Make your Brain Crystals Shine

When we were born, we came with a fluid mind that could take anything in and learn an unimaginable deal of skills and consume an almost unlimited amount of information. We rose from zero vocabulary to 50,000 words even before we stepped into the first standard and then we continue to learn more subjects and skills.

But at one point in life, this fluidity is lost and we can't learn more, not with ease and speed like we could as children. For most people, learning new things become difficult after the age of 30. Then how do we survive at work? How are we still able to learn new skills?

The truth is that we are actually not learning anything new but we are only learning how to apply what we already know in new ways. After we grow into adults, we do not have fluidity but we have something called crystallized intelligence as recognized by Raymond Cattel. As per him, crystallized intelligence is built upon the knowledge and skills we already have. For instance, you have already learned math and then, when you are learning to become an accountant, you are just learning how to apply the same in specific ways.

Learning for adults is like shining the hard stones so that they can be carved into shining crystals. But how do we do that?

If we assume that our fluid learning doesn't play many roles and it is the crystallized intelligence that we need to use to hone our skills, the first change you would try to make in your learning process would be to stop learning like a kid.

How does a kid learn?

A kid sees a dog and you tell him that it is a dog because it has four legs, fur, and a protruded mouth. Next time, the kid would see a fox and categorize the fox as a dog unless you tell him the subtle differences between the dog and a fox. And this is how the kid keeps adding new categories and creating a learning stack in his head. This is visual learning. For abstract learning or behavioral learning, a child will observe you, mimick you, and then, experiment with variations.

How does an adult learn?

An adult already has categories in his head. So, the moment a new concept is introduced, the adult would not try to make a new category but would search for those available to find where to fit it. No matter how many times you are told to unlearn and then learn, coming up with a clean slate is extremely difficult. So, what do we do if we want to learn?

We already have schemas in our heads that have created the shape of the world as we know it. Instead of trying to change this schema, what if we find a way to fit the new information into this schema?

You want to learn how to use new software. You already have a schema in your head for any software. In this schema, you will have a few items listed such as menu items like file, save, open, close...tabs, buttons, and depending on the use of the application, you would be expecting some distinguished functionalities. For instance, if you learn Microsoft Excel, you will expect spreadsheets. If you learn Word, you will expect pages for typing. Learn paint and you will expect to see colors and brushes. Fortunately, designers have already recorded your schemas well, and thus, they present the features in any new software considering your expectations making it easier to learn. However, the onus of learning still lies on you if you are learning a sophisticated skill or gaining current knowledge that the world has come up with only recently. What to do in that case?

I will give you an example of a concept I recently tried to decipher - Genome sequencing. I am an engineer turned writer so I have not touched many medical terminologies and I knew nothing about them. I began watching explainer videos like a curious kid and after watching two, I was still blank and wasn't able to remember anything. And then I wondered if I could connect the idea of genome sequencing with some crystal already inside my head. Of course, that needed me to think creatively but this is what I could come up with -

A genome is made of 4 types of codes A, C, T, and G. I have learned piano in which we use 7 alphabets, and depending on how they are used in a sequence, we make different songs. Similarly, based on the sequence of these 4 letters in a genome, we could be making different species. Now, that fit well and I was able to remember the codes too.

Let me give you another example. Going back to the days when I first started learning to write books, what I already knew was how to write an article of up to 3000 words. But writing a book of 30,000 words was a new ball game for me. However, one thing was common in the two systems - they both started with a background story, identified problems, and delivered solutions. Only in a book, I had to divide these sections into three parts such that a few chapters would be consumed by my background story, perhaps an introduction to terminologies, and some basics. The middle part would discuss specific challenges, each distributed to different chapters and the last part would list down tools or solutions chapter by chapter. Of course, later I also understood the variations and explore many more elements involved in book writing. However, if I had not tried connecting the dots between an article and a book, book writing would have sounded like a daunting task and I could have been discouraged. So far, I have written a dozen books (Not all for myself) and I am able to also understand the structures created by other self-help book authors.

So, to learn a new skill, as an adult, all you have to do first is find out the existing categories and schemas in your head to fit the new lessons and if you are unable to, you can always ask your guide to help you do the same by correlating the learning with an earlier experience.