Recently, I wrote about my goal of learning everything. This is more than a tad ambitious, and probably impossible. Even learning a small fraction of everything can have huge benefits that ripple outwards towards every other area of life. Unfortunately, most people fall into a group I’ll call “functional” learners, and severely cut off their potential.
Functional Versus Lifelong Learning
Functional learning is learning with a purpose. I want to do X, so I need to know how to do Y. If you want to become a doctor, you need to study medicine. To do that, you usually need an undergrad in biology. For that, secondary and primary education are prerequisites. All of these are links in the functional learning chain.
Lifelong learning comes from a different approach. Instead of being driven from the top-down, it’s driven from the bottom-up. Lifelong learning suggests that learning anything is good, regardless of immediate results. So even if there is no functional learning to be done, you should pick up a book and start reading anyways.
Justifications for Lifelong Learning
The justifications for functional learning are easy. If your goal is important, you learn what you need to learn. If I want to become a professor, I need a graduate degree. It’s easy to justify spending time and money learning when the outcome is right in front of you.
The justification for lifelong learning isn’t as obvious. Lifelong learning feels important, but when you break it down to practical reality, it isn’t for most people. Most people see a far clearer return on investment for working more, socializing or entertainment than learning unnecessary subjects.
Lifelong learning, unfortunately, falls into a “should” category for most people. It’s something that they’ve been taught to believe is good, but can’t really support those feelings with a clear motivation. Going to the gym is another “should” in our society. We all know it’s important, but most people haven’t explicitly made the connection between exercise and daily energy levels, lifelong health and overall well-being. They know the destination exists, but the map is fuzzy.
I’d like to remove the fuzzy map between lifelong learning and why it is important, and to show you my justifications for spending time, energy and money on the pursuit.
Holistic Learning
For those of you who haven’t read my book, my free book or the most popular article on this website, I suggest you take a look. Holistic learning was a phrase I used to describe how smart people appeared to learn. Instead of bashing facts into their skull, every idea was woven into a set of existing understandings. Knowing Shakespeare helps you understand parts of chemistry which improves your understanding economics. Ideas are linked together instead of encoded like a computer.
Although I didn’t mention it, holistic learning actually provides the justification for spending hours of your day learning with no clear need to. When ideas are linked together, the facts themselves lose importance. What truly matters is the spaces between linked ideas. The understandings that arise as more than the sum of their parts.
When you learn a lot of seemingly unimportant subjects, you make connections. These connections work in the background to give you supporting knowledge to everything else you do. History, science, computer programming and art all provide a bigger foundation for understanding everything else.
These enhancements can be seen as one way of upgrading your brain. Your hardware doesn’t change much (although some evidence shows constant learning increases new neuron development). What really changes is the power of your software. With more ideas imprinted, your brain has more power than before.
Rejecting the Myth of the Full Cup
A popular notion in learning is the idea that your brain has a max capacity. In order to learn one thing, you must forget another. The mechanics for storing information in memory are still a hot topic of research, so while this might be the case, I have serious doubts.
My experience has shown the opposite. While knowledge does fade with time, that happens regardless of whether you learn or not. In fact, active learning helps keep those memories sharper. Far from being a cup, which once full, must empty contents to add more, your brain is closer to a muscle, which will wither and die without usage.
Why “Everything”, Shouldn’t You Focus on Strengths?
I’m a believer in the “T” model, which suggests you should have excellence in a small subset of areas and a general understanding in a broad area of knowledge. Focusing on your strengths is important, but it misses some of the benefits of lifelong learning. Your profession will usually hone your expertise in one area, it’s up to you to use your leisure time to explore everything else.
The main argument I have for learning from everything is that you’ll never know what you find. You can’t know whether a book will be useful until you’ve finished reading it. So sticking to one narrow domain limits you from a wide variety of opportunities.
Why is a Knowledge Foundation So Important?
What’s so important about being smart? Although there are other qualities more important than intelligence, I’d say most pale in comparison. If you have smarts (not just limited, academic smarts) you almost have superpowers over ordinary people. You can see the patterns that otherwise appear to be noise to everyone else.
Functional learning is a bit like exercising because you know you’re running in a race in two weeks. Not only does it fail to get you in shape in time for the race, it misses out on all the other benefits of exercising. In truth, the race doesn’t matter. What really matters is the healthy body that comes from exercising regularly.
Steps to Go From Functional to Lifelong
I can’t force you to switch learning styles. You need to find the motivation yourself. For me, the motivation to become a lifelong learner was great enough to build the habits to support it. If you are interested, here are a few habits to take that interest and make a commitment:
- Always have a book. It doesn’t matter whether it takes you a week or a year to finish, just always have one ready.
- Wikipedia lunches. I’ve recently taken up the habit of reading random Wikipedia articles as I eat my lunch. It’s a great way to get 15 minutes of learning in without taking any time out of my schedule.
- OpenCourseWare. I’ve taken a self-study course from MIT. Look for ones that have all the content online, so you can get started immediately.
- Buy a Library Card. When you read dozens of books a year, the charges can expand. Go the library to save yourself the money.
- Take obscure classes. Yeah, I know, you need to study for your finals and midterms. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take an evening dance, language or martial arts class.
I'm a speed-reading, vegetarian, holistic learning, productivity hacking university student.
I personally do what you might call directed functional learning: whenever I think that there is somethign that might be interesting to learn I try to find a project where I can apply what I intend to learn. Being in college, I try to get research opportunitites with professors who are working in things I am interested in.
I agree with you on the whole lifelong learning idea. In fact, I just wrote a blog post on cultivating a healthy reading habit.
One thing that I would have to disagree with you upon would be your idea of ‘wikipedia luches’ though. I instinctively go to wikipedia every time I have something that I don’t know enough about and I realize that if I allow myself too much time on Wikipedia, it results in a whole lot of wasted, less than productive time. Unless you can control yourself (but since I like learning so much, it can be difficult for me) that is.
Reading a book (electronic or paper) contributes to learning in a much more directed way I guess. Wikipedia is but discrete bits of information all over the place anyway.
Keep up the great posts Scott!
Excellent tips. I personally took a self-hypnosis two-day class last week-end. Thanks, Scott.
-Charles.
One important thing is following up learning with doing, or contributing. This is one mistake that many have learning for their own satisfaction or withdrawal from their responsibility.
I’d like to share an article here
Do you make these mistakes in learning?
Thanks for a very thoughtful article.
Robert
Scott, have you read the book Brain Rules, by John Medina? If not, you should: it provides some scientific background to many things that you’ve discovered in practice, and is a good read overall.
Kevin,
Uncontrolled wikipedia reading isn’t productive, I’ll admit. But if you search the online encyclopedia at specific times when you can, I’ve found it an interesting way to add more learning.
-Scott
“In order to learn one thing, you must forget another.”
It has happened to me that while learning a new language I forgot another, but only for the duration it took to come to grips with the new one, then I remembered the older one again and could count to ten in it without automatically swiching to the other.
So in my experience there is no limit to longterm memory, but while learning a new thing I certainly did experience another thing being pushed aside meanwhile. Perhaps this is where the misconception stems from.
Got to give you credit Scott you’re an amazing guy and one I have a great deal of respect for.
Very interesting post and I’d like to add one thing. I’m sure you do this anyway, but make sure sometimes you do NOTHING, meditating maybe? Eat your lunch whilst sitting outside or even inside but simply being in the moment.
I concur on the learning as well, my belief is that we can continue to learn new stuff without pushing the old out of the back!
BTW, have you read ‘Stumbling on Happiness’? Fabulous book, one of the best I have read in the last year or so.
Thor,
Good point. Languages may be an exception to my rule (at least in part). I’ve been told that if you aren’t frequently using a language you soon lose it. Although, I’ve also been told it is easier to refresh a language than to learn from scratch.
Tim,
True. Sometimes it is best to just do nothing. I enjoy taking walks, but everything can be a meditation.
-Scott
Personally I like keeping track of where I can find the information, I know that learning from a book in the library is probably cheaper but you might not have immediate access to that book later in life. When you purchase a book you have immediate access to its content (repetition here), and after you’ve learned it, you even know where you can find the information within that book. Because of the volatility of the human brain information and the location of that information should be combined.
On the other hand, maybe information and its location would be a bit too “functional”, followed by a smiley.
In my past I sometimes felt bad about the fact, that I’m quite a generalist. So what do I REALLY know? A few years ago
I found a good point about knowing a little about many things:
I know that XYZ exists and if I find an application for it at a later point in time I go for the details. I often start books (without finishing them) or scan them for the essence. I even have a subscription to a “service” where you get 4 page executive summary of business books, with a rating.
Since we are in the “information age” I believe that people who know how to filter and distill the essence out of complex topics will thrive. Times have changed and so has learning.
I’m always seeking ways to tune my mind and ways of thinking, feel free to drop me a line!
achim
Hi Scott,
Eating is very important thing. I have experienced and observed through various sources that it’s scientifically wrong to have any distraction while having your food. Never watch Television, no newspapers or magazines during breakfast and no screen reading during whenever you are having food.
There is more about it that I can let you know, if you want to. I understand we have shortage of timing in our life and multi tasking has become a way of life for everyone. But for the four basic sources of energy should never be compromised. These are Food, Sleep, knowledge and breadth these are further very important to get us our Physical, Mental, Social and Spiritual balance.
Thanks,
Chandan
[...] previously written about my goal of learning everything. I don’t see this as a passive hobby, but a crucial activity. If you aren’t learning as [...]
i’m always think..does curiousity lead to biggest big development in our goal?In some blog I stop,they said we can become like leonardo da vinci if we have high curiousity.Does it true for real?And for my request to you,can you make an article on how to become a curious learner?
Thanks for the OpenCourseware link!
[...] The Goal of Learning Everything – “Even learning a small fraction of everything can have huge benefits that ripple outwards towards every other area of life. Unfortunately, most people fall into a group I’ll call ‘functional’ learners, and severely cut off their potential.” [...]
I like this angle on lifelong learning. When you hear the term in the media it just sounds like learning your next job and that’s it. I read everything and each new subject seems a little easier. With true lifelong learning we will all develop “an old man’s eagle mind” (William Butler Yeats).
You’ve got a nice site here. A good variety of articles.
Scott,
Your article is very interesting in that you are trying to create an habit out of what is, in my case, a truly entrenched one. I love reading, I love to know new things. The problem is that, I don’t actually get to produce something new all the time I do so. Being a Maven has me on the wires because there is this deep down desire to build and create, and even if you take efforts to go into that direction, the pull of novelty and fresh information is sometimes too compelling in its own right to just let go. And so I go down the river of promises on the creativity front.
There is this paradigm of Focus I am still unable to fully grasp. I want to Focus more and do things instead of absorbing information all the time. Even in “The Four Hour Work Week” we are warned of all the dark consequences of information age. Even without Television (which I just turned of years ago) and Twitter (which I didn’t even go near), even by just paying attention to quality channels using RSS feeds and the like, even so, it seems that the never-ending river of information and knowledge is ripe of non-awareness.
Selective Ignorance is truly a skill one must use in this day and age of information. We either take a deep step to only use what we Really, Really need to produce our goals and just add some quality “other-things” feeds into our Maven God or we will lose our ground and be filled by the old habits of consuming craze we all so love.
I wonder how you plan to cope with the duality of Creation versus Consuming. Its not easy, its hard. 10 years ago the world was much more localized, must much more manageable, you talked about Libraries, yes, Libraries were The Sanctuaries of Knowledge of all knew, we didn’t have Internet as we have today, the plethora of things we all have now at the disposition of a finger is truly remarkable, but is also a dichotomy.
When we had just a small group of people, hanging around a club of two, having a Library nearby and getting together to talk about stuff in the evenings, we had a sense of self. It all made sense, when we wanted to go someplace we didn’t have multiple paths and multiple things to jolt on a mind-map to remind us we we’re human. No.
We just did it, we just lived with the Dream and got the pieces that mattered and were known on our own little world. Perhaps is was insufficient. But it was far, far more enjoyable. We Created things. Today we Consume.
Thank you.
Verry intresting article.
Do you have experience with “The School of Phenomenal Memory”?
I bet you’ll like it. Google it.
You know what Scott, your ideas are amazing. I’m fascinated with your no-restrictions attitude to gain knowledge. I, like many others reading your articles, am greatly inspired. I think speed-reading, ‘have a book always’, ‘Wwkipedia-lunch’ are ideas that i’ll utilise lifelong.
Scott,
I have an important question: what do you really mean by your goal to “learn everything”? At the beginning of the article, you vaguely qualified that completeing such a task is “probably impossible.” Again, I’m not sure what this goal you have about “learning everything” is (I’m assuming you ultimately want to be a more enriched, conscientious being, etc) but, I can assert most definitely, since you cannot, that such goal is impossible to reach. I understand this only because I too have had similar aspirations.
There is one thing that you do not evade in the article, but that is also never really mentioned, and it is something which is necessary to understand: life is learning. Learning isn’t something that one can be encoraged or prodded to do, it is something that inevitably living things do do. Therefore, the definition of learning itself extends beyond an academics. And who says academic learning leads to ultimate spiritual fufillment or whatever?
On that academic level, I agree with you whole-heartedly that “lifelong learning” contributes to making one better oriented for living in modern society, but—and I’m sorry if I’m missing your whole point here, or not reading between the lines well enough—I am still concerned about the idea of learning “everything.” And not because any other discerning individual would
think that the comment is a bit of an exteme generalization, because any understanding humans require is rlative to culture, society, information, etc… but isn’t okay, isn’t it the very essence of life to not understand everything? For new ideas and things and situations to be surfaced everyday?
Sorry if this has been too lengthy.
Sarah,
You can live without learning, or learning much. Learning is a function of the challenge and new experiences in your life, so my goal is to maximize that.
The goal isn’t so important as is the spirit.
-Scott
I get it! Thanks for shaking me out of my existential cocoon. (And sorry for my being so concerned with such a minute detail!).
This post relates to Walberg’s Motivational Behavior Study that all of us has goal and humans are willing to learn something even it takes time to attain something—-this means that all the actions we have has purpose. So, that is why we want to learn something in order to achieve something. Human beings are goal oriented and purposeful. We learn to act and act to achieve those goals in our lives. And through learning, we are feeding ourselves to new ideas that could generate inventions and discovery and thus, discovery will lead us to new heights being human beings. I think learning should not be hindered and not to be stopped. It should be nourished and be continuous.
Hello Sir,
My name is Louis Gonzales, and I am a Biology student at St. Mary’s university at San Antonio, Texas. I’am having a hard time studying for my MCAT right now. See, whenever I am trying to learn in class, It takes me forever to learn. I feel as if I spend twice as long as the other students studying. Overall, I believe the main reason for this to be my studying habits. I in any class usually record the material on a audio recorder, because I have a hard time keeping up with writing what the teacher is saying. Then I spend the majority of my day writing the notes of what my various professors have said. But, I don’t think I’am taking notes right, because sometimes it feels as if I am just writing the notes and not overall learning the material. Then when my professor gives us time to study for a test or something I then use my perfectly written notes and cram most of the information in a week. Then I do the same thing over again. I at first thought this was ok, yet I had a scary realization in a class that I have not really learned anything the three years I have been at St.Marys. I was wondering what book would be the best book for me and what words of wisdom you might have to help me. My main goal in life is too be a doctor and it seems now that I will have to wait a year after graduation to go into medical school since I just can’t seem to retain information. Yet, with the year I might be able to self study in prep for med school and use any material you have to help me better myself.