How I learn things

For me, learning always begins when something catches my attention: ' this thing looks interesting and I want to do that'.

From that point I will seek out as much information relating to that thing as I can, it often becomes all consuming - my single focus. To begin with I'm just observing. I spend a lot of time simply passively reading / watching, absorbing information largely subconsciously. I make little to no effort to actively engage with or apply anything.

I look for any information that is available, the same things presented by many different people in many ways, and engage with that which appeals the most to me. Mostly I focus on concrete information, not abstractions. It is very, very easy for me to watch someone doing something, and then replicate it. I don't need to break things down or attempt to analyze it in any way, I can just watch and repeat.

The act of performing a task can be described as a set of related information, like the roads and junctions within a city. As I am learning, specific aspects of a task will catch my attention, and I follow things and learn about in a nonlinear way, such that new information I am engaging with is directly related to information I was just previously learning.

For example, most recently I have been learning the basics of how to draft and sew clothing, and my approach to doing so has been to watch a lot of videos of people making a huge assortment of different types of garments, and other videos addressing fundamental techniques, in the background while I'm doing my normal 'day job' work of making ocarinas.

I find that in doing this, by exposing myself constantly to so much information, things stick because there is a lot of repetition. The same concepts appear in different types of garments and these ideas are absorbed over the weeks and months that I'm engaging with this, even though I make very little effort to apply anything in practice, because I have very little free time to do so.

When I did start applying what I've been learning and making things, I was able to start with much more complex projects, than if I was trying to learn with an approach of acquiring and then immediately applying a concept, because my subconscious mind has already absorbed a considerable amount of information.

The first things that I made was a bodice sloper (a form-fitting torso garment), by adapting a pattern copied from another garment refining fit through a series of revisions, a basic pair of trousers drafted from measurements, and a circle skirt I wanted for contra dancing.

When I started playing the ocarina back in 2011, my learning process was much the same, to spend weeks researching the ocarina, music theory, and effective methods of practicing instruments. I do feel that with the playing of instruments, applied practice is of higher importance due to the need for developing muscle memory.

My natural way of functioning is to spend several years working on and learning about something deeply, then to pivot hard and learn something completely different, which often is related in some way to what I was doing before. The previous interest falls into the background as a 'learned skill', and is drawn on when it is useful to me.

I have realized that concrete information repeated over time and a focus on subconscious acquisition and processing of information is extremely important to me because I have no short-term memory and am generally very bad at dealing with new information presented to me on the spot.

Abstract explanations generally do not make sense to me unless I already have considerable experience with something. For example in programming, I generally can not make a connection from an abstract explanation of an algorithm, to the code that would implement that algorithm - I need a concrete working example in code I can copy and apply in my own way first, then the logical understanding arises organically after the fact, through practical use.

This tendency to focus deeply on one thing for a long period of time probably exists as an evolutionary trait that makes it possible to understand aspects of the world in great detail, which is required to influence them. This 'modus operandi' is called 'monotropism'.

But because of the way that I learn, mainstream education systems and approaches absolutely do not work for me at all: the constant task pivoting between things that have little in common, and insistence on teaching things in tiny chunks through logical analysis, and highly controlling environment, is enormously stressful, and triggers self-protective behaviors. I will be discussing this further in a future article.