A Prolific Learning Principle: Work WITH Your Brain
We need to work with our brain instead of against it.
Working with our brain is produces long term learning which is enjoyable and satisfying. Fighting our brain is frustrating labor and usually results in temporary learning which is quickly forgotten.
The key word to understand is familiar. When we learn things working with our brain’s natural operation, those things become familiar to us. We can remember those things or use those skills with little conscious effort. In contrast, when we learn by fighting our brain’s natural operation, we have to work hard and those things often continue to feel unfamiliar to us. If we don’t constantly review those things, we forget them.
Our brain is great at picking up on regular patterns around us in the world. Most of us can easily walk around our homes, work places, neighborhoods, and other familiar places without thinking about it. Indeed, everything that is familiar to us is something that our brain has simply internalized with little effort on our part. Those things that we focus on and do on a daily basis become internalized into our natural thought patterns. We can just use them with little conscious effort. One of our brain’s features is that it forgets things that are not a regular part of our life so that they are not a distraction to us. Our brain remembers things that occur on a regular basis in the world around us. It forgets things that are sporadic or that we don’t focus on or care about.
Think about when you learned the Happy Birthday song. Chances are that you cannot point to a time that you learned it. Think about the layout of your home, office, or some other place you regularly frequent. Chances are that you didn’t learn it by memorizing a map but rather by simply moving around in the space and getting used to it. Think about tying our shoelaces. Chances are that you cannot remember when you learned that. Think about all of the people you know. We can trivially recall many facts about people. Think about how many songs that you know. This is how our brain naturally operates. Things that we enjoy and focus on and that recur frequently in the world around us become internalized and become familiar to us. This type of thing just occurs naturally with little effort on our part. It also produces long term memories and skills that stick with us.
In contrast, consider the significant effort it takes to memorize a list of facts because we have to for some reason or another. We can make flashcards, use spaced-repetition software, mnemonics, or other methods to try to force ourselves to effectively memorize the information. However, in spite of our best efforts, those things often remain unfamiliar and are forgotten quickly. In a very real sense, much of that time and effort is ultimately wasted.
When we want to learn something new, we need to make it a natural part of our life in some manner. Our learning should be more akin to play and hobbies than forced labor. This is what will cause something to become natural and familiar to us. We often choose methods of learning that make things labor intensive and frustrating rather than making them a natural part of our lives. We often make learning an artificial labor that we force ourselves to do temporarily gaining knowledge that is quickly forgotten after we stop actively reviewing it.
A simple rule of thumb to follow is this. Is the method you are using to learn leaving you enthralled where time flies by and you enjoy it? Or do you constantly have to force yourself to work on it? This is often a good indicator if the methods of learning you are using are working with or against your brain’s natural operation.