Learning for a purpose

Our kids are now firmly entrenched in the education system. Our daughter is in second grade, and our son is in seventh grade. That means a lot of homework, tests, reports, studying, preparing, and trying to figure out the best way to digest information.

Just this morning my son was working over the information needed for a history test. It's fascinating to see a young mind at work like this. He has an uncanny (and annoying relative to my own childhood) ability to quickly absorb information and memorize it for the benefit of the upcoming test. What a gift.

This has me thinking about my own school days, a mix between homeschool and community college, and how I applied the need to pass a test against my desire to dive into a topic.

In reality, most of what I learned at the time was forced. I did it because the class required it, not because it necessarily interested me. This was probably fine in the aggregate; I learned how to read as a result, write with passable legibility by hand, and all the other basics.

But the most interesting parts of my education came, not from the necessary assigned school subjects (again, I still think these are important), but from my own curiosity informed poking and prodding on all kinds of topics—that, along mentors throwing ideas out with just enough guidance to pique my interest.

So much of my later learning has come from diving into books, watching courses, learning from watching someone else, or learning from the trial and error process of figuring out something until it reached a completed state. Also, there are tons of things I didn't learn and threw by the wayside—oh if only I knew how to sew now like I wished years ago.

Education and continual learning aren't necessarily tied to the school system. In fact, they're often disconnected entirely, where many students enter excited, but quickly pass through in a begrudging manner to just make it to the other end. On the other hand, they're not mutual exclusive either. Many tireless teachers, admins, parents, guardians, and other students, put in endless effort to support and encourage the education of our young people.

All that comes to a point I've been considering.

If we're trying to learn something, and it's not specifically to pass a test, at what point do we consider our learning good enough? I've been seeking that balance for the last decade.

What I've found is it's important to learn just enough to move the next milestone of a project forward. Yes, there's value in diving deep into a topic for its own sake, in uncovering hidden gems and knowing something at a deep, well considered level. This stuff matters, and is where so many great minds of our age have been able to pass on knowledge to shape the world.

But, that's probably not the case for the project you're working on right now. Instead of needing to know everything, how about moving forward with just enough information to make a tiny bit of progress on the thing you're trying to accomplish.

I'll use sewing as an example. I've bought sewing kits before, assuming I'd be able to quickly and magically create the perfect backpack.¹

Things went nowhere. I realized I didn't know how to thread things into the sewing machine, or didn't know how to punch materials and fabrics properly, or didn't understand the first step of cutting and aligning the pieces.

Looking back, or forward, I'm considering how I might sew something far simpler. A handkerchief perhaps, or a wire dopp. Rather than researching this thing forever and perfecting my knowledge until I reach the point of being able to make a backpack out of whole cloth, I should modify my goals.

And that is an approach I've realized applies to every area of my life. Learning something for a practical application today has far more weight than theoretical learnings for a future time that will never come.

That's not to say I don't enjoy research for its own sake. It's fun to dive into topics with no goal in mind. But, sometimes it can come as a crutch, a way of avoiding facing reality and creating the concrete from the nebulous.

1. I've owned many, many, backpacks over the years. I like to collect them, and ultimately want to learn to sew my own. Because, there is in fact, no perfect backpack on the face of this planet—it hasn't been made yet. That is my mission in life, to accomplish the impossible. And so I collect and purchase, return and resell, all in the pursuit of understanding this Sisyphean task of creating a storage compartment that perfectly encapsulates all the things that need to be carried.