Learning

I love learning, but I’m not good at it.

It’s true! I love the idea of pouring hours into a subject and becoming better at it over time. I love knowledge and collecting information about disparate topics. I even like doing the work of learning myself. My only problem is that I may love learning too much.

I will often get the urge to learn something: sometimes because of necessity and other times simply for pleasure. I will find all the resources I can online that I can use to educate myself on the topic. At this point, I will start with the first resource, start reading/watching, and get overwhelmed. After realizing the enormity of the task before me, with hundreds of pages of information out there, I give up and stop my efforts. I think that I often expect myself to learn something that takes others their whole career in only a few hours, which in turn is a result of my desire to know about as much as I can. I find the idea of not knowing something about the world I live in deeply troubling.

To counteract my urge to abandon learning endeavors prematurely, I have started employing a few tricks. Firstly, I have started to actively think about the steps I’m taking when learning, instead of mindlessly reading or experiencing content. I think this helps me to be more mindful about how much time I’m taking, where I’m struggling, and helps me to actually learn. Secondly, I have started to think carefully about what I’m actually trying to learn. Instead of pulling up the entire corpus of works on the topic, I have started trying to look up the specific resources I need to learn effectively.

In addition to the things I’m actively trying to do, I have also thought about what else would be useful for learners to do (including me) that I’m not already doing. I think the biggest thing that prospective abecedarians (a word I just had to look up) should do when in the learning process is TAKE NOTES. I know I’m guilty of not doing this enough myself, but the few times I have actually done this have shown me how useful it can be. I truly believe that everyone should start taking notes on the things they read and consume; it helps you to be more focused, attentive, provides a reference, and helps with comprehension.

I think learning is an incredibly important part of life, and I truly love doing it. I know that few people in the world would put down “learning” as one of their hobbies, but I would enthusiastically put it down every time. My struggles do not take away from my enjoyment of learning; in fact, they may even strengthen it.