Learning tips I wished I knew

These days I am trying to relearn stuff that I have learned it way back in my university years. I have to say those times back in the day, despite my efforts in learning new learning methods, I was unable to adopt those methods until now.

With time in the workplace and more times than ever needed to use what I have learned, I have some new ideas on learning. I hope this would also benefit you too.

Learning requires a purpose

I few years ago I bought a book set, the first one called Input and another called Output both books written by Shion Kabasawa. The most important idea from the books is that learning should be determined by your output instead of what you input or quantity that you consume. This turned my perception on learning on its head. So, after all these years, I think I have to start this blog and to share about what I have picked up along my journey.

In my previous job, I worked as a medical education equipment sales, this provided me with more insights into learning. I remembered one of the first things I learned is that Adult Learning requires a purpose. Why adults learn things is that we want to use that piece of knowledge and apply them. There is a motive and drive for them to learn. You might recall what you did before when you want to know about say investing, or how appreciate wine. You are trying to get to a goal or an aim like, being financially independent or able to boast to your friends on wine knowledge. Although it is obviously now that you need a destination for your learning, I didn’t know it is this essential until I joined the workforce.

How you organise knowledge on the outside also reflects what you know inside

For the longest time, I think that I know nothing. Maybe there’s some truth when Ygritte said to Jon and similarly me. Despite taking the whole you know nothing out of context, I do echo with the sentiment. I know nothing, other than popping seemingly intelligent words and phrases from now and then. I have to say what say are words that are blurted out almost randomly while my brain is totally blank. I guess the issue here is perhaps all my new ideas are merely serendipity and I just so happens to be in the right place, in the right time saying the right words. Maybe I am having imposter syndrome…

As a person who likes to learn stuff, not particularly good at exams, I always like to cram knowledge into my head, and there are times I am unable to sort those new obtained information into the right places. I think my data science provided me with more knowledge about how I should be treating information. For example, Imagine knowledge as a tree, or to cluster relevant knowledge…there are plenty of ways to visualise information.

Information has a certain way of representation, and having these visualisations actually improves on comprehension. I also found out that I am able to remember better when actually try to visualise what I know. Mind mapping is a good first start.

Filtering information is more important than than hoarding

When you are learning, maybe you are like me, you like to hoard stuff. I am a curious person and I always believe I am a sponge that can absorb anything thrown at me. However, I am not. Surprise, Surprise. Yet I have gained the habit of information hoarding. I would be copying every line in the book, convincing to myself that it will be useful one day. That one day never came and I have spend the day copying instead of actually gaining anything. The sense of one day you need that knowledge, you believe you need to know about what a Pterosaur is or where each of capital is located, is blown to disproportion. Rather than getting to know about some knowledge that you might use someday, it is higher in return in extracting key information of something you learn. Something like “learning is about output” or “the key to the secret ingredient is nothing”. Keywords that revolutionise how you approach the world.

How to filter those you might ask? One of those tried and true methods would be to have a list of keywords. Try to pick the most important keywords that you can explain an idea like 80% of the time. Then try to link each ideas together, and see whether you can derive those ideas. The way it works is to clump similar ideas together such that you can enable yourself to remember and with some pondering you can better understand how those ideas come together. But, there’s also another way to learn, why not ask an AI.

Learning through asking LLMs

Artificial intelligence is all the craze right now, why not ask an AI? There’s a lot of benefits to learn using AI. As long as you are mindful of the information accuracy that these AI are, you can make use of the AI to quickly learn a new skill or to comprehend better.

Modern AI Large language models are usually trained using online resources and with more later versions providing more sophisticated answers. In the past, when you want to learn you go to YouTube or Khan academy or Coursera but the issue is that the curriculum, or what you learn is based on the teacher and sometimes when you have a question, you almost certainly have to figure it out yourself.

Now using one of those AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Poe, they can provide you with something that is only given to you now — the personalised teacher. You can ask questions, and follow up questions or asking for confirmations. If you don’t understand a concept that you are learning, you can ask for an analogy, you can have them give you an example. The freedom is in your hands. No more the time when you are too shy to ask a stupid question and missed the opportunity to understand it. If you understand the explanation, you can proceed to ask a follow up question. You can have it giving you questions to answer or have the AI to point out blind spots and misconceptions. The possibility is endless.

Conclusion

My learning journey is filled with trials, it is not sunshine and rainbows. There are much to learn, much to experience, much to share. Learning requires a process of generation, it needs you to filter and regroup your information. And if you are stuck, consult an AI, it can help you figure out what are you struggling with and help you comprehend better. I hope that by sharing you some insights you can also be more confident in learning and this love the process of learning. Happy learning…