James Clear on Learning
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James Clear on Learning
Muse #149 - you can certainly speed up your learning if you put your mind to it
A dissected one of James Clear’s quotes yesterday. Let’s take his next quote to dissect. This one is on learning.
“Almost anything in life can be learned faster.
Most people learn passively. They wait for insights to come to them.
But you can speed things up by actively searching for useful ideas.
One strategy is to ask the top people what they do. Make their best practices your baseline.”
— James Clear
This quote worked for me when I read the first three lines. But the last one seems to be a self-prophecy to start providing “answers” to the readers. You cannot, repeat cannot borrow best practices from others and make it your baseline. One cannot be Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or James Clear for that matter and start with their strategies. You can only be yourself. And especially in the human context, there are no best practices - Best practices are for repeatable methods and practices that one learns to repetition. But asking others what they do and replicating it as your strategy is a recipe for disaster.
The better thing to learn from others is to ask them “why” they do what they do, the way they do it. The “Why” would potentially explain the values that they use to derive being who they are. And steal their ideas, their “why”, if it makes sense with methods and practices that work in one’s own context.
So here is my updated version, which would possibly make more sense in a human context…
“Almost anything in life can be learned faster.
Most people learn passively. They wait for insights to come to them.
But you can speed things up by actively searching for useful ideas.
One option is to ask successful people around you why they do, what they do. Learn those collective values as a baseline and figure out methods, practices and techniques to instantiate those values in your life.”
James did help me model “learning” in a new way as an infographic. It is worthy enough to take on independently in tomorrow’s post.
What did you think about my fix to his original quote?
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