On Learning and Living

I came to the conclusion that I'm a slow learner relatively late in life, but I am a persistent learner and when I do learn something - through those insight moments when the penny drops - I tend to learn it well. Lifelong learning is the vocation of a curious and observant mind, a mind that cannot rest. But the speed at which one learns is predicated by native intelligence, determination and focus.

My learning is random; it tends to be driven by coincidences and multifarious paths that converge, diverge and are generally messy. But, just as a jumble of tangled wood shavings and fibres of different lengths and at different angles when compressed and glued form structurally solid fibreboard, so  my haphazard approach to learning has consolidated over the years into something useful. But had I applied myself more to learning, many of the insights I've gained in recent years I could have picked up decades earlier.

Learning is like compound interest, you build on that which has been accumulated before.

Set yourself five tasks for the day, accomplish but three, put two off to the next day; three new ones join them, put two off to the next day and so on - at the end of the week you've done 21 things rather than 35; you've learnt from those 21 things, not from the 35, so procrastination is the reason some of us learn slower than the more focused, self-disciplined one among us.

The advantages of learning are incremental, you stand ever higher on the pile of learning you have accumulated, your horizons ever broader. Do this quickly, methodically, you see further, faster. But if, like me, you put stuff off till the next day, that accumulated learning effect still happens, but the benefits come to you when you're over 50, rather than when you're over 30 and still have time to affect major outcomes.

Breadth vs depth

Learning is like building with bricks. You can use them to build a long wall or you can use them to build a tall chimney. Consider the bricks to be 'learning moments', insights that consolidate facts that we've learnt. These insights come about from our practical experience, from learning from others' experiences, by listening, by reading. Some of us gather them faster than others. Some of us use pile insight bricks in a closed circle, piling new layers onto existing ones, the chimney stack quickly grows higher and higher. Others place the bricks randomly at first, then a line emerges, not necessarily joined up, then the beginnings of a low wall emerge, growing higher but very slowly.

How high should your wall be? Several years ago I was talking to a Polish lawyer, who said that a good lawyer, with good social skills, should be able to engage in a meaningful conversation on any subject for eight minutes. Whatever the subject - speed-skating, photosynthesis, the works of Racine, Javanese gamelan music - literally whatever - using their existing knowledge of neighbouring  subject matter, a person with good general knowledge should be able to hold their own at small talk.

I have written before about breadth vs. depth and advancing age; the generalist's wide range of interests deepen, while the specialist's narrow field of expertise broadens. Why we become generalists or specialists has, I feel, a genetic as well as environmental factors. Our attention span - to what extent is this limited by willpower (or lack thereof)? Ability to concentrate on one subject for more than 20 minutes at one time (said to be the upper limit of the average human attention span) is of great competitive advantage. Ease of understanding, quality of learning material - quality of teacher or mentor - an important factor for the self-taught... but most of all, curiosity.

Then there's RRBI - repetitive and restrictive behaviours and interests - that limit some minds, focusing them intensively and allowing for depth of knowledge in a narrow specialisation very quickly. Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Adam Smith and Isaac Newton are examples. On the other hand, there are polymaths such as Leibniz - said to have been the last human being alive about whom it was said that they know 'everything'.

Jumping about from one subject to another, unable to drill down too deeply in one go is certainly a failing of mine - or so I used to think. Then I found that returning to something that I had once looked at before, though in a superficial way, it became more accessible. Armed with insights from completely different areas of learning, I reach a new levels of cross-disciplinary understanding. It's not that deep in any absolute terms, but deeper than it was, and across a wide spectrum of subjects.

My intellectual self-confidence rises and falls like a wave. When on the high, I consider myself intellectually superior to those around me. When it falls, I realise the big gaps in my knowledge. It is in the dips of my intellectual self-confidence that my learning accelerates; new insights pile onto existing ones, I feel brighter, sharper, smarter - until once more I am confronted with people who are smarter than I. And then the competitive need to self-improve kicks in again. A non-stop cycle.

As human existence becomes exponentially more complex, considering the infinite number of permutations of our scientific, commercial and artistic endeavours, our approach to the acquisition of knowledge and insight is taking on new forms. Finishing to learn the moment one completes one's formal education is no longer an option; it leads to social and economic exclusion. One's success or failure thereafter is down to one's own attitude to learning. The complexity of society - and the complexity of the policy issues that the governments we vote for - mean we all have a huge obligation to keep up with change, and its implications.

This time two years ago:
Goats and hares

This time three years ago:
Białystok the Dull

This time ten years ago:
Crushed velvet dusk in my City of Dreams

This time eleven years ago:
My second Jeziorki blog post, also from this day