3 Great Learning Strategies for Generalists
Jens Meiert, November 2, 2007 / February 25, 2008.
This entry is filed under Uncategorized.
“Lifelong learning” sounds like yet another buzzword, but it is necessary to develop and to progress, and it is just great to master anyway. Mistakes are great, too, as they are an accelerating ingredient of the learning process, and this always needs to be kept in mind, especially in times where people nonsensically tend to outlaw more and more mistakes: As long as you learn from them, mistakes are cool.
However, here are three learning strategies and mindsets that appear to benefit (not only) professionals with rather broad focus, and that definitely proved to be very useful to me:
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Use the Pareto or 80/20 rule (which means that
80 % of the effects comes from 20 % of the causes
).Applying the Pareto principle to learning methodology means to me that it is in fact possible to learn 80 % of a topic in only 20 % of the time. And instead of focusing on just one topic – web development, for example – and investing 100 % of my time in it, I instead focus on several topics. I accept that in order to acquire “100 %” of the knowledge for a specific topic, I probably need to invest all my time, but focus on five topics, for example, allows me to acquire 5 × 80 % knowledge.
I don’t claim that this really means four times more knowledge than somebody who just learns about one topic, but it’s really far more “expensive” while at the same time not inevitably necessary to learn 100 % than 80 %. My philosophy and my “educated generalist” approach like that, and it pays off.
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Pick the best masters and material available.
You can enormously accelerate the learning process by choosing teachers and material wisely, and this strategy also helps in compensating drawbacks of the Pareto rule approach: If there’s something you don’t know, it helps when you know where you can quickly get reliable information.
This method always kept me away from fora, for example. I learned HTML and CSS by “learning by doing” first, but went relatively straight to the W3C and read specifications; I learned information design basics by reading Tufte; I learned usability basics by reading Nielsen; I learned much about accessibility by enjoying W3C lists and reading Joe Clark. There are so many more sources and so much more practice to be involved, but focus on experts and evidentially good literature avoids to learn crap and waste time.
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Do not put too much effort in remembering everything; reiterate instead.
Assuming a working memory, there’s no need to try to remember every detail you ever read and learn about, so don’t waste too much time with really memorizing. That stuff exists to bother kids, not professionals. I like to use a “sieve” metaphor here; the better your memory works, the more stuff will get caught.
Training the memory will prevent forgetting too much (however, remember the “sleeper effect”?), but another measure appears to help a lot: Repeating and reiterating the most important things. So me, I read the very best books twice, at least, I check the best bookmarks more than once, too, and I regularly call in mind important or interesting facts and mnemonics (this very moment, for example, I just needed to think of and recite the THREES formula by Helitzer).
So learning is fun. What are your thoughts and favored methods?
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Comments
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On November 6, 16:25 CET, Richard Morton said:
I think that we tend towards doing this naturally anyway. For example, my knowledge of Microsoft Word is probably only 20% of what was available in Word 95 and yet it still gives me 80% of what I need to use in Word 2003 or beyond.
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On November 12, 10:21 CET, Jens Meiert said:
Richard, right, the Pareto rule can certainly be observed “in nature” – for instance, we probably “automatically” wear 20 % of our clothes in 80 % of the time.
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On March 12, 10:04 CET, Wolle said:
Good Article, Jens
To Point 1) in German we say: “Mut zur Lücke”, it means “Courage to the gap”.
To Point 2) Sometimes you need verry much luck to get the best. -
On March 20, 8:00 CET, Iris said:
It is also important to practices your memory every day, to read a book and to talk with real people, not only over icq.
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On April 11, 4:32 CEST, seektan said:
this days i read your blog ,and get lots, after that i post a article about your posts of Learning. hope it’s not offend you.
my post: Jens Meiert 关于学习
