Learnability- How to LEARN
Before you learn, you need to learn how to learn.
Learnability = The Ability to Learn
Maybe you are studying in school or college, or you are working.
Do you know the purpose of schools? Is it to mug up topics, compete with friends or get good marks?
NONE of these!!
What is the purpose of learning?
The purpose of the schooling system is to actually teach you how to LEARN…. How to be a lifelong learner.
But due to lack of proper guidance or knowledge of the authorities, that message is not passed onto the generations.
Don’t assume that I knew all these when I was in school or college. I was just running behind marks, I guess. I have learned more from the internet than textbooks.
Honestly, my decision to go for an international MBA will remain as my worst life-decision. I wasted my time, effort and money. So I hardly recommend people to go for a masters degree and I always tell them the disadvantages.
However, different people experience things differently, you may have a better experience than I had. It is true that many people lack practical knowledge. In the 21st century, learning has become easier more than ever, thanks to the internet.
Why do we learn what we learn?
Some of you study all year-long, some of you study before the exam nights. The results vary sometimes, other times the results are the same. But have you ever thought about how we learn? What is the process of learning? Why are you forced to learn?
In India, you are taught to learn to get marks and pass the exams— to say politely, this is the shittiest purpose of any major system. Not only in India, the same thing persists in many other countries.
What is the reason for such a system??… are you being prepared to NOT think critically or are you to blame yourself for not being able to crack the code?
In the traditional education and social system, they don’t teach you for your benefits. They teach you to remain a slave. Just think once- what type of advice they give you- study hard, get an education loan, get into college, get a job, repay the education loan, then get a mortgage to build a house, then pay that loan for 20 years.
You have to pay bills, taxes and everything from your money. If you are working hard to only make others rich, and you don’t have any issue with that- then YOU are the issue for yourself.
and often, the people who say ‘if you study in college and get a job in MNC, you will be settled and rich’- they are victims of poverty. It is like that frog that stays inside a well and looks up and can only see a little piece of the sky and thinks ‘this is the limited world’. Don’t trust blindly.
DON’T take advice about money from poor people. Learn from bonafide people, ask questions to yourself and whatever you have learned in your life. Wake up to get out of the matrix!!
I once took a coaching for IES (Indian Engineering Services) and in that coaching, one teacher told us the purpose of reading history…. Can you guess the reason why history is included in your syllabus? From history, we learn the mistakes that have been done before; so that the same mistakes are not repeated again.
It is about the concepts. I don’t consider myself as a good learner from this viewpoint.
Often in life you will learn real knowledge late, but it’s ok. Keep learning. Learn a way to use that knowledge for your benefit, for everyone’s benefit. I am trying to be a better learner.
How to learn efficiently?
The best way to learn is to admit that you don’t know. Let yourself feel like an idiot while learning. Ask someone who knows, there is no shame in it. Rather it makes you attractive.
If you don’t know something, you will try to justify something with a biased mentality.
And then you will probably fail. This is why businesses perform market testing to know the needs, demands and reality of the consumers. Then they fool-proof their plan to achieve success. Though market tests are not perfect, it gives the right direction.
A simple example is that I am generally repelled by detective stories. When I was quite young, I read a few detective stories and did not like the suspense and slow grinding.
I have developed a dislike since then and I developed a bias that all detective stories are boring, based on only a few stories which I did not understand when I was in primary school. But then a few years ago, I read ‘Byomkesh’ by Sharadindu Bandyopadhayay.
It is one of the top detective stories available in Bengali language and many movies and series have been produced based on the stories. I quite liked reading it as I was more mature than when I was in primary school.
But still, I would prefer other genres to detective stories and the bias remains that unless the author is renowned, the stories will definitely be boring. Which is most probably wrong to conclude.
How can learning increase success rate?
Bill Gates dropped out of university to work on Microsoft. But before that he did a good amount of market research to be sure that he will earn profit from that and the Microsoft products will be in demand.
You might have heard advice like- “don’t leave your job to work on your start-ups until your start-up can cover your expenses”; this is partially true but you have to analyse critically. Multiple income sources are required to make money. Risk-aversion and calculated risk-taking will help you to get mental peace and confidence. So, if you know more and learn more, you can tackle risks better.
The best learners do not have pride
If you are an adult, you might be too proud to learn new things. Pride is harmful, it will make you look foolish unless you have a good personality. And even if you have a good personality, you will remain a fool cloaked by just the personality. It is better for you to keep your pride in your pocket and keep learning.
There are 4 types of people in the world-
- The ones who don’t know that they don’t know- they are called ‘fools’
- The ones who don’t know that they know- they are dormant
- The ones who know that they don’t know- they are simple
- The ones who know that they know- they are called ‘wise’
You need to ask yourself which one you are and then set a goal to reach the last type mentioned above.
What’s the secret to learn faster- Secret 1
Some factors to know your ‘learnability’ is to know how fast and how easily you can learn something. Swami Vivekananda is an Indian spirituality, who’s birthday is celebrated as the World Youth Day (12th January). Swamiji could just turn 700 pages and learn within a few seconds.
700 pages!! At one go!!! …… I can’t even remember 1 page properly when I read textbooks (not that I would really really want to)
The secret is to have a focused mind and concentration. When you are learning anything…. Be it your calculus or be it how to tie your shoelaces, you need to focus. The more you focus, the faster you will learn.
How can learning help you in daily life?
Learnability will help you in any place of your life. In your office, your boss needs you to learn things fast, so that you can perform and contribute to the company’s development.
In businesses, they are integrating machine learning technologies because they learn faster and contribute without error. If you keep asking your boss to check your work every time and he finds errors in that, the trustworthiness reduces, Next time, he may hesitate to give you responsibility and this makes you more replaceable.
Your partner wants you to learn what she likes and dislikes, so that you bring gifts he or she will like. If you don’t learn, you will have a fight. Learning about others’ nature, helps you to manipulate and persuade them. As you learn more, your awareness increases. It can also be that you learned by getting pain- even that is a type of learning that builds your personality.
What’s the secret to learn faster- Secret 2
First principle method is the best way to learn something. It says that in order to understand something truly, you have to understand the fundamental things in it.
As an example, I once tried to understand how Lithium-ion batteries are manufactured. For that I broke down the components of a battery- metal body, cathode, anode, electrolytes, lithium, separator film, insulator film etc.
Then I tried to find out the materials of these items- like Anode can be made of graphite or graphene, a form of carbon. Cathode can be oxides of Lithium. By doing this, I understood the manufacturing process to some extent.
From a business perspective, you can break down an element like this and identify the costs of each separate element. And as you know, when you manufacture things, the manufacturing cost is much less than the cost of the ultimate product’s cost.
This is how Elon Musk bought raw materials directly and manufactured batteries to reduce the cost of EVs.
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