Learning is not memorizing information
I spend a good deal of time memorizing information. This could be cards I put in Anki, doing my “Daily Review” in Readwise, or any number of other things. Memorizing information isn’t bad, but it’s worthless if you stop there.
In a recent episode of “Founders”, host David Senra shared thoughts on some time that he spent with Charlie Munger and he dug into this very concept. From the show:
“Learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. If I spend all this time reading about Charlie Munger, watching his Q&As at the Berkshire meeting, listening to his speeches, reading books, reading people who were influenced by him, and it doesn’t change my behavior, I’m just wasting time.”
I need to be careful with that when it comes to learning, and to be sure that I’m making actual use of what I learn. I’m confident that much of what I learn is of benefit, but I’m also confident that I have pieces in there that don’t do much good in the long run for me.
If I think “how can this information help to shape my behavior?“, it will make me better consider what I’m taking the time to learn. That doesn’t mean that everything needs to have a lesson behind it, as entertainment is an important facet of our lives, but simply that I need to keep that in mind when I start to learn something new.
Detouring slightly, years back I read David Allen's "Getting Things Done," a fully embraced his idea of putting stuff into a trusted system, which is not your brain. I took it too far, and started using my systems for everything, and was suddenly in a situation where I could hardly have a conversation if I didn't have some device with me! That is only a slight exaggeration. Part of my daily review is to look at conversations I want to have in the near future and pull some of that stuff back into my brain. Sadly, having trusted my systems so long and so well, my brain has somewhat forgotten how to hold onto things!