How To Learn Better
Lessons From Charlie
RIP Charlie
Yesterday, the world lost one of our greatest thinkers and a man I look up to. Charlie Munger was the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and alongside Warren Buffett grew the greatest holding company in the world. He was a lifelong learner. He was an inspiration to Shane Parrish and to this month’s book, Clear Thinking.
What Does Thinking Clearly Look Like?
What is clear thinking? What does it mean to think clearly?
We usually hear the term used when someone is “not thinking clearly.” We might say it to our friend who’s jumping to conclusions and getting overly emotional. They’re making big jumps in their logic that don’t quite make sense.
So we can say, someone who isn’t thinking clearly is thinking illogically. But then what does that mean? What is “illogical”?
Heck , what’s “thinking”?
From the time we’re born, we learn massive amounts of information. Preposterous amounts! Before we’re even two years old, we go from not knowing anything, to learning what words mean, to repeating those words, to saying those words in context and then connecting those words to make sentences with collective meanings. HOLY LEARNING MACHINE!
We’re programmed to learn. All animals are. But especially humans. We can learn a lot more complex ideas and fiddle with ideas that are fully conceptual. I mean, somebody programmed the first computer. At some point the world was just rocks, dirt and trees and today we have bluetooth… by manipulating only those same rocks, dirt and trees.
How Schools Have Failed Us
Learning and thinking are what make us human.
But for some reason, schools don’t teach us how to do either very well. The best way to get good grades through school is to memorize and regurgitate information. Is that really thinking or learning? I don’t think so.
School leads us to say “I can’t” or “I’m not good at” so easily. “I can’t do math” or “I can’t write” and it’s like well no s**t! Once it becomes more complex than just memorizing, most people don’t have the mental tools to learn the material. And it’s a shame. Because anyone can learn anything. They just need:
To believe they can learn anything
To know how to learn
Charlie Munger has a million great lines, but here is one of my favorites:
"The first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form."
Having a strong web of foundational knowledge to weave new ideas into is the key to learning. In Clear Thinking, we’ll learn how to build a strong foundation. This is one of the highest ROI things to learn especially early in life. It makes everything you learn after more applicable, and more valuable.
Brains Gains
What’s the most important thing you learned in a classroom? What made it stand out?
Go learn something today. Go to bed 1% smarter than you were when you woke up.
Your Biggest Fan,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski