Learning On Purpose
The first memory I have of consciously pursuing a piece of information—beyond what I was handed, fully formed, by a parent or other authority figure—was when I was six-years-old following a viewing of Beauty and the Beast (the original 1991 animated version) which contained the Gaston brag-song in which, among other things, he claims to be “especially good at expectorating.”
This was a word I’d never heard before and which I eventually learned meant something like spitting, but with the implication of hocking-up phlegm. I hunted this tidbit down in a real-deal dictionary, as this was before the web was a thing many people had access to, and before Google and Wikipedia existed.
There's a chance that wasn't the first time I intentionally sought out a piece of information on my own, but the memory of that moment—of being unsatisfied with whatever my parents had told me when I asked them (there's a chance I simply ignored or didn't understand their answer)—has stuck with me.
In the years since, I've implemented all sorts of policies and habits to make this process more reflexive, as it’s casually easy to notice a gap in one’s knowledge and to simply allow it to remain uninterrogated; not necessarily mattering in any practical way, but also (arguably) representing a missed opportunity for self-improvement via knowledge-related perspective-expansion.
One of my policies is to immediately note when I encounter this sort of information, either jotting down an unfamiliar word or concept for later, or simply asking the person who introduced me to it for more details.
Sometimes this means clicking a few links to go deeper into something I’m reading, or maybe a quick online search.
The goal is to get the basics, understand how this new bit of data fits into everything else I know, and then either move on, minutely enriched, or file whatever I learned away for future looking-into.
Another policy of mine is to seek-out and follow folks who are informed about some topic or another, and who have come to different conclusions about that topic than I have (subscribing to their work, following them on social media, befriending them).
This, I find, is often frustrating and psychologically frictionful (like many people, I’d latently prefer to dismiss the opinions of those who disagree with me as the product of ignorance, thoughtlessness, moral vacancy, etc), which is why making it a habit has proven so valuable, as it helps me to more consistently round-out my perception of issues I care about with informed, good-faith counterarguments and alternative interpretations.
It can also be useful to have reliable sources of new information baked into one’s day.
I find crossword puzzles semi-regularly introduce me to new words and concepts, and tackling books on unfamiliar topics (or those just on the edge of what I currently grok) often serves the same purpose.
I don't personally make use of the “extended mind” tools that have become so popular, in part because I find that even taking too many notes seems to make my brain think the jotted information is no longer relevant or necessary, and I’m thus less likely to remember it long-term.
Instead, I take quick notes about learning-related action items—things I need to look into, books that sound interesting, films to watch—and then I try to tuck the knowledge contained in these things away in my own, biological brain, by allowing myself to be interested in and awed by whatever they contain, and by looking for connections between what I already know and the new info to which I’m being exposed.
This is all imperfect, of course, and I generally retain information better when I do the above, but then also revisit novel insights and data (ideally in a different context or form) later, and/or when I have reason to explain it to someone else (teaching something is a great way to learn and retain knowledge).
Also: we all function differently, due to the differences in our brains and bodies, our backgrounds, habits, and everything else about us; what works for me won’t necessarily work for you, and vice-versa.
That said, there are a lot of ways to learn, to improve upon how we learn, and to make learning a more integral and regular part of our lives, regardless of all the other things that occupy our time and energy.
It’s worth periodically checking in on these elements to see if something might benefit from tweaking, if said elements are serving their intended purposes, and if there might be something we can borrow from someone else, experimenting with foreign habits and tools, and possibly upgrading our own autodidactic setups, as a consequence.
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