Learning About Learning: The Best State of Mind in 10 Conditions

According to K. Patricia Cross, Professor Emerita of Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, "Learning is not so much an additive process, with new learning piling up on top of existing knowledge, as it is an active, dynamic process in which the connections are constantly changing and the structure reformatted." Meaning that learning is sloppy; it is an adding and a subtracting, cutting and pasting, learning, re-learning and adjusting. But do it we must for our personal betterment to improve in our relationships, careers, political decisions, all areas of life.

But what are some of the best conditions to allow this sloppiness known as learning to occur? For learning the art of learning is critical, to do so the opportunity for success must be optimized.

"Learning how to learn is life's most important skill" Tony Buzan, memory expert.

Researchers who study the brain tell us that there are ten conditions that optimize our ability to learn.

1. You are intrinsically motivated (from within) to learn material that is appropriately challenging.

The majority of students are externally motivated by grades, prestige, rewards from parents, and so on--outward motivation. However, those with staying power, the few and the proud, are the ones who are the most successful. Even though statistically 90% of high school grads plan on attending college, the reality is that only 28% of adults have a college degree. A major reason for this discrepancy is that the majority are not intrinsically motivated.

2. You're appropriately stressed, but generally relaxed.

Generally, you want to be somewhere between sweaty hands and falling asleep. If you're overly worried about something you won't learn. Being overly stressed, just like not having enough sleep, affects the brain's ability to function at optimum capacity. If you find yourself falling asleep, the material may be too fundamental or uninteresting. In some cases, you just have to suck it up if it's knowledge you need for your job. But if you're taking classes to advance your career that bring on the doze, you may just want to change your major then your career.

3. You enter into a state researchers call "flow" when you're so totally absorbed in what you're doing that you lose track of everything else.

Here is where interest is key. In college or school there were certainly courses that induced more of a lack of "flow"; these are not your choice of focus. However, if you've found yourself while immersed in a hobby, reading, writing, sculpting, or whatever, fall into a trance where time just slips away, this is most likely where your genius lies. And if it is not something that you do to make a living, you may want to consider a life change to optimize not only your potential for happiness and fulfillment but monetary satisfaction as well.

4 . You're curious about what you're learning, and you look forward to learning it.

Far too often people mention how they hated school, hated reading, math, science, and so on. However, it may not be that they hate learning but were not using a dominant learning type. Of the eight types of intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, body-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic) most people have a few they are naturally comfortable using. School uses generally the first two: linguistic and mathematical. How one learns varies from person to person, so if you're not into picking up knowledge via linguistics and logic, you might think you're a dunce when you actually just didn't like what was on the learning-type menu. Your intelligence of choice was not listed.

5. You're slightly confused, but only for a short time.

If you're so overly challenged by the material you're not getting 70% or more, this should indicate that you need more fundamental knowledge. However, if you understand everything, you're not learning. Some students think that being an "A" student is preferable. Certainly, getting all high marks looks good on the transcripts, but maybe they weren't challenged enough. Just like your muscles the brain needs to be challenged in order to grow. Try picking material that is a struggle but not so much that you are buried in misunderstanding. Challenge will certainly serve you well in the long run. Also, variety is not only the spice of life but of a healthier, more diverse understanding, for the broader the material the greater chance for comprehension as the spider-web data base is referenced and cross referenced as greater, deeper insight and understanding occurs.

6. You search for personal meaning and patterns.

If we listed these in order of importance, this one would come near the top. To learn, to enable that learning to stick, and for it to be of greatest use, one must find "personal meaning." In assigning topics for papers, the best response from students comes when the teacher asks them to find something they can connect to on a personal level. The greatest thinkers connect what humankind has learned to their current understanding and perspective on things. They ask, why did man invent math? Calculus? Algebra? Why did man invent the zero? Why did man develop sophistic philosophy? What has he progressed to? Why is physics just philosophy with math? Where are we going next? If you can connect what you're learning to discover greater personal meaning by looking at existing patterns of knowledge to connect to your knowledge to create new patterns that is the essence of the joy of learning and gaining greater depth and breadth of insight.

7. Your emotions are involved, not just your mind.

If you ever thought learning was emotion neutral, think again. For most, this realization is never made and these people consider their emotional knowledge fact based. Some get so emotionally attached to a certain perspective or opinion that no matter what happens they won't begin to venture down a path that may contradict their beliefs-beliefs that may not even be theirs, handed down from parents or people of great influence in their lives. Just like the college experience can't be as academic (emotion neutral) as some professors desire or as emotion based as most students want it to be. But keep in mind that feelings like thoughts can be changed. Why do you "feel" a particular way? Is it simply based in unfounded emotion or more so in fact?

8. You realize that as a learner you use what you already know in constructing new knowledge.

When it comes to learning, you are the constructing foreman. Learning is not a passive state, even though you've probably spent twelve to sixteen years mostly passively sitting and listening to lectures-predominantly old-school method of teaching. Unfortunately, the majority of your schooling has been based in digesting fact and regurgitating on cue on some test or paper. But the greatest learning uses critical, active thinking-thinking that is goal oriented, problem solving, weighing evidence, and making decisions. It is unfortunate that the majority of thinking after school--in the work-'a-day world--is this type of active thinking and schools and colleges use mostly passive or simply intake thinking.

9. You understand that learning is both conscious and unconscious.

Part of the critical thinking process entails the passive gestation period that leads to eureka and creative discovery, the old apple-on-Newton's-head moment of insight and realization. As you ingest and then actively ponder and process, you eventually move into the moment of creative discovery. And without quiet downtime this won't happen. In this day-n-age of move, move, move one may find it difficult if not challenging to find enough downtime to ponder and reflect, but without it thinking, that of great depth of understanding, is incomplete. And it is this incompleteness that results in the majority going to a proliferation of gurus and experts for their dose of insight when a great portion of their answers-with a little bit of work and invested time-can be discovered on their own.

10. You're given a degree of choice in terms of what you learn, how you do it, and feedback on how you're doing.

Yes, in this country of greatest freedoms, one can see the value of choice. But the biggest problem is an educational system that does not develop creative, intuitive, critical, value-based thinking or self-discovery of talents, abilities, gifts and weaknesses to boot. In missing this 80% of one's education, it is critical to understand that to learn the conditions of "choice" and "feedback" is critical. Here, one sees that she must be fired up through choice-since that opportunity is so abundant in this greatest of countries-in order to optimize her learning experience.

So there you have it. Learning, as one can see, if far-reaching and complex. But in this freest of countries, it is critical as we make important decisions to guide our lives, the lives' of our loved ones, and the lives or our fellow countrymen through accurate, thorough, well-informed, and accurate thinking, taking advantage of the understanding of all the conditions that make this opportunity so.