You May Be Trying to Learn Too Much Too Quickly

Human brain may have large “storage capacity.” But, there are other limitations to learning that you may run into.

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

I sometimes can’t believe I have been writing professionally for over seven years. That’s longer than I’ve deliberately practiced any other skill.

It was through writing that I understood a lot about how my brain works — and hence, about how I learn.

• I started recognizing the relationship between quantity and quality of output.
• I experienced how the brain forms creative connections between ideas effortlessly when you’re not trying to “work” on them.
• Through that, I appreciated the importance of taking work breaks — not just for the sake of productivity, but for, more importantly, for the sake of wellbeing.
• I explored the intricacies of how attention works, and how being able to keep stable attention helped me access deeper layers of thinking and produce better writing.

The meta-outcome of these (and other) lessons was insight into my own learning. I quickly realized that I wrote for the sake of learning at least as much as for an audience.