I’ve started rereading a great book called Make it Stick. It’s written by two cognitive scientists and one great storyteller. The book is filled with ways to be a better learner. Yes, learning is a skill, and one you’d do well to start practicing.
One thing I like is that the authors start the book by defining “learning;” I love their definition:
“When we talk about learning, we mean acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so you can make sense of future problems and opportunities.”
Learning isn’t memorizing something for an hour. Learning is obtaining new knowledge or skills that will be available to you in the future so that you can USE it.
The authors go on to say:
“To be useful, learning requires memory, so that what we’ve learned is still there later when we need it.”
This may seem obvious, but it’s important.
Learning and memory are both skills, like any other. They may be two of the most important and valuable skills anyone can develop.
The painful, snarky, eye-rolling individual immediately starts arguing that “IQ is what it is” and we can’t change it, so none of that matters.
That individual doesn’t want to get better and would rather wallow in their position than try something new. That is an unenviable place to be, and I feel truly sad for them.
Now, on to everyone else.
You can get better at memory and learning with training and by using better tools and techniques. You should think about it like training for anything else.
You can’t get any taller, but if you practice, you can become a better basketball player.
You’re not necessarily going to win the gold medal in the marathon, but you can train and finish a marathon.
You probably aren’t going to be the strongest person who ever lived, but you can train to do 100 pushups.
Success isn’t being the best. It’s being better than you were yesterday.
You can be a better learner tomorrow or you can do it the same way you’ve been doing it.
I’ve spent the last 10 years studying learning and piecing things together to make it easier for you to do better. For the past 6 years, I’ve been trying to come up with a way that I could create a complete study course that would be different and better than everything on the market today.
I’ll be presenting the material so that you can “learn” it. Not in lists. Lists suck.
I’m going use something so much better. I’ll show exactly what that is in The September issue of The Physician Assistant Exam Scholars Newsletter. It’s a whole new way of “seeing” the material. I can’t wait to explain it. PAES members are going to love it.
Learning is forever. Getting better at it is an exponential kind of skill.
We go to the printer on September 1st. That’s right around the corner.
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Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian Wallace