People sometimes ask me if I would meet with their children who are in high school or college, and talk to them about careers in science or research, and less frequently about development, democracy and governance. I thought I'd put down the common themes from these chats.
1. Give yourself the opportunity to be excited about what you do. As a young person, I felt motivated to do some things but turned off by others, and being excited was a big part of the split betn the two. By encountering excitement more often, one can get to a lot more goals.
2. Whatever you're learning, give yourself a chance to know what the cutting edge of that field is, and what questions people are asking themselves today. It helps to be able to see the frontier too, even as you encounter the more immediate things daily.
3. Learn the history of knowledge too, in addition to knowing things. What we know about the world has come about in a context, and being able to understand that is an important part of imbibing the learning itself better. History is also fascinating, in its own way.
4. Give yourself choices. Either pursue more than one interest, or pursue one interest in more than one way. Choices allow us to feel like we're in control of the directions in which our lives are heading, and that can be useful during the more chore-like periods.
5. Help others learn. This is to remind ourselves that what we are learning is the accumulation of so much that has happened before us, and also because we are privileged to be able to access it. These are both useful foundations for life itself, not only for learning.
6. Build a rhythm for learning. It doesn't matter how much time one spends learning daily, but it's important to do it daily. 15 minutes a day spent learning something that educates you can do a lot, and that kind of learning is for life, not only the school and college years.
7. Practice 'observation'. Teach yourself to understand the world around by noticing it better. It can be simple things - people, buildings, vehicles, crops, anything - see what you can tell by looking at things, and then read up on them, and come back to look again.
8. Have fun. Goofy, slapstick fun. Hangout, overdone fun. The fun of experimenting with things. Fun with people. All sorts of fun. This doesn't have very much to do with learning, and yet it does. It's most fun when you discover that.
