“I may walk slowly, but I never walk backwards.”
- Attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but not verified as having him ever said it
The under-valued quality of self-guided learning
We have a theory that’s important to Stormthread’s mission, that self-guided learning is a commonly overlooked foundation of our educations. Where the majority of the learning that we actually do is done independently.
5.03: Professor explaining to university students what the expectation of independent self-study is at the university level in the 1950s.
3/3.625 to 1
The first component of Stormthread’s theory of independent learning comes from the above video. The video gives one a snapshot of what a professor recommended to students as to the amount of hours they should dedicate to independent learning compared to the hours they spent in class.
The numbers the professor broke down in the video:
16 hours of in class time
48 hours of homework
10 hours of lab work and additional learning as necessary
--
58 total hours of independent learning, (Up to)
Breaking down the numbers:
Based on this professor’s math these numbers converted into a ratio come to 3/3.625 hours of independent learning to in class learning. This shows us what an ideal ratio of guided to independent learning per week could look like.
There are various different and changeable variables that go into where each of our ratio’s ideally would be and where they actually end up being in practice when we study.
For instance it depends on your institution, how much you can push yourself individually, and how well you are absorbing the information at hand at any given time. Finally, and perhaps most decisively, a major variable in how much additional independent work you can do per week time is determined by our individual life circumstances.
What does this tell us? Well this points to an over-looked aspect of learning. One that even professors of higher learning institutions have acknowledged and emphasized to their students: that 3 to 1 and up to 3.625 to 1 of our hours are spent learning independently. We are not as solely reliant on institutions of education to ensure that we succeed in our educations as we might initially think. Much of our learning comes from our own effort.
This comes to the second aspect of the theory we at Stormthread think about learning: In addition to the hours spent outside of classrooms, the practical ways we learn in class: where most of the learning, although instructed, comes from one’s own concentration and engagement with the material.
For instance, If one repeats the same concentration and effort alone in a room with the classes’ textbook but without the teacher, then one might find that they can get through roughly the same amount of material as one do in class. Therefore it is possible then that even much of what you learn in class, can be fairly considered as potentially learnable independently of a teacher or mentor in the room.
Much of our learning therefore- even in class learning- is in fact self-guided learning. With these two insights, it is plainer then to begin to appreciate that a truly great and massive portion of our learning is derived from our own will-power and discipline.
Self-education as a compliment to formal education
A good way to think about self-education is to treat it as a compliment to formal education, not a pure replacement for formal education.
The more we undertake self-guided learning, the faster we can push up our learning curve. After we graduate from college or high school, the importance of self-guided learning increases as the influence and time we spend with formal education as a source of knowledge and information reduces, and our own efforts and habits make up the majority of what we learn.
And just as our needs to keep-up a higher independent learning tempo increases when we leave formal education, is just when many of us reduce our self-guided efforts in knowledge gathering. Like the time immemorial cliché of people who say after leaving education that they are done with pencils and books- as if it was an honored and desirable rite of passage to leave behind study. Versus a pause of consideration by us to think of learning to be viewed not as a burden but a positive and rewarding series of habits that yield enormous, yet perhaps hard to measure value to us.
A lot of us rarely pick up a book after leaving education, Why is that?
We believe there is a mass failure by our societies in regards to education, both culturally and with our current education systems. Too many people matriculate out of education with negative feelings towards learning and negativity to the building blocks of learning such as reading and writing.
That’s a huge shame for humanity. But if this behavior and mentality can be conditioned into our mindsets, then with enough effort, there is an opportunity to also condition ourselves out of these developed negative thoughts of learning. And perhaps we can rediscover not just to learn how to learn again but actually enjoy and see and feel the value of learning again.
Like that good feeling of when we have those ‘a-ha moments’. We believe that all people can enjoy learning and the process of learning if it is on our own terms and at a pace we are comfortable with, on topics that interest us.
To do this what is needed is a positive growth mind-set, setting aside 15/20 minutes a day, effort and resilience.
Incrementalism & Resilience: Comfortable Discomfort
The incrementalism approach starts with us acknowledging that tasks that create value can be difficult to start and maintain over time. This is especially so in the beginning, when change can be scary and new things we don’t normally do feel so hard.
Accepting that something may be painful to do however, allows us to live in it long enough to see if we can actually handle it. The cool part of this is that then after giving oneself the opportunity to feel this discomfort when we start with small doses, gives us the chance to realize that this difficult task we’ve built up in our minds is easier than we imagined.
Repeating this process enough gives us the chance to build tolerance to something we may have once thought was very hard or perhaps even impossible.
One universal law that plays a big part in getting in the way of any of us who want to do something positive is the principle of Inertia:
A body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion
- Newton’s first law of motion
The easiest way to overcome inertia is to take one step, any step in a positive direction to- to take initiative to create momentum. Building positive momentum helps make one’s next step easier. The first step of anything is almost always the hardest step- but taking that first step unlocks the ability to take the next and it reduces the inertia that gets in the way of making positive change towards motion that can allow one to do something that needs to be done.
The smaller the first step, the easier it is to do and therefore the most logical way to do something hard- as it gives us the best chance of building momentum and continued success.
So repeating small tasks that build confidence and reinforce habits also help us build up our internal tolerance towards doing hard things. Doing the hard things allow us to eventually reach our goals and eventually achieve more work in shorted spaces of time with that tolerance we build up.
These principles, over time are what can create massive improvements from humble beginnings with relatively small repetitive actions. Don’t sniff downplay yours or other’s baby steps, because anything of value and merit originates from what can look like small seemingly innocuous positive actions.
Incrementalism: The math of repeated Small Efforts – How small things become big things
Small efforts over long enough time frames can yield big pay-offs, if you can be resilient enough to stick with a series of tasks to achieve a goal over enough time, then you give yourself the best opportunity to accomplish what you’re is looking to do.
Work = Effort x Time
Over a longer time period, say three to five years, one can with smaller amounts of effort achieve large amounts of work that would feel daunting over a shorter time span. Over a life-time small amounts of effort, if repeated consistently can yield amazing work results. If one invests just 20 minutes a day over the course of 5 years, one can do the equivalent of just over 600 hours’ worth of work over that time.
If you want to get more work done (or learning in), you either need to increase your effort levels or your time committed to a task (or both).
But we can make it easier by spreading small efforts over a long enough period of time. And through this really big, daunting tasks even tasks can be overcome and accomplished.
There is no big secret, no immediate hack or short-cut.
Just that the work gets done by putting in effort, there is no free lunch. However by consistently putting in small efforts over time we can put in enough work to achieve the learning and tasks that are difficult to achieve with more manageable small but consistent efforts, to make the jobs we need to do easier and feel more achievable than if we tried to do the same work, but over a shorter period of time.
Therefore Consistency and focus on ones goals over long periods of time while not getting discouraged are key components in achieving difficult tasks.
How Honest Abe did it
Abraham Lincoln, in his time, was no stranger to challenges and inhospitable environments. Growing up, he estimated that on aggregate he had less than one year of formal education [1]. He explains his thinking on how one can also meet the challenge of learning things that take time to understand in the following quoted passage from Team of Rivals. It is longer than a typical quote, but the author Doris Kearns Goodwin gives such incredible context to Lincoln’s words that we couldn’t help but share her writing in its intact glory with Lincoln’s to you guys:
“What Lincoln lacked in preparation and guidance, he made up for with his daunting concentration, phenomenal memory, acute reasoning faculties, and interpretive penetration. Though untutored in the sciences and the classics, he was able to read and reread his books until he understood them fully:
“Get the books, and read and study them,” he told a law student seeking advice 1855. It did not matter, he continued, whether the reading be done in a small town or a large city, by oneself or in the company of others.
“The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places… always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.””[2]
Granted we all might not have the natural ability of Lincoln, but there is a chance that if that is used as a reason not to try, then it might be a sign we are not being honest with ourselves.
You don’t need a fancy library to study in, or expensive tuition to learn something; there is no trick to it. It requires one to carve out time and attention to whatever you would like to learn.
Self-guided learning provides one the opportunity to get better without relying on anyone but oneself. Even while taking into account that all living things perform according to their gifts [3], but we can improve our gifts and weaknesses with effort and practice [4].
You alone largely decide where you go and how much you do, despite any perceived or actual limitations you might have, one only can control what you can control. You control the effort you have in your discretionary time.
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill
In closing, change is difficult; we all know that and experience that in our lives. But difficult doesn’t mean impossible. Change for the better is valuable- things of value typically do not come easily and require some effort to achieve.
Brace yourself for this difficulty and remember you have the choice to make positive changes in your life. Don’t let yourself get in your own way. Pick up a book in a subject you’re interested in today and put a handful of minutes aside in a day to read, even if it is literally just five or ten minutes.
You may just find that you enjoy reading that little bit more than you thought you would. You might then remember that good feeling that learning something you’re interested in can bring. Who then knows where that positive feeling will take you if you let it...
Notes & References
[1] Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln – Doris Kearns Goodwin, page number: 51.
[2] Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln – Doris Kearns Goodwin, page number: 54
[3] Spock quote from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqrZRIBLfe4&list=PLcPVIHxNkHLjz9VfrHoUafOJ3hVXjqM9P&index=5
@ 0.36 : Spock : “As with all living things, each according to [their] gifts.”
[4] "Most successful people are good at identifying, very early, their strengths and weaknesses, at knowing themselves," … "For most of us average Joes, that meant we've relied on strengths but had to work on our weakness -- to lift them to adequacy -- otherwise they might bring us down.” - Joe Biden https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html