Recently I was reviewing some chemistry concepts for an upcoming exam and I noticed an intriguing parallel between chemical reactions and the process of learning. As an avid learner, the observations discussed in this post have been prevalent throughout my learning experiences. For those of you who don't remember or who never learned any chemistry, here is a quick lesson on chemical reactions:
In order for a chemical reaction (initial state --> final state) to occur, there is an energy barrier that needs to be first overcome. This situation is much like pushing a boulder up from the east side of the hill to the west. Once the boulder reaches the apex of the hill, it will easily roll down to the west side. Although it is possible that someone is strong enough to throw the boulder over the apex of the hill, the most energy efficient way is to roll it from the bottom to the top. This minimum energy required to initiate the reaction is called the activation energy. As you can see from the diagram, usage of a catalyst can significantly lower activation energy.
From my experiences, in order for learning to occur, there is usually a barrier, similar to the activation energy of chemical reactions that needs to be overcome before any learning can take place. The point of learning is to go from an initial state (for example: non musician) to a final state (musician). Like the aforementioned analogy of pushing a boulder up a hill, unless you reach the apex, real productive learning can not occur. At the apex, effective learning begins and achieving the final state is not only a possibility but an inevitability. Failures to overcome this barrier are evident when you see people who put in good effort but are unable to reach their final states. I believe that anything can be learned, although mastery is another subject all together.
So, how does one overcome this learning barrier in the fastest most effective manner? This is very similar to asking what the fastest method is to pushing a boulder from one side of a hill to the other. One can either use more energy or somehow take a short cut through the actual hill itself. Here are some ways that can help you reach the activation energy needed to initiate effective learning:
1) Lower the Learning Barrier: In chemical reactions, the activation energy can be lowered by introducing a catalyst. Lowering the actual barrier will naturally cause the road to reaching the final state both smoother and faster. Common catalysts for learning are teachers/coaches, instructional books and the internet. These catalysts all act to lower the barrier to effective learning by providing a "shortcut" to reaching the top of "the hill". The quality of the catalyst is very important because poor and questionable instruction (especially on the internet) can prove to be detrimental to achieving your goals. Although it is possible to learn on your own, excellent instruction is usually the more effective method because good teachers have refined their methods from years of trial and error, saving you the trouble of hitting common pitfalls.
2) Use More Energy: Molecules with higher energy tend to react more easily because they overcome the activation energy more readily. Ways to increase energy in learning is to approach the process with a positive attitude coupled with hard work. Motivation, although helpful for the initial push and maybe short bursts during your learning process, is hard to sustain but having discipline will allow you to keep your energy high and at a consistent level. Without hard work and discipline, you will not have enough energy to reach the top of the hill.
3) Persistence: Molecules will constantly bump into each other until the right configuration and energy is achieved for a reaction. It is not enough to only have the energy to push the boulder up the hill; you need the resolve to keep pushing it until you reach the top. Even though mountain climbers cannot see the peak of a mountain until they get near the top, what keeps them going is that they know there is a peak. So for those who have tried but still can not see themselves as musicians, Italian speakers or golfers, just keep pushing to reach that apex and these things will become an eventuality.
From my own experience, here are some important points to keep in mind as you approach learning:
In order for a chemical reaction (initial state --> final state) to occur, there is an energy barrier that needs to be first overcome. This situation is much like pushing a boulder up from the east side of the hill to the west. Once the boulder reaches the apex of the hill, it will easily roll down to the west side. Although it is possible that someone is strong enough to throw the boulder over the apex of the hill, the most energy efficient way is to roll it from the bottom to the top. This minimum energy required to initiate the reaction is called the activation energy. As you can see from the diagram, usage of a catalyst can significantly lower activation energy.From my experiences, in order for learning to occur, there is usually a barrier, similar to the activation energy of chemical reactions that needs to be overcome before any learning can take place. The point of learning is to go from an initial state (for example: non musician) to a final state (musician). Like the aforementioned analogy of pushing a boulder up a hill, unless you reach the apex, real productive learning can not occur. At the apex, effective learning begins and achieving the final state is not only a possibility but an inevitability. Failures to overcome this barrier are evident when you see people who put in good effort but are unable to reach their final states. I believe that anything can be learned, although mastery is another subject all together.
So, how does one overcome this learning barrier in the fastest most effective manner? This is very similar to asking what the fastest method is to pushing a boulder from one side of a hill to the other. One can either use more energy or somehow take a short cut through the actual hill itself. Here are some ways that can help you reach the activation energy needed to initiate effective learning:
1) Lower the Learning Barrier: In chemical reactions, the activation energy can be lowered by introducing a catalyst. Lowering the actual barrier will naturally cause the road to reaching the final state both smoother and faster. Common catalysts for learning are teachers/coaches, instructional books and the internet. These catalysts all act to lower the barrier to effective learning by providing a "shortcut" to reaching the top of "the hill". The quality of the catalyst is very important because poor and questionable instruction (especially on the internet) can prove to be detrimental to achieving your goals. Although it is possible to learn on your own, excellent instruction is usually the more effective method because good teachers have refined their methods from years of trial and error, saving you the trouble of hitting common pitfalls.
2) Use More Energy: Molecules with higher energy tend to react more easily because they overcome the activation energy more readily. Ways to increase energy in learning is to approach the process with a positive attitude coupled with hard work. Motivation, although helpful for the initial push and maybe short bursts during your learning process, is hard to sustain but having discipline will allow you to keep your energy high and at a consistent level. Without hard work and discipline, you will not have enough energy to reach the top of the hill.
3) Persistence: Molecules will constantly bump into each other until the right configuration and energy is achieved for a reaction. It is not enough to only have the energy to push the boulder up the hill; you need the resolve to keep pushing it until you reach the top. Even though mountain climbers cannot see the peak of a mountain until they get near the top, what keeps them going is that they know there is a peak. So for those who have tried but still can not see themselves as musicians, Italian speakers or golfers, just keep pushing to reach that apex and these things will become an eventuality.
From my own experience, here are some important points to keep in mind as you approach learning:
- As with different chemical reactants, different people have different activation energies. Some people may learn certain things faster and other things slower. Due to this natural discrepancy, it is pointless to compare yourself to someone else. Like all scientific experiments, there is a control and a variable. If you want to track your progress you should only make self to self comparisons to keep all other variables constant.
- One thing certain is that the more things you learn and the more times you successfully overcome the activation barrier, the easier learning new things will be. The brain is like a muscle that only gets stronger with exercise and use. Although the things you may be learning are completely unrelated, the actual process of learning these things are strikingly similar. For example, someone may be learning how to swim and after they overcome their learning barrier they will begin to be able to manipulate their arms and legs in the form of a swimmer. They may not have the best form yet but they are able to better consciously control and coordinate various aspects of their body, such as the arms, the legs and breathing. This boosted ability to control their body and breathing will strengthen the neural networks of their brain making it easier if they ever wanted to learn other things such as salsa dancing, martial arts, snowboarding, guitar and etc. Also, with each learning barrier conquered, you also build up your discipline and perseverance which will help you in everything you do. Bottom Line: Learn more things.
- Another useful method to help reach your desired learning goal is to map out mini goals. Succeeding at mini goals will provide the fuel you need to tackle bigger goals. For example, if you want to learn how to play the guitar, your first mini goal will be to play one chord, your next mini goal may be to play four chords and after that to play a song using the four chords you just learned. Before you know it, you will be playing the guitar and it was all because you were focused on reaching these small checkpoints and not on the taking the entire challenge as a whole. It is like running the marathon one mile at a time as opposed to thinking about running the entire twenty six miles.
- The most important attribute that will lead to successful learning is - Don't be scared to fail. People learn much more from failure than they do from success. Here are some good quotes summing up the subject of failure:
"You miss one hundred percent of the shots you never take"
(Wayne Gretzky)
"Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm"
(Winston Churchill)
"Life's real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up."
(Unknown)
(Wayne Gretzky)
"Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm"
(Winston Churchill)
"Life's real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up."
(Unknown)
Please feel free to comment with your own learning experiences and tips. Look for future posts concerning self-discipline.
Recommended Reading: Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
Recommended Reading: Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
2 comments:
As a new IT instructor, I have to deal with learning from two perspectives, firstly, learning the teaching materials and, secondly, delivering the course to delegates in a classroom. The blog article draws an analogy between the processes of learning and chemical reactions. It touches on many interesting aspects of the two processes mainly in the potential barriers, which must be overcome before both types of processes can reached the completion state. The article suggests that the catalyst in easing and speeding up learning may be sourced from instructors, instruction manuals and Internet e-learning.
Most people learn in small manageable chunks as pointed out in the blog article as mapping out 'mini goals'. IT courses come in many, small 'modules'. The delegates are expected to understand the key points in each module by sitting through the training course. When the students receive the certificates at the end, have they really completed the learning? No, not yet. because the delegates have just been armed with the basis, the framework and the keys to the subject being learned. They resume the second stage of the learning process later when they will recall what they could remember from the course and attempt to apply the modularised knowledge to deal with problems in real situation.
How soon they can complete stage two to become masters will be determined by the chemistry-like activation energy barriers suggested by the blog article. In my mind, the equivalent barrier in learning is represented by the individual's ability in making meaningful interconnections between the 'mini goals' or 'modules'. The learning process is deemed nearer to completion when the basic framework grows into a knowledge network, which can be tapped into to answer a question or resolve a problem.
Coming back to the scenario of my preparation to deliver IT training, beside meeting the main objective of teaching the modules, I should provide some filler to lay the groundwork to help the delegates to grow the interconnetions in their own time and pace. The instructor merely supplies limited raw ingredients and it is up to the learners to turn these into the catalyst to speed up mastering the newly learned skills. Unlike chemical reaction, however, the learning process never completes.
Very nice comment! As I mentioned at the end of the third paragraph, mastery is definitely a whole different subject. This article mainly refers to obtaining the effective learning point leading to competency, but in order to master something, like you said the learning process never ceases. At the mastery level, in addition to learning, masters take things to the next level by innovating current ideas and pushing the boundaries so as to further increase the scope of their art/profession. They not only take in but they also create. One can not create without learning the basic fundamentals needed to be on the road to mastery. It is while learning these basic fundamentals that people meet the most resistance but once they can internalize these fundamentals, they will be well on their way for effective continual learning.
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