learning

It’s easy, in this abstract, detached, quasi-virtual world of blogging, twittering, and all other flavours of social media to lose sight of real progress.

I’ve noticed that at times I feel like I’m pushing sand around, only to have it washed clean by the incoming tide (how’s that for depressing quote of the year?). In all seriousness, when this happens, it is important to step back and assess what measurable progress, tangible change, and physical success you are achieving. If it’s not enough, think about why. Find the areas of your work where you are making real things happen, and double them while cutting the rest.

This year I’ve done some things I’m pretty proud of (making my first physical piece of clothing, getting a photoshoot in a magazine, running a marathon, graduating from college). I’ve also pushed a lot of sand, wasting time focusing on minutia, writing irrelevant things and planning instead of doing. It’s important to recognize that and move forward rather than make the same mistakes over again.

I came across a very interesting concept today, courtesy of Bill Simmons (of ESPN fame) (and yes, I’m strongly considering referring to everyone by their Twitter handle now). It fits in with the idea that everything is a learnable skill, and that practice is the single most important factor to success at something.

Quoting from a three-year old article (an interview, over video games, with Tiger Woods), this is Bill Simmons’ theory on celebrities:

Take the dorkiest people on the planet, make them famous, and within four or five years, they wouldn’t be dorky anymore. Why? As soon as they became famous, their entire lives revolve around awkward interactions with people who are either (A) terrified to meet them, (B) kissing up to them, (C) interviewing them or (D) just as famous as they are. They become conditioned to it after a while. Eventually, their confidence swells and they morph into someone else — in any situation, in any room, they’re usually the alpha dog, and they know it. The perfect example is Clay Aiken, the dorky crooner from “American Idol” who slowly morphed into this generation’s Barry Manilow. Ever see Aiken on a talk show now? He’s as smooth as Merv Griffin in his prime. That’s what fame brings, a distinctive poise from being in control all the time. Eventually, you can’t help but become secure and self-assured. It’s inevitable.

I’m trying to come up with a counterexample; but I haven’t been successful yet (please enlighten me in the comments if you know of one).

The point is, even if you’re terrible at learning to be cool (as defined above), several years of being forced to practice will almost certainly be enough to make you an expert. Becoming famous takes the choice out of this learning.

Think about the popular kids in school; the popular kids typically remain popular from elementary school through high school, because they tend to have more interactions (and thus continue to improve at being likeable). The kids who aren’t popular typically abandon the practice (often focusing on a small group of close friends, or a non-social dynamics pursuit), and thus do not get more popular. Personally, I was never particularly popular, but was also somewhat forced into practice (because of my image as the “genius”) and thus became fairly skilled at the more shallow interactions (talking to people in passing, chatting at lunch/before an event), but did not develop a large number of friends that I did things with.

Obviously, you don’t have to be forced into practicing social skills, but for a lot of people, fear prevents them from doing it on their own. This is why programs such as Toastmasters are so successful, they force you to interact by letting you make the decision to do so very removed from the actual act (signing up for a speech/performance, joining the club, etc.).

If you want to improve this area, you need to find a way to practice. It can’t just be done with books/websites/forums/theory.

-Barry

How much do you remember from books you read five years ago? How about your high school classes? The last magazine you read?

In all cases, my answer (and I imagine most people’s answer) is not very much at all. I can’t tell you the plot of a Turn of the Screw, the Catcher in the Rye, or To Kill a Mockingbird, and I don’t remember much about calculating chemical equilibria.

Of course, certain things have been reinforced over time for some reason or another. Since I’m a math major, I recall the obscure trigonometric identities I learned in precalculus. 1984 was my favorite book in high school, and I can recall some of the scenes vividly in my mind’s eye.

This diminishing memory is natural, as we don’t remember what we don’t use, need, or care about, and the best way to tell your brain you care about remembering something is to reinforce it through various means. Most of these activities occur without great intent, and shape our memories based on our own needs and preferences. For example, someone who watches a favorite TV show every week is much more likely to recognize and name the characters a year later than someone who watched a few episodes. Someone who does engineering calculations all day is more likely to know the densities of certain materials off the top of their head.

Now, if we know we need to understand and recall certain types of information in advance, how can we prepare our minds to do so. What can we do to build and reinforce memory of the things we read? Thus, developing effective reading systems is a productivity issue I’m going to explore in the coming weeks.

Why?

1. I’m concerned about my own personal lack of retention (short and long term).
2. A number of projects I’m working on require the filtering and processing of complex ideas (research here and my math thesis).
3. I need to build a system of organizing and cataloging ideas.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to assume that different types of materials can be read effectively in the same way. At the least, we need to consider three separate categories:

1. Fiction books
2. Nonfiction books
3. Academic papers

For each category, we need to determine what we want to get out of the reading (during and after), and then develop a system that will best achieve those goals. This is a personal process, as the effectiveness of any method is certainly not universal, and there are a lot of methods out there. Today, I’m going to develop my requirements for a reading system as an example.

Fiction Books

I want to get enjoyment of the text, a basic long-term knowledge of characters, plot, and themes, any interesting ideas or quotations. Thus, I need a reading system to not interfere with the pleasure of reading fiction, provide simple means for locating and recalling interesting sections, and provide a method for plot summary and book summary.

Nonfiction Books

I want to learn and retain actionable ideas, important references and facts. Further, I need to draw connections between different ideas throughout the book, since nonfiction tends to be less linear than fiction. This means I need a reading system which focuses on developing, retaining, and connecting ideas while I’m reading. This will be more interactive reading, and less straight-through reading. The system must also provide an organization scheme to find the ideas in the book once it is read.

Academic Papers

Because I read academic papers to develop my own ideas about a very specific topic, I need to quickly determine whether a particular paper is worth reading. If so, I need to understand and extract the relevant complex ideas, as well as understand the relation of those ideas to other ideas and papers on the topic. This system will require the most constant engagement and organization. It must develop not only a logical system linking papers, but ideas within papers, and examples/explanation of those ideas.

Next Steps

In the coming weeks, as I receive books for Christmas and begin work on fashion, philosophy and sociology research for this website, as well as work on my mathematics thesis, I’ll be using a significant amount of trial and error in working towards developing these systems. My goal is to have a working system for each case within two months. I’m looking forward to doing a lot of reading!

-Barry

I remember a period of a few a months during high school, I was obsessed with the concept of lucid dreaming (it’s still a really fascinating idea), and I read about it all of the time.

Lucid dreaming is essentially becoming aware that you’re dreaming. Unfortunately, it’s not a natural ability for most people. Fortunately, it is apparently a skill which can be learned.

I remember reading that the first step toward being able to lucid dream is to keep a dream journal, where you record as much as you can recall of your dreams upon waking up. The idea is that you have to activate the centers of your brain which work during dream phenomena, so that you can begin to exert some control over them.

I’d conjecture that the same idea holds true for understanding color (and fashion in general). I know that since I’ve begun consciously thinking about color all the time (in my clothes, the clothes of others, and in the surrounding world), my ability to understand color relationships and effects has improved. Just like any artistic skill, practice and examples are at the core of improvement.

While I don’t know much about the execution, I’m quite confident that color “sense” can be learned at a high level. What makes it different from other “school” learning is that often there aren’t correct answers aesthetically, but there are known concepts such as the types of contrast, and our eyes can learn to measure these concepts. It remains a matter of opinion as to how to interpret them.

-III