Learning Forward and Sustainability
When I was in college there is a very difficult subject that every student struggle with. It is because it is hard for us to learn forward or learn next chapter every week because most of us after the session finished haven’t grasp the whole or most idea of the chapter. So, when I say I want to learn the subject at night my fellow ask “You learn forward or learn backward?”
That was an interesting question. Most of the time for that subject I actually was learning backward. And then just recently I realized that what I was doing in college is not a good way to learn.
Currently, I am trying to learn new language, Chinese Mandarin. It was a very hard language I think. You need to learn not only how people speak, but how people write the language with their own character, not alphabet. It was like 1 month ago I try to start to learn it and bought some books to learn including the basic grammar, speaking, reading and writing books.
The first thing I want to learn is the characters and how do I write it and memorize it. So I grab a good book about Chinese characters and its story. It was very good. I also bought some specialized notebook to learn how to write it. Then, for the first few pages and days I able to learn smoothly. Unfortunately, after a five days streak, everything broken, I can’t keep to learn it again because of day work, consulting work and any other stuff. I become a churn of my own path.
Just today before I decide to write this, I got a weird experience, I open that book again about how to write the Chinese characters and boom, nothing I remember about the characters. My brain memory and muscle memory depleted in just about 2 weeks after I haven’t take that book and do exercise again.
Now, I learn the hard way that learning something new is hard, and even harder if you are not do it frequently enough. It is similar to what I’ve done in college. It is because I learn that the whole concept in a batch manner, so that I can’t keep up with the pace. The stuffs that I need to learn is just so big that my small amount of time I allocate to learn everything in batch is just not enough. I need more time and I need to do it in a more small chunk to small chunk manner.
The stuffs that I need to learn is just so big that my small amount of time I allocate to learn everything in batch is just not enough. I need more time and I need to do it in a more small chunk to small chunk manner.
Now, I decide to try it again but with better strategies and tactics. Reducing the commitments I made in life to only a few. Then I can pursue my own goal in more consistent manner and more sustainable manner. A small chunk of time that we allocate to learn subject in consistent manner better than a huge amount of time to learn, but we can’t commit to do it consistently.
If you have better approach, please kindly share in the comments.
