If you want to learn more about something, study anything else.
Earlier today I posted a comment on Darren Rowse's blog ProBlogger about my maxim above. Wanting to write more about it, I thought I'd do it here and now.
It's no secret I love blogs and blogging. Maybe so much that I'm getting too bloggy for my own good. But, I don't think so, I'm learning how to have a lot of blogs and, like livestock, take care that they get fed regularly.
One of the things I love about blogs is the adventure of discovery, discovering unique voices, new views and perspectives, new people, terrific information. It's pig heaven for an infomaniac like me.
I've always been an autodidact, someone who doesn't need a school to teach them, who just loves to learn, and seeks out information all the time. I read lots of books, am a curious soul. As a result, I've read widely, studied in many fields, and have less or more knowledge and practical experience in them all.
In my journeys into discovery and learning I realized one day that rather than a learning dilettante, I am a synthesist, someone who takes information from many sources and sees it come together into insights, conclusions, questions, new areas for exploration in ways that differ from the linear trajectory of most academic learning systems.
Somewhere in there I formulated my maxim, "If you want to know/learn more about anything, study anything else." Or, it's slight variant, "If you want to know/learn more about something, study anything else."
This works so well, is such a great addition to the usual method of learning that I've applied it to a broad spectrum of areas. When I want to create an article title, or a book title, I look about me at objects in my environment, including the titles of books on my shelves, and riff off them, innovating and generating many possible titles. I'll list them, and choose several that appeal, and innovate off these, and keep on playing until I find a preference to select.
The late Steve Allen, comedian, musician and actor, did it with music. He'd ask anyone in the audience for three musical notes, and he'd, on the spot, create a melody to go with it, and add supporting harmony and keyboard elements to fill it out. Some people can do that with words, creating an immediate poem on anything, just innovating and drawing from the vast information they've mentally downloaded from experience.
Improvisational theater, impromptu speeches, and modern dance all draw from the same reservoirs of information we've gathered.
It is but one step from there to purposefully selecting a subject area or field to dip into at whatever immersion level to ask, "What do I detect here that can be applied cross context?" The answer doesn't necessarily come immediately, or in a linear fashion. It may nudge one gently with an inkling, and/or arrive as an "Aha" realization, or appear as a curiosity--What might happen if.....?"
Where can you look for additional perspectives? Where might you explore today?
Comments