How to Become a Super Learner

 
By Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener

Part One: Introduction

Across my academic career, I have researched a wide range of topics: happiness, friendship, coaching, social support, pleasure, generosity, and hospitality. Because each of these is positive—they are all topics that deal with people at their best rather than at their worst—they fall within the sub-discipline known as “positive psychology.” Positive psychology is a refreshing antidote to a world that seems politically tense and a profession (psychology) that has long focused on negatives. 

One of the monumental achievements of positive psychology is the study of character strengths. In the early days of the field, scholars were curious to see whether it was possible to develop a counterpoint to the diagnosis of mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. Simply put, they wanted to create a basic checklist to identify people who were good at things. Folks who are generous, or wise, or creative, or funny, or great leaders. The result was the creation of a free-of-charge and widely used assessment of character strengths (if you are curious about your own strengths you can take the assessment here). 

There are 24 common character strengths included in this classification. One of them is particularly intriguing to me. It is called “love of learning.” Love of learning is associated with achievement in primary school, greater personal growth, and increased life satisfaction. As the name implies, people who are high in love of learning have a passion to learn new things and do so simply for the sake of learning. The only problem is that—in my professional experience—people who are high in love of learning are not necessarily superior learners. 

You would expect folks who are motivated by a deep desire to add to and expand their knowledge to be pretty good at it, right? When I first began interviewing my coaching clients about this strength, I discovered that they were higher on the “love” part of “love of learning” than they were on the “learning” part. That is, for many people with this strength, it is a kind of appetite. It is like showing up hungry to a buffet and piling food on your plate until it is overloaded. In a similar way, many of my clients said that their love of learning could be seen in all the half-read books that litter their shelves and all the seminars and courses for which they enroll. None of them professed to have any keen insight into superior methods for acquiring or maintaining knowledge. They simply liked to be exposed to new stuff. 

You can see a good example of this in the way that people often report their own experiences of magazine articles or TED talks. Here is how it often goes: “Hey, I came across this super interesting TED talk. It was by this one woman—like, a scientist? She studies the brain and she discovered that the brain can change all across your life!” As a piece of learning, this isn’t exactly knock-your-socks-off material. In this example, the person couldn’t identify the researcher and has only a cursory understanding of the research findings. How does the brain change? Are all such changes positive? What are the factors that lead to this change? The answers to these questions are what elevates the learning from pseudo-facts to an actual understanding and application of concepts. 

This insight set me to thinking about learning as a skill. Your intuition tells you that you can learn from observation, and from trial and error, and from reading, and from teaching and mentorship. In fact, there is a whole science on effective learning. If you want to be a super-learner—someone who doesn’t just expose herself to new material but who understands it, remembers it, and can use it—then there are some tips you might find useful. 

Part Two: “T”, a drink with jam and bread

There is a classic scene in the Rodgers and Hammerstein spectacle, The Sound of Music. In it, Julie Andrews—a governess—teaches music to the von Trapp children. Appropriately, she does so by singing her lesson. The resulting song teaches the kids and the audience about each note: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti. But in this case, I think ti is more than “a drink with jam and bread.” Instead, I think it is a peek into how learning occurs. The teacher explains, then demonstrates, and then invites the rest of us to practice singing as well. It suggests that the lesson needs to be small and clear, that it needs a real-world application, and that students need a chance to give it a try. Inspired by this thought, I offer three more ti’s or “T’s” related to better learning. They are: trying, teaching, and tailoring. 

People are fond of thinking that there are “types” of learners. You might hear, for instance, a person claim to be a “visual learner.” Research reveals that there isn’t evidence to support these claims. Instead, it turns out, that all people learn better through multiple channels. Barring being blind or deaf, people learn best when they see, and hear, and discuss, and reflect. Among these channels of learning is “experiential learning.” In essence, experiential learning is trial and error. Trying is especially important when learning a skill. Imagine trying to learn to play tennis, cook a meal, or drive a car simply by listening to a lecture on these topics. It would be hopeless. Instead, we all need to practice a backhand, taste the mixture of ingredients and get the feel for how hard to press the gas pedal. But trying is more than just an opportunity to fail your way to success. What makes experiential learning effective is the opportunity to receive feedback on your performance. When the ball smacks into the net, when the dinner is too spicy, and when you jerk the car forward with too much gas, this is immediate feedback on your performance. The best learners are not those who simply practice; they are the people who pay attention to feedback based on their trials.

The second “T” is teaching. It might seem counter-intuitive that teaching is one of the best ways to learn. In order to teach a topic effectively, a person needs to understand it, to be able to condense it and articulate it, to provide examples, and to answer questions about how the concept applies to various contexts. You often hear school instructors say, “I learn as much as my students.” This is because each time a teacher teaches, she is forced to answer new questions and think about the topic in new and more sophisticated ways. 

Take the example of high school civics. You might have learned, in your freshman or sophomore year, that a person needs to be 35 years old or older in order to run for President of the United States. If asked why, you might have said that this provision is laid out in the Constitution. But, as you age, and gain a more sophisticated understanding of the world, you might answer differently. By the time you have teens of your own, you might be able to explain that people in their middle age generally have more life experience, a greater degree of wisdom, more emotional self-control, and a wider web of knowledge than do their younger counterparts. This maturity, then, is the reason that the Founding Fathers required a bit of age for the nation’s highest office. Over time, you might even consider the fact that the average life span at the time of the writing of the Constitution was significantly less than in modern times, effectively making that 35-year cut-off even older than it sounds today. 

You teach more often than you think. For example, when you hear a news story on the radio or read an interesting magazine article and then discuss it with a friend; that’s teaching. You are, in essence, summarizing and imparting the information. Teaching, in this way, forces you to make choices about which type of information is the most relevant and important. You have to contend with how to make the topic as interesting as possible. And, interestingly, teaching itself is a kind of trial and error that comes with its own feedback. If your “student”—your friend in the example of the news story—doesn’t understand, this might reflect your own lack of clarity. 

Finally, “tailoring” information is applying it. It is one thing to read about a concept in a book and quite another to see how it shows up in real life. An economic textbook, for instance, might have a dispassionate explanation of credit and how it works. But that is a bit different than the reality of receiving credit card offers in the mail. In each instance of learning, skills and concepts become better embedded when you can tailor them to real life, or understand how they differ from one context to another. This latter process is something that educators call “elaboration.” You can see elaboration in your own life. You learned to be polite in formal settings but came to realize you can be indelicate when you are in the casual atmosphere of friends. You may have learned that an umbrella protects you from the rain but may have also come to realize that it is effective protection from the bright sun as well. You may have learned that your quick wit amuses your friends but also that it can be used effectively when you give presentations at work. In this way, you gain wisdom regarding how to transport knowledge and skill from one area of your life to another. 

Conclusion

Taken together, trying, teaching, and tailoring can make you a superior learner. Give up any antiquated notion you hold that merely being exposed to information is how you learn. You are not an empty pot that teachers, or TED speakers, or journalists, fill up when they speak. That is the notion of passive learning, and it simply isn’t true. Instead, learning is active; as active as arguing, eating, or running. The best learners run toward information instead of waiting for information to drift into orbit. How do they “run toward” it? They try it out, reflect on their performance, explain it to others, and consider how it applies across multiple concepts. Try this out for yourself. In doing so, see if you don’t know more, have more wisdom, and a wider web of knowledge. See if you can’t be a super learner. 

About the Author 

Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener is widely known as the “Indiana Jones of Positive Psychology” because his research on happiness and other positive topics have taken him to such far-flung destinations as Greenland, Kenya, India, and Israel. Robert works as a researcher, coach, and coach trainer at Positive Acorn. He lives in Portland, Oregon (USA) and rock climbs whenever possible. www.positiveacorn.com