Active Problem-Solving is Where The Learning Happens

Comfortable fluency in consuming information is not a proxy for actual learning.

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I know it “feels” like learning when you’re following along while reading/skimming a book, but that feeling is completely artificial.

That comfortable fluency you feel is arising from the fact that the surrounding context is already on your mind – you’re not made to pull it from long-term memory.

If you don’t practice the retrieval process, then the information quickly dissipates. But, of course, you don’t notice that it’s gone if you’re not actually testing whether it’s there.

The way to avoid this problem and maximize your learning is to switch over to active problem-solving immediately after consuming a minimum effective dose of information.

I know that might feel a bit jarring, like it’s slowing you down, but it isn’t actually slowing down your learning – it’s only exposing the fact that your perception of learning does not accurately reflect actual learning.

Really, it’s speeding up your actual learning. The only thing it’s slowing down is your perception of learning.

You might say “but I had learned so much, and I had it down pat, and then I forgot it all when I focused my effort on solving a problem.”

But the thing is, if you can’t retrieve that information from memory at the snap of a finger, after thinking about other stuff or zooming in to focus on a specific problem, it means you didn’t really have it down pat.

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