can help you in the refinement stage because you can ask exactly the questions you need and they can respond accordingly to give you the exact knowledge you request. That’s something books, tapes, and videos cannot do because those are one sided conversations. You can further capitalize on asking people by leveraging those relationships to ask for introductions to other people who are knowledgeable about the subject as well.
    Now let’s take a look at other factors crucial to learning.
    First, a humble attitude is critical to learning and is best applied when it comes to asking people for information. Acknowledge the fact that you know little about the subject and that you wish to learn and then ask people to help you and you will be amazed at the torrent of information that comes pouring out from them. People will be less inclined to give out information to somebody who claims they know a lot about the subject as opposed to those who are humble and willing to learn.
    Secondly, listening. The majority of people love to talk about subjects they are knowledgeable about and are more than willing to dish everything out, provided the other party is truly listening.
    Thirdly, experimenting. Don’t be afraid to mix things up when you apply what you’ve learned because that in turn can point to an area of refinement you never knew existed. Experimenting shakes things up and can even lead you to learning something that’s never be known before! Learning begins with choosing the right subject one that you, and you alone are truly interested in and I know that sounds obvious, but people try to learn things that they are not interested in for reasons outside themselves.
    Generally speaking, it turns out learning is pretty easy, so long as you like the subject. When that happens, you’ll realize that all that time you spent on it was actually time spent learning. It just didn’t feel like it at all.