Learning and Busyness

The most common objection to becoming a learning machine is the busyness of life. 

This makes sense. We may be professional learners, in the sense that a lot of what we do as knowledge workers is learn, but we’re not full-time students. 

We have projects due, meetings to attend, and families to take care of. 

We don’t study with the goal of passing a class. We learn so that we can advance in our careers and accomplish our goals. 

Thinking about how to prioritize learning in a busy life, I go back to a Charlie Munger quote.

The goal is to get a “little wiser” each day. We’re not trying to study for 3 hours every day. We just need to get a little wiser, each and every day. 

Here are my three levels of learning. Each level requires more time investment but can, I believe, be incorporated into a busy career. I’d expect a time investment of 15-60 minutes per day (flexible depending on the day) to prioritize your personal learning journey. 

Level 1 - Foundations 

Daily learning journal habit to reflect on what you learned that day. Think about blogs you read, podcasts you listened to, meetings you had. What did the universe teach you? 

Have a book with you and read a few pages before scrolling social media or watching TV. Nothing major, just the pause to “eat your vegetables” so to say of reading before watching entertainment. 

Level 2 - Quizzing 

Quiz yourself on what you are reading and listening to with an LLM like Chat GPT. 

Self-testing is the holy grail of learning. This single activity will do more to help learning stick then anything else. 

Make this a daily routine to go along with reflecting and reading. 

Level 3 - Teaching 

Take what you are writing in your learning journal and quizzing and create your own content to teach others. 

You don’t need to start a blog or post on social media. You can keep it in your journal, but write as if you are speaking to others. This activity engages a number of neural processes to help learning stick.