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1/ In thinking about how I currently learn best, I am coming to the alarming realization that I think the entire education system is structured incorrectly for enhancing long-term memory and understanding. A few thoughts:
2/ How I currently learn about a new topic (i.e. how predictions markets work, or how Uniswap works) is by doing a complete deep dive for a few days, or in some cases longer, until I feel like I really understand it. This meanings reading source material like whitepapers ..(cont)
2/ plus what others have written, watching videos, etc. Then I usually find founders or people who know way more about it than I do and ask them questions until i feel like I get it. Then I explain it to somebody else (either live or in a memo / LP letter) to confirm I get it.
3/ The key part of the process is that I am TOTALLY focused on learning one thing, and one thing only. I am increasingly convinced that context switching is the enemy of deep understanding.
4/ If you go super deep on something for an extended period, it transfers from "think I remember now but could forget" to something that you really KNOW. The latter is much more valuable as it's basically permanently rather than temporarily held in memory.
5/ But school, esp pre-college, does the opposite! Students are constantly being shuffled between different classes, which are generally no more than an hour. So you never go very deep on anything. Everything stays in the short/medium term category of surface-level understanding.
6/ It seems to me that learning by topic, (i.e. for several weeks JUST learn about cell biology, then move on to history of WW2)by combining different formats of learning -- videos, lectures, reading multiple books on the subject etc would be a MUCH more effective way to do it.
7/ Can anyone point to any research on this? Very curious what studies have been done on this concept.
