Learning, inertia and bad habits
I have been experimenting with my brain in the past few weeks to figure out a lot of things about myself. Most of these things have got one common theme: trying to be in control of myself, when I want. One of the lessons I’ve learnt along-way is about learning – the process by which mind gains new knowledge (not just new data). Memorization primarily involves the ability to store and retrieve data, learning involves the ability to store concepts, which can be applied to new and previously not experienced scenarios. While learning itself is a complex process, I’m going to point out a small observation about one of the parts of the process of learning – the part when we start learning a new concept.
Learning something new involves, by virtue of the word “new”, learning a new idea / concept – something which your brain has never created a pattern for. Often this should alter the way you think about something existing or add a completely new fundamental idea.
This is where inertia comes in. While the new concept maybe unusual for the brain, it may or may not be hard for it to comprehend. Most of the hard part comes from the inertia to absorbing that new concept. Instead of working on the details of the concept, the brain starts evaluating the effects of inertia and we end up feeling that the concept is difficult, that we are not suitable enough to understand it. Note that this happens without actually evaluating what the concept actually is. Further, this creates a negative and demotivating feeling inside us, and we end up either giving up or partially understanding the new idea (which is equally useless).
And soon this process becomes a bad habit. Unfortunately, we even fail to classify this repeated pattern as a bad habit – we just end up classifying the new knowledge as hard or simple.
It is important to always remember the difference between memorization and learning. The initial inertia will always be a part of learning something new – that is, if you have picked up the bad habit of learning things the wrong way. It is however not very difficult to kick the habit out. The first step is definitely identifying that you are a victim of that habit, and then creating your own techniques to knock it off. While I’m still in the process of knocking it off, I cannot explain the joy that I get now while learning something new. I am very curious and eager to see what would happen when I am completely out of it.
