Measuring Quality and Progress in Prolific Learning

Take Pride in Accomplishments

One focus in prolific learning is satisfaction in our progress. Are we proud of what we are doing? Are we seeing our consistent progress? Or are we constantly seeing ourselves as falling short of what someone else expects of us?

Having pride in what we accomplish is one of the best possible measures of quality in prolific learning.

Most of us have become accustomed to measuring our progress in terms of taking tests of some type. We have some type of objective standard we work towards and then compare our progress to it. For many of us, we simply cannot think of any different way to measure our progress. We have usually come to define quality on the basis of performance on tests or other measurements.

I’m going to suggest an alternative to this. What is the difference between a Broadway production of a musical and a local high school performance? All of the notes might be sung correctly and all of the lines delivered correctly. But there is a huge difference that we can immediately notice. What’s the difference between a national symphony orchestra and a high school band? Each can practice and play the same song without mistakes, but there is a difference in quality we can hear. It is this type of measure of quality we need to learn to use when measuring our learning. One performance is simply “better” than the other. This difference cannot be measured by mistakes (or lack of them). It is subjectively measured by what we like best. Often, it is this type of difference and improvement we are striving for.

One of the misconceptions we have come to believe is that there are objective learning standards. In reality, if we think about it, there are no truly objective standards. An expert determines a list of what you must learn. When it comes down to it, this ends up being a series of opinions as to what is most important for you to learn. Then an expert determines how they are going to measure if you have mastered those things. When it comes down to it, this too is a series of opinions about how to do this. Then a series of experts determine how to best teach you to best perform on those measurements. This too is ends up being much experimentation for what works best for the most people. Your success (and that of the experts) is about getting the best possible results from the measurements. The reality is that this is a series of steps with many subjective decisions made at all stages. Why then do we treat the relative ranking of numbers at the end as being objective? How meaningful is the particular number that a particular student receives? Does this number measure what you actually want to be doing with what you are learning? How many people have gotten passing (or even very good) grades in a course and came out remembering little from it and have few if any useful skills from it?

In practice, there is some correlation between test performance and real life performance, but usually only in mass measurements of groups. If thousands of people are scored on some test (on a 1 to 10 scale), chances are that someone who scores an 10 is going to be better at it than someone who scores a 1. But how likely is it that a person with an 8 can outperform a person with a 7 or a 6? What will be the difference between a particular person with a 4 and a particular person with a 5? It’s probably not possible to say. On the other hand, if we look at 100 people who got an 8 and 100 people who got a 6, we’d probably see some difference between the two groups as a whole. However, the relative performance of two individuals randomly selected from each group will be hard to predict. My understanding is one organization that does extensive testing of new candidates is the National Football League. However, in spite of the amount of research and ranking with a number of measures of potential candidates entering the league, there is not a high correlation between predicted performance and actual performance. (At least that is based on a few articles I’ve read on the subject.)

Sadly, most people who end up giving up on something or fall short of what they want are not using appropriate methods or measures. They are likely not focusing on what they want to learn to do and getting better at it. They are instead likely focusing on so-called objective standards and methods of learning. Their measure of quality and progress becomes what someone else has determined it should be. They might be making good progress on the so-called objective standards but doing what they really want to eludes them.

One of the things that characterizes prolific learning is that we usually have something in mind we want to do with what we are learning. We need to learn what quality means to us for what we are learning. We can then start to figure out ways of directly measuring that. If I want to learn to paint landscapes, what is the best measure of quality? It depends on what I want to do. If my goal is relaxation, I need to measure how relaxed I am while painting. If my goal is to decorate my home, my measure will be how much I like to look at a painting I made hanging on the wall. If my goal is to become a professional artist, my measure will be how many paintings I can sell and what price I can get for them.

The two things that describe prolific learning are enjoyment and effectiveness. We need to measure both. If we do not enjoy something, we’re going to slowly stop doing it. If it is not effective, we won’t make much progress.

We need to keep track of how much we enjoy doing something. Once we start getting frustrated or dreading something, our efforts will tail off and we will end up dropping it. We need to closely monitor if we enjoy what we are doing. If we do not, we need to figure out why. There are many possible methods and ways of using them to learn something. We need to be aware of when a particular method is enjoyable and when it is starting to become frustrating.

We need to keep track of how effective a particular method is for what we want to accomplish. I wasted decades of time and effort failing at language learning. Why? A big part of it was that I was effectively doing things which didn’t advance the skills I really wanted. I got very good at memorizing tables and information, but I never got very good at actually using a language. I started improving at reading another language when I started practicing reading. At one point I was spending about 30 minutes per day reading in my new language. By keeping track of how many pages I was enjoyably and comfortable reading per day, I had a much better measure of my real progress than when I worried about how many words in lists I could remember or not.

Prolific learning is about learning things that enrich our lives. A large part of this is that those new things bring us enjoyment and satisfaction. Another large part is that our skills consistently move forward. This is a long term journey that we need to enjoy. We enjoy the journey by having things that we can take pride in and are satisfied with as we move forward. It is best when these things arise spontaneously and naturally. This means our satisfaction is coming from our natural learning process and progress and has deep meaning for us. Sitting at a piano and feeling enjoyment and satisfaction as we play is a good way to measure the quality of our playing in a way meaningful to us. Having a sense of pride as we and others look at one of our landscape paintings hanging on our wall is a measure of quality. It is these type of things that encourage us to keep moving forward both enjoying the journey and improving our skills as we go.

There are of course times that getting feedback from others is very helpful. There are many people we can learn from. Sometimes others can give us an outside perspective that we are lacking and what we can do better. This is something healthy and helpful for us. However, we need to make sure others are helping us move forward toward what we want to be able to do. If someone is judging our progress by an arbitrary standard of what is good and bad, they potentially can discourage us and rob us of our sense of enjoyment of something. If we constantly measure our progress by what other people think of it, we can lose sight of what we enjoy about what we are doing. Countless people today have particular subjects or skills they gave up on or have a sense of futility of even trying because they’ve failed at someone’s standards so much they’ve given up on it. Note that it’s possible for even the most encouraging teacher to produce a sense of failure and futility in a student when the ultimate standard ends up being how well someone does on a test.

When our heart and soul is satisfied and we can take pride in our progress, we’ll stick with something and keep improving. When we are frustrated and constantly feel like a failure, we are much more likely to give up on something. Ultimately, prolific learning is rooted in our personal enjoyment and satisfaction rather than trying to get others’ approval. Quality in prolific learning is doing things we can take pride in.