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The joy of mastery: Why adults actually have the edge

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Evolution is a slow teacher. Humans have been able to hasten the stolid build-up of genetic memory through teaching  and culture. But we still come armed with a mental model of the world when we first emerge into it, given to us through countless generations of natural selection. Scientists have been able to suss out that babies have an in-built sense of object permanence, number and probability. They watched newborns as a screen obscured a red ball teetering on the edge of a table and noted the surprise on their faces when a green ball dropped, a look that was absent when it was the expected red ball that appeared.

This surprise caused the babies to pay closer attention and potentially update their mental model. It is surprise, and the delight we take in it, that sparks our desire to find out more about the world. It is at the heart of learning.

And learning can be learnt. Babies can seem like learning machines – they soak up their mother tongue without thought and develop the skills in their first few years that will help them survive and thrive.

But just because we have left the hothouse learning environment of our early years doesn’t mean we are cut off from learning. We can master skills at quickly as an adolescent – if given the same time, space and resources.

It starts like this:

There is this imagined me. He can do all these things I can’t. He’s good at chess, knows about photography, can read Latin and knows more about our world. I know how I can become him. I can learn all these skills. But learning, especially as an adult self-learner, is difficult. So, before I could work towards my goals, I had to learn more about how we learn.

Learners are motivated by five things which make learning rewarding:

First, daily survival. You need the skills of cooking, cleaning and more to at least come across as a semi-competent person.

Gaining new skills helps with career progression. Knowing Excel can make work easier, more productive and boost progress towards a promotion.

Beyond material wealth, persistent learning can lead to a more fulfilling life. We use the word hobby as a stand in for what is self-directed learning. Whether it is photography, baking, sailing or any of the countless other skills people enjoy, all are different arenas where we are continuous students.

We can learn to impress. Being able to identify a Cézanne from a Seurat gives someone cultural heft. It’s impressive if your conversation partner can outline clearly and entertainingly how the printing press revolutionised the medieval world and what parallels that has with the internet.

Finally, learning keeps minds sharp. At the beginning of the 21st century, life expectancy climbed to the highest it’s ever been in human history. As we exercise to halt our bodies from falling into frailty, so we stretch our minds to safeguard them from slumping into senility.

Learning becomes more difficult as we get older. Though it is not because our minds decline. There are no teachers or lecturers to guide us. We have great demands on our time. We have to work, socialise, take care of ourselves and those around us. We may lack the incentive to allot some of that limited free time and money to the effort needed.

Growing up, tests and exams gave us extrinsic motivations for studying and learning new material. There is no one now, though, to punish you if you put off till tomorrow reading up on a potential new hobby that you know will make your life more fun today. You don’t get that promotion only because you finished an online course on business communication.

Picking up new skills as an adult must be its own reward. These intrinsic prizes are more compelling that extrinsic ones anyway. The sense of satisfaction we gain from finally completing our first knitted sweater or winning that first club game of chess can’t be beaten.

We lead many lives. They can be professional, spiritual, social, philosophical, physical and more. Only when we embrace and try to better each of these separated strands that braid and become our holistic existence, can we say we are living to the fullest. We must pay attention to our mental lives. And committing ourselves to becoming dedicated students, of whatever field that sparks interest, is one of the best ways of leading a more rewarding mental life.

Becoming such a student isn’t hard or mysterious. We only need a few gentle nudges and suggestions before we can flourish. There are approaches and models we can all easily use that make learning easier and more fulfilling. Anyone can do it. Learning can be learned.

1. Metacognition: Know how your brain works and learns

The nematode worm is one of the world’s more simple creatures. It has a three-day life cycle and only 959 cells. Yet, it can learn. It learns via habituation and association. Though habituation, it learns to respond and adapt to the repeated presence of a stimulus. Association lets it remember aspects of its environment that help it predict other things.

Learning is within the reach of everyone. But there is one tool that leaves the ability to learn more easily within grasp. The British Educational Endowment Foundation identified metacognition, knowing about the powers, limitations and workings of the brain or how we learn, as one of the most effective ways of boosting how well students learn.

Stanislas Dehaene, a neuroscientist, identified four metacognitive pillars that help the brain absorb knowledge and information to create learning.

Four pillars of learning

Focused attention

We can become saturated with information. Attention is a way of filtering out what is unimportant and attending to what is. It tells us when to pay attention, what to pay attention to and how to pay attention. Paying conscious, focused attention to something changes the brain. Neurons fire and continue firing far longer than they would otherwise. This strengthens synapses and makes the information easier to recall.

Meditating, made accessible through apps such as Balance or Headspace, is one way to build attention.

By focusing intently on study material, free from distractions, it becomes much easier to store and retrieve information, making learning much more effective.

Active engagement

Merely reading, watching or listening to lessons cannot lead to a deep understanding of a topic though ,  no matter how much focus you give them. Passivity is the enemy of learning. Curiosity and surprise sit at the centre of active engagement. When learning, we come up with ideas about how the world works , such as  how to conjugate a verb in a foreign language so that you can get your meaning across ,  and then test those ideas out.

Rephrasing learned concepts in our own words is one of the easiest ways to engage actively while learning. This helps immerse the brain in the concepts themselves and embeds them more securely in the mind.

Error feedback

But we have to test those hypotheses against the real world. If our understanding is wrong, we have to correct it. When we get something wrong, when our predictions about the world fail, we get surprised. As with newborns, surprise is one of the key reactions we need to learn. It is not enough to have only a theoretical knowledge of a subject. We have to put that knowledge to the test and see if it works in the manner we expect. As a self-learner though, it can be hard to get quality error feedback. There is no teacher there to help guide us.

Determining what type of feedback we need is crucial to success. We don’t need formal exams or an instructor to watch over us. Put knowledge to practical use and see if the outcome meets what is expected. Chat to someone in a target foreign language, play a game of chess and talk about it with the opponent afterwards, take a photograph in challenging conditions and see how it comes out. All these are great ways to get feedback and help adjust our mental models ,  leading to better learning.

Consolidation

Even if we deploy the three earlier pillars, it won’t be enough to gain real expertise in a subject. It takes time and effort over the long term to go from struggling to mastery. Neuroplasticity is the thing which allows us to keep learning throughout our lives. The brain can change. It can strengthen certain areas and move things from its conscious, effortful realm to the automatic.

Think of learning to read. At first, all the letters had to be sounded out and then put together. After years of consolidating how letters merged to become words, it is hardly any effort at all. We don’t even read the whole word. We see its shape and suddenly (almost instantly), it springs forward as if spoken in a clear voice.

It is the same with other things we learn. We have to build and strengthen connections in our brains. Revisiting previous lessons helps build those connections. Remembering lessons without reference to notes, talking to people what was learned both help consolidate memories. Continually build and strengthen connections and things become more automatic.

Sleep also plays an important role. While we sleep, our brains are running through what happened that day. They are incorporating things we did, saw and learned into our mental models of the world. We forget things as time goes on. But with sleep we can hold on to things for longer.

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2. Have a strategy

Being aware of the four pillars is a good start; the next step is to produce a plan and strategy.

First, decide what to focus on. Having a goal is important. Passion for a subject helps motivation and discipline. Anyone reading this probably has something in mind already. Start with that.

Identify existing skills and knowledge. This helps settle on what aspects to improve. As I did, creating an imagined future self with new skills and abilities is a useful tool. What is needed to make that a reality? That will help identify what to focus on.

Then see what resources are out there to help foster those skills. Luckily, we live at a time when learning material is abundant and easy to get. There are online courses, books, video series, audio books, lecture recordings and more that cover any imaginable subject. Spend time researching what will boost progress towards the spelled out goals. Don’t go overboard. A beginner only needs one or two texts. These might include a course from Udemy (I recently bought one on photography) paired with a book. Librarians can help a lot and what they provide is often free. Learning doesn’t have to be expensive.

Create a timeline of when to hit specific milestones. These should be measurable as well as achievable. The desire to become a chess master isn’t as helpful wanting to hit a 1400 ELO rating on chess.com or learn several openings for black. Use deadlines to create a sense of urgency but be generous. Learning should be a delight, not a burden.

Finally, set aside time to reflect on progress. Were the goals too hard or too easy? Were the resources used good enough? Are goals being met? Answering these types of questions can help see where to change and adapt the plan, leading to better outcomes.

3. Tips for studying

The first two pillars of learning are focused attention and active engagement. There are approaches to studying that help fire these and make learning easier. Both the mental and physical environments play big roles in making learning easier.

Focused attention may seem in short supply. Bombarded by notifications, distracted by short, viral videos alongside the frequent dopamine hits of an always online culture, our attention spans have shrivelled.

It’s easy to build them back up though. I’ve found that you can’t beat the pomodoro technique. This splits sessions into 25-minute periods of work, followed by a five minute rest. After four of these half hour cycles there is a longer break. Once I became comfortable with that, I doubled the length of each cycle to an hour, with 50 minute study sessions followed by ten minute break. It has helped in other areas of my life too. There are plenty of apps that help track this.

Creating the right physical environment is important. I study at my desk with headphones on, usually playing some background, ambient music that doesn’t intrude too much on my mind. I put my phone on do not disturb and leave it on the other side of the room (wireless headphones are useful here) or have it propped up showing how far I am through my pomodoro session. I might have a cup of tea and a few biscuits at my side so I’m not tempted to give into hunger or thirst and cut short my session.

It helps to create a habit. I try to study at the same time every day, usually putting aside an hour each evening to do so. Time may be in short supply, but consistency and frequency are better than duration. If it’s only 15 minutes you can carve out, then carve them out.

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After environment comes method. Passivity does not help learning. We must become actively engaged with our material. Peter Hollins, who has published several books on self-learning, has outlined some techniques that I have found beneficial.

The first is Cornell note taking, which I have slightly modified for myself. Here you split the page up into two unequal columns and a footer. The bigger column should take up two-thirds of the page and this is where initial notes are recorded. These notes are reduced in the second column, called cues, that focus on key issues. Finally, the footer is used to summarise the whole page in a few sentences.

My method involves taking the initial notes on day one, reducing them to the cues at the beginning of the following session and then writing the summary on day three. All these records, cues and summaries should be in your own words, engaging with the material rather than taking passive, verbatim notes. Illustrations and diagrams can also be used. This way, I come back to material often and early in the process, reengage with it and see if my further work has highlighted any confusion.

When taking notes, ask questions of the text that seek to clarify information, challenge assumptions, probe evidence, examine viewpoints, seek implications as well as understand why something is important.

Flashcards are useful for revisiting material. But they shouldn’t be relegated to a way to mere recite facts or definitions. When I was studying for my degree, I used flashcards (on the fall of the Roman Empire in this case). The front of the flashcard had the title (the Emperor Diocletian for instance) as well as tasks such as ‘analogues’, ‘context’ or ‘evaluate’. These asked me to actively engage with the topic on the flashcard, combine it with other information and think about it more deeply. On the back, bare facts can still appear alongside page references to where other aspects of the title are discussed.

4. Overcoming the obstacles

Procrastination is a massive obstacle, at least for me. Starting is the hardest part. Once I am focused and invested, I am very happy studying. But moving myself from in front of the television or away from a videogame is hard. That’s why making study a habit is important. It’s like exercise. Doing it once or twice won’t help. Consistency is vital.

One thing that helped me get over my inclination to dwell on mindless fun was understanding the procrastination cycle.

The cycle starts with unhelpful assumptions, such as ‘everything has to be perfect to begin’. That may include only wanting to start studying on the hour mark. If it hits three minutes past, then there is nothing else but to wait another 57 minutes.

Once we make these unhelpful assumptions, we move to the next step: increasing discomfort. We know what we should be doing, but now feel bad or anxious, which gets in the way of starting. We then arrive at the third step, looking for things to decrease discomfort. We all know that this would actually be doing the thing we said we’d do. Instead, we might clean the dishes, organise the desk, reply to messages or anything else that gives us the illusion we are making progress without actually doing so.

This finally leads to the consequences of our actions. We may have a beautifully tidy room with all our emails read, but we haven’t learned anything new or made progress towards our goals. This can lead back to unhelpful assumptions , that it must always be this way before we can study ,  or even more discomfort, which we look to reduce with even more avoidance activities. Understanding this loop can help us break out of it.

Lifelong learning

Learning is fun and anyone can do it. I wanted to learn a whole host of skills but before I did, I wanted to make sure I was doing it the right way. I want to improve my Latin, take better photographs, learn how to play chess well alongside understanding different aspects of the world to a much greater degree. I set out to learn about learning. And this is part of it. It’s a recall exercise that hopefully has some use for you.

The most empowering thing was metacognition. By the end of my exploration, I had discovered how malleable the brain is, how it is set up and wants to learn. Through the methods I found, putting together a plan and having a structured approach was easy, making me more willing and enthusiastic to just sit down and learn. Below, I’ve included links to some of the sources I used in this, which go much deeper on certain aspects covered here, as well as lot that weren’t.

Learning is for life. It is never too late to start. It is fun, empowering, enlightening, entertaining and fulfilling. As Aeschylus says in Agamemnon, ‘It is always in season for old men to learn.’

Resources and reading list

The Science of Self-Learning, Peter Hollins

How We Learn, Stanislaw Dehaene

Don’t Go Back to School, Kio Stark

A Mind for Numbers, Barbara Oakley

The Learning Strategies Center

The Learning Center: Studying 101

Cornell notes

This is a slightly revised version of an article I published first on Medium.