From the day that we are born into this world we learn. At first through play, then through graft, and finally through experience. It is part of our nature, our culture, and our society. Some of it is sub-conscious learning. A fair bit is voluntary learning. And the balance is required learning.
But there has been a lot discussion in recent years with regard to the required element of this – ie. what we are made learn at kindergarten, school and college/university. If fact, if I hear the statement “Why do we have to learn algebra at school – when was the last time you had to use it in real life” once more I shall cry.
I have two issues with this – firstly, what you choose to learn, be that how to fix a dripping tap or how to change the oil in your car, is just as important to your development as what you are made to learn. Secondly, and more importantly, the physical knowledge you end up with is actually less relevant than how you got there.
I’ll start with my second point, mainly because it is the more cryptic, but also because it probably answers the first point too. You see, learning something requires you to go through a number of phases:
- Establish what it is that you actually want to learn
- Scope out the subject matter that encompasses this target
- Form a curriculum that gets you from what you know now to what you want to know
- Find source materials that can fulfil this curriculum
- Consume the materials
- Test and practice the material
- Check you have completed the curriculum
- Use the knowledge
Now that sounds a whole load a waffle for how to learn something, but it does help to break things down in this way. Lets look at an example – fixing your leaking tap:
- How to fix my leaking tap
- Plumbing
- I need to know what is inside a tap, how I get in there, and what I need to change to stop the specific problem I have
- Source materials are a trip to the hardware store, a copy of ‘Home DIY’ and maybe a chat with your mate Eddie who build his own condo.
- Read the book, visit the store, and chat to Eddie
- Turn the water off and take the tap to pieces
- Does it all look familiar? Can you recognise the parts?
- Fix the tap
Utter over-kill for that I know, but the process is very important. I may have learnt to fix a tap, but chances are I don’t need to retain that knowledge. I do though now own a good reference book, I know where the hardware store is, I have some useful tools, and I know Eddie knows nothing about plumbing. I now ‘know’ about a skill called plumbing, and I have a method for dealing with similar problems now. I may never have another leaky tap, but if the toilet won’t flush I probably have a good chance of using what I learnt from the process to be able to fix it.
I have a terrible memory, but that is not a problem because as the above shows, you don’t need to know everything, I just need to be able to establish processes. Most of us don’t need to be able to speak French to go to France, but it is helpful if you know that there is such a thing as a Phrase Book, or that they generally can’t be bothered pronouncing the last syllable there 
You see, it is all about knowing where knowledge IS rather than actually trying to retain that knowledge.
So you don’t need to be a Psychiatrist to be able to cope with depression – you just need to know that there people out there who can help you. You don’t need to have a better idea before you decide you hate your current job – you just need to know that about Monster.com. And you are not going to need to be a black-belt in productivity before you can tidy your desk – you just need to read Getting Things Done and subscribe to Half-a-dozen Monkeys!
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