My Learning Process

Context

In 2007 I was in a high speed car accident that left me with a compound femur fracture & a brain injury. I've talked about it. sure. I haven't actually connected the dots on what happened that night and how it changed my view on the world forever.

While I was learning how to walk, I was also learning how to process information, read, & write effectively. Both of these "injuries" became superpowers later on. The femur fracture led me to a hyper focus on gait. This led to 1,000 experiments on myself and I ended up running track division 1 (not well) through these experiments. My obsession with running faster led to my current life obsession -- making people run faster and healthier.

The brain thing, coincidentally, I forgot why this was important until .. now. Part of my therapy was "learning how to learn". At the time, I thought it was stupid. One day a week I'd meet with a specialist who'd make me do WEIRD things. She'd give me 100 words and would tell me to group them into 4 categories then tell her why I picked those groups. She'd have me read a paragraph then ask me questions that had nothing to do with the story then ask about the story (i'd fail). It was STRETCHING my brain and it was uncomfortable... It wasn't until @StuartMcMillan1 started talking to me about systems thinking and frameworks and models etc that I realized how IMPACTFUL her exercises were in my life.

She taught me to remember things by "chunking" and "grouping" things into categories. She taught me to recall information through FEELING. Probably most importantly , she gave me a learning process.

Here it is:

1. Read it.

2. Write it (pen & paper)

3. Type it (that night).

4. Talk about it.

Then lastly, from accumulating of these over time I realized the magic was connecting these notes. At home i have tons of full notebooks.

From 2007 until now I have notebooks where I wrote nearly everyday. Sometimes I had gaps. On my computer I have extensive google docs of translated notes Connected notes.And some unconnected notes.

Right now for some reason I feel like I'm learning more than I've ever learned. Maybe its correlated to the newfound comfort with being wrong and not feeling dumb. I've challenged everything I've ever thought was true over the past year. Mind you, this is a year where I had 1st round Draft Picks, Olympics, Medalists.. etc. And it was maybe the first time I EVER thought-- what if everything I have been doing is WRONG? Then it clicked. This is learning.

We don't learn until we have a problem sometimes. Learning isnt linear. We don't look for an answer until theres something wrong. This is embarrassingly my first interacting with not having a major problem and trying to identify and audit if there is a problem. We hold on to what we think are facts. We attach our bias then look for confirmation vs. looking for a challenge to our bias.

But the crazy part about "facts"? They all get disproven, at some point. Theres a explanation for this - the "half life" of knowledge" is the time it takes for 50% of something to be proven wrong. Half life of Math? 9 years. Science? 8 years. Neuroscience? 2 years. I wonder what it is in our field. What have we held on to a little too long? How many therapists still say R.I.C.E. for injuries or coaches who say "jog 5 laps" for warmup.

We emotionalize these facts into our identity. The real learning starts when we view our learning process on a continuum of "truth". Knowing that at some point we will be proven "wrong". So what do we do? Approach everything with caution. Ask for opposing opinions. Have people challenge.

Thank you for reading.