by Tim Brunson, PhD

Whether part of our formal education, professional development, or the improvement of skills related to a hobby, in order to more efficiently acquire information we seldom focus on the need to improve our learning skill. Yes, we focus on content and pretty much ignore the need to improve our learning processes. However, our ability to master the tasks related to an endeavor depends almost entirely on our improving our ability to acquire knowledge.

Learning is a process skill that was established first at the infant and young child period of our lives. Our methods were habituated at a time when our immature brains were rapidly developing. Some of the ways that we encoded procedural and declarative memories are as valid in our adult life as they were in those early years. Nevertheless, as a mature human with several decades of knowledge acquisition under our hats, we now have numerous additional learning advantages that are ignored should we continue to use methods that were appropriate prior to our brain fully developing.

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