On learning how to learn
Unpacking learning science to master any skill that you set your mind to
Greetings from Melbourne, Australia!
👋 Hello! I'm Aarushi Singhania, and this is the #6 issue of Edstreet. It’s a newsletter that connects education & skills, innovations (tech and non-tech), policy, and how you prepare for your next thing.
What's new this month?
I'm celebrating course creators who are wrapping up the first cohort of the On Deck Course Creator (ODCC) fellowship and have created amazing online courses at the 3-day Learning Conference on June 9th -11th.
I'm thrilled to share I'll be involved in another education innovation experiment - this time enabling Maven instructors to build world-class cohort-based courses.
Undeniably, learning is hard and often overwhelming but learning how to learn is the ultimate superpower in today's fast-changing world of work. With new developments in learning science, you can master any skill that you set your mind to.
A year ago, like many people, the virus changed my life plans seemingly overnight. I had to sort out some decisions to stay away from family and friends for an unforeseeable time while continuing work in Australia. Digital transformation of my workplace meant I had more time to learn skills I always wanted to learn.
In this issue, we go meta - I discuss learning how to learn. Not with theory, but through a live experiment on how I learned headstand from scratch. Specifically, what was the process of learning and how can you apply the same skill of learning to anything in your life and work.
Headstand (Shirshasana) is a yoga posture, where one stands on the top of the head like this. 👇
At the time when I committed to learning headstand, there wasn't a single online course on how to practice a headstand. There was plenty of inspirational content over Youtube and Instagram telling me how to get into headstands but that wasn't enough to learn the skill.
I decided to curate an online course to learn the skill of doing a headstand.
The curriculum was a combination of live classes and asynchronous content from Gertrude Street Yoga studio in Melbourne, 1:1 zoom practice sessions, WhatsApp coaching from Pushpa Thantry - one of my most trusted yoga mentors from India and learning by observing - rewatching 100s of videos of how it happens was the key to go from 0 to 1.
I did not have any performance trackers to measure progress and performance. My learning goal was to make 1 percent improvements every day, with the expectation that those small improvements will add up to something significant.
Meanwhile, improving by just 1 percent wasn’t easily notable (and sometimes it wasn’t even noticeable). But like every good thing in life, consistency leads to compounding returns.
Here's the punchline:
If you get one percent better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done - James Clear
This coach improved every tiny thing by 1 percent and here’s what happened.
Shouldn't this be how all education experiences are designed?
An education system that meets the learner where they are.
A curriculum that allows learning at your own pace, at any point in life, with world-class instructors from anywhere in the world.
A community of like-minded learners who might not be together in the same space but in time, pixels, spirit, and sound.
An assessment system that appreciates incremental progress and encourages you to make progress at your own will.
What does the process of learning a new skill look like?
Improvement in learning anything new is not only determined by how many hours you practice but also by the quality of your practice.
The people at top of the game understand 'deliberate practice' - a higher-order skill that can be applied across many other fields. Learning any new skill requires deliberate practice.
I'll summarise the practical application of deliberate practice in the context of learning a headstand but you can apply this technique to any new skill you want to learn.
1. Set Intention
My main intention with learning a headstand was to be curious about what's truly possible with the human body - the combination of breathwork, strength training, discipline, and mental strength that you can do it.
For any learning to be purposeful, it is critical to articulate your unshakable why - why you want to learn the new skill - what is the spark, motivation, and fuel behind what you want to learn.
2. Identify sub-skills that matter the most
The thing with learning headstands is that it is not a talent, it is a learnable skill and consists of many sub-skills.
I deliberately practiced skills to build core and shoulder strength, which enabled strong foundations for a stress-free headstand. Integrating breath work makes the practice effortless. Though these skills on their own are never enough.
Learning from mistakes, pushing out of my comfort zone, and staying curious remain important skills in the learning journey. To me, the effort is most important - consistently showing up on the mat every day.
I love how Ava, the author of the bookbear express newsletter, articulates effort.
If someone’s much better than you at something, they probably try much harder. You probably underestimate how much harder they try. I’m not saying that talent isn’t a meaningful differentiator, because it certainly is, but I think people generally underestimate how effort needs to be poured into talent in order to develop it. So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours. If you’re doing it wrong you can do it a thousand times and not produce any particularly interesting results. So you have to make sure you’re trying the right way.
When you are starting your learning journey - it is important to deeply observe, understand the sub-skills involved, copy, perform, and eventually find your own style.
Copying isn't bad. Remember, Marie Poulin says:
There are no original messages, just original messengers.
3. Practice purposefully
Just doing a thing over and over doesn't mean you are getting better at it. Think about what is the specific thing you should be practicing?
Purposeful practice involves having a plan of action, a way to measure goals and maintain motivation.
While learning how to headstand, I specifically focused my attention on my pain points. For example, I watched and rewatched my own videos and videos of several instructors, to design my practice sessions to overcome my weakness.
4. Overcome learning plateau
It is natural to feel the learning plateau. It is the point when you are stuck at a particular point in your learning journey, and not sure how to progress further.
That's where the role of the coach is insanely important. Identify who the experts are, talk to other people, people you look up to, and ask them for recommendations. Understand how did they learn what they learned. Figure out what makes them so good.
The role of a coach is important because they observe your practice - what you are doing, and where you are going wrong. Also, they understand how to perform the skill too. Finally, the best coaches can define practice routines for you which allows you to unlearn and relearn.
For me, it was my mentor friend Pushpa, who is a trained yoga instructor in India, and she voluntarily observed my practice session via 1:1 zoom calls and corrected me early in my learning journey.
Ultimately, success isn't about getting more done, rather having fun and productivity takes care of itself. Mastering a new skill is the outcome of deliberate practice and effort.
Cheers,
Aarushi Singhania
Twitter: @singhania_aa
LinkedIn: Aarushi Singhania
Additional resources:
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, a book by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
Atomic Habits, a book by James Clear
The Secret to Learning Any Skill Faster by Thomas Frank
On embracing failure, by Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code
Also If you found this issue of the Street valuable, I'd appreciate, if you could forward it to a friend or colleague who you think might enjoy it.
Or, if you'd like to share it on one of your social networks, that’s always a great idea as well.
As always happy to engage directly via DMs on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Have a wonderful week!
Really enjoyed this Aarushi, beautifully written with such great insights - thank you for sharing your Shirshasana learning journey!
Wonderful newsletter and great example of learning how to learn. I especially appreciated your tip on setting an intention for learning. Understanding the why makes it so much more likely you’ll stick with it!