The Potholes of Learning

by Sanjana Kulkarni and Justin Skycak on

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The potholes of learning are when you find out that you have a knowledge gap that’s blocking you from learning the thing that you’re trying to learn.

You try to learn this new thing and you’re like, “Oh, wait, this doesn’t make any sense. Why does it make sense?” And you have to kind of backtrack and figure out what’s the bottom of your foundation where things first are not really making sense?

Then you gotta build all that up again.

And if you are continually having to do that on every single topic that you learn, you waste a lot of time just figuring out what the heck is it that is confusing me that I have to learn before I learn this new thing?

And often it’s really hard to figure that stuff out because you don’t have a great mental model of the subject. I mean, if you did, you’d already be an expert who knows a lot about it.

And so that’s why it takes an expert to kinda help you chart a course that avoids all these potholes in your learning journey, so you can just step on the gas and go fast.

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