The critical skill you never learned in school: Learning how to learn
1. The problem with education today
We can all agree that our education system needs to be improved. But what would be the most impactful improvement that we could make? There are several ongoing debates about what we should add: some say add financial literacy, others say we should prioritize coding and STEM, while a third group advocate for entrepreneurship.
While I believe that all those subjects are important and that everyone should have a basic understanding of them, I don’t think learning any specific subject will solve the education woes our children currently face. This is because our education system as a whole is too focused on content and not focused enough on learning. We believe that learning specific material will guarantee us success in life.
Most ambitious children get told that learning specific subjects will enable them to have an enduring, successful career and build wealth. Today, these subjects would be things like maths, computer science, or history, but they were different 20 years ago and will be different in 20 years time. I too fell into this trap as a young student in post-apartheid South Africa: I prioritized learning maths because I wanted to become an actuarial scientist, as it was the job that was said to pay the most at the time.
To change education for the better, and help all humans actualize their potential, what’s needed is a mindset shift away from emphasizing material and toward the process of learning, empowering students not just with knowledge of maths, economics or physics, but with the skill of learning how to learn and an understanding of how they learn best.
Read on to learn what “Learning how to learn” is, how it transformed my life, and how it can do the same for you, no matter if you’re a student, working professional or entrepreneur…
2. Learning how to learn
Learning is a deeply personal phenomenon. By definition, learning is connecting something you don’t know - new information - to something you do already know. That connection will be unique to you based on your prior knowledge and life experience. Learning how you can best make that connection between new and existing information will help you succeed. This is true regardless of whether you're a university student who wants to study efficiently, an early career professional looking to accelerate their career, or an adult going through a midlife crisis looking to reinvent themselves and their work.
For most of us, learning happened by accident. We never learned how we learn best. Often we just did what we were told to do in school -- like read textbook chapters or write essays or do problem sets -- and that counted as “learning”. When we had to study, we read the book, highlighted some stuff and then hoped the info stayed in our head for the test. Maybe we even did some practice exams the teacher assigned us. Or more likely, we stayed up cramming all the information from 12 weeks worth of lecture slides into our tired brains the night before the exam. We badly needed to learn how to learn.
Learning how to learn is gaining knowledge of the process of learning a new subject or skill. It’s understanding what the best way for you to learn new things is. It’s having a process to develop competency and even mastery in any field or skill of your choosing. It’s having the capability to teach yourself something new without a syllabus or textbook.
Knowledge of the learning process and self-awareness of how you best learn are more valuable than learning any particular subject or skill. Mastering learning how to learn is like finding a magical lamp with a genie that offers you three wishes, but you use one of your wishes to ask for infinite wishes - and it gets granted! It’s that powerful!
3. Every child (and adult) should learn the skill of learning
Every student should learn how to learn
I owe a large part of my success as a student to learning how to learn at a young age. It helped me reach the heights of the International Junior Science Olympiad and International Physics Olympiad despite attending a public school in South Africa, helped me adjust to and excel in the notoriously difficult International Baccalaureate while at United World College Costa Rica, and it helped me graduate with a degree in Computer Science from the number 1 ranked university in the USA, Princeton University.
As a product of the South African public school system which had little to no emphasis on the learning process, I was forced to further refine my process of learning after being confronted with the rigor and pace of the International Baccalaureate in my final two years of high school. I saw the value of learning how to learn, as it would help me spend less time studying and more time with friends and working out. I even taught myself methods like speed reading, in order to do better on SATs and reading assignments, as well as mind mapping, in order to create notes that would help me better connect concepts and remember them more easily.
Learning how to learn helps rescue students from the (very avoidable) pain inflicted by inefficient study techniques. Rather than study for longer hours and pull more all-nighters, students can understand the goals of their learning and develop a process by which they can achieve those goals, using principles and methods grounded in the science of learning and memory. The end result is better grades, students being more efficient with their time, and having less stress and anxiety in their lives.
Most schools teach at the pace of the slowest (or median) student in the class. By learning how to learn, students can take their learning process into their own hands, by spotting gaps in their knowledge and utilizing the resources at their disposal to strengthen them. I did this myself as a high school student in South Africa:
“I no longer relied on the pace of learning set by my teachers and began to own my own learning process: reading ahead and teaching myself upcoming Physics and Chemistry topics on weekends and evenings.”
- Excerpt from South Africa. Costa Rica? Princeton!: My educational journey as a global citizen
Many students also develop fixed mindsets around subjects in which they struggle or might’ve had a bad teacher or experience in. You’ve probably heard Liberal Arts majors say “I’m not a math person” or Engineering majors say “I’m not a writing person”. This sort of fixed mindset is something learning how to learn can help students break out of. By developing competence in learning, it builds the confidence in a person that they can, in fact, learn anything. They might not become the best in the world at it, but they can become the best they can at it, which is definitely better than they are now. The confidence gained from mastery of the learning process will benefit students as they move through life, where they don’t have to fear any book or any topic for fear that it's too complex for them.
Every adult can (and should) learn how to learn
Learning how to learn continues to aid me today as an adult, as I navigate the rapidly changing world of technology startups in the United States. Not only did it help me in my personal learning journey, but also as a startup founder and a technology professional.
As a startup founder, learning how to learn helped me get up to speed, and immerse myself, in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, digital privacy and data ownership. And when I joined Timescale, it helped me learn new programming languages and become versed in the world of time-series databases, DevOps, Internet of Things, and many other topics.
Learning how to learn also opened professional doors for me. It equipped me to help software developers learn new technologies more efficiently, while working at Andela, an African tech and education startup. And it led me to excel as a Developer Advocate at Timescale, where part of my job entailed learning new technologies and teaching other developers how to leverage them to solve problems, either through written blogs or tutorials, or videos and talks. Many times, I had little experience with the technologies I was tasked with teaching, but in a few weeks, I would be skilled enough to give a 1 hour live training on the topic to in the US and Europe, answering their questions as I went along. The best example of this is my series on dashboarding tool Grafana, which has helped over 63,000 people (judging by its view count at the time of writing).
For adults, mastering learning how to learn gives you the confidence and the ability to reinvent yourself. You’ll never have to feel helpless and stuck in a job you don’t like just because it’s the only one you’ve been trained for, because you’ll have the capability to learn new things and adapt yourself. Rather than fear new trends, learning how to learn will enable you to take advantage of new technologies, market opportunities and behaviours. It will help you navigate the world while being attuned to reality, rather than using a mental model which reflects an outdated world.
You probably were told to focus on educating yourself, so that you can go to a good college and get a good job. I know I was. However, the world we live in today is not the same one as that of our parents and grandparents, where you were trained to do one thing and held that job your whole life. We live in a world of rapid innovation and constant change, where the final frontiers of technology and science are being ever expanded. This means that as an adult today, you will probably work a number of different jobs in your lifetime and that you’ll have to learn new skills in your 20s, 30s and 40s that you didn’t learn in school or from previous jobs. If you have mastery over the learning process, you’ll never never get left behind, nor have to worry about doing something which you initially know nothing about, as you can always learn what’s relevant.
Learning how to learn will also future-proof you from the coming AI revolution (or at least protect your career from automation). Whether you’re skeptical about AI or believe that being booted from work by a robot is a serious concern, there’s sufficient evidence about AI’s impact on jobs to pay attention. In 2013, Oxford researchers predicted that 47% of total US employment is at risk of being replaced by automation. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the US to lose 60 million jobs, and the World Economic Forum predicts that 85 million more jobs are at risk of being lost by automation by 2025. Even if your current job gets automated, learning how to learn will ensure that you can always be employed, or if you’re an entrepreneur, that you’ll be able to start and run businesses, in the markets of the future. While you might not be able to do exactly what you do today, you’ll be able to take your strengths and apply them to different domains, as you adapt with change.
4.How can you learn how to learn?
Preparing for life-long learning and teaching yourself things can be scary. While the process might sound difficult, notice that you already do it when you learn how to play a new video game, learn how to use a new device or play a new new sport. The same principles can be translated into learning any skill.
Rather than prescribe the process of learning I’ve developed for myself, I want to leave you with a treasure chest of resources for you to use as you continue (or begin) your learning journey, so that you can learn in the ways that best suit your strengths and personality. These resources on learning, memory and study skills have helped me and I hope they help lay the foundation of life-long learning for you:
Books, videos and PDFs to start your Learning How to Learn Journey
Learning How to Learn: Online Course by Barbara Oakley and Terrance Sejnowski
“Buzan’s Study Skills” by Tony Buzan (Free Slides)
“The 4 Hour Chef” by Tim Ferriss (Read the chapter on Meta-learning)
“Accelerated Learning Techniques” by Brian Tracey
The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman
“A Mind for Numbers” by Barbara Oakley (see also Author Interview and Author TED Talk)
“Learning How to Learn” by Barbara Oakley and Terrance Sejnowski
“Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel
“Moonwalking with Einstein” by Joshua Foer
“The Art of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin (See also these resources, this interview with author and The Ultimate Guide to Josh Waitzkin)
“The Brain that Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge
“Ultralearning” by Scott Young
Learning how to learn is a personal process of discovery. In addition to knowing principles and techniques, it's important to reflect and bring knowledge you already possess - about yourself and how you learn - to the surface. Here are ten reflection questions which helped me personalize my learning process:
Ten questions to help you master “Learning how to learn”
What makes learning fun for you?
When last did you experience the joy of learning something new? What led to that moment?
How can you get excited about what you’re learning?
How can you connect what you’re learning to your life?
How can you prime your mind to be interested in what you have to learn (for a class, your job etc)?
What is the process you use to learn something new? What are methods that others use? Where have your methods succeeded? Where have they failed?
Why do you make notes? What’s the purpose of the notes you make? What are different methods of note-taking and note making? Which one works best for you?
How can you integrate recall and retrieval (remembering what you learned) into your study systems?
Create exam questions as if you’re a professor making the test? What would you test? What questions would you make?
Be honest with yourself about what you know and don’t know. Do you have gaps in your knowledge of certain subjects? What areas are you strong at? What areas are you weak at? How can you become stronger in your strong areas? How can you fill in gaps in your knowledge?
