learning

The proverb "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" is usually seen as disparage for teachers. If you are not skilled enough at something to make a career out of it to yourself your only option is to teach it. But there is another way to look at it.

Teaching others is the best way and motivation to learn something new. To be able to teach something you really need to know your topic really well because you need to be able to explain it to somebody who knows even less than you do. If you want to learn something really well you should try teaching it to somebody else.

Usually when trying to learn something new I need to repeat the information multiple times for it to stick in my memory. It doesn't matter how important or interesting that knowledge might be. It requires a lot of work.

Then there are times when I just hear or see something just once, briefly. And then I can't get it out of my head even if I wanted to.

It would be nice to consciously be able to do that: learn things instantly without all the repetition, pondering and hard work. Having such a memory would be fantastic.

Just an idea might not be enough to write a full post. It might feel like it, but run short after few sentences. Or it could be I don't have enough knowledge yet to write about the topic.

Following rules and best practices can be overdone. For example it's good to write shorter sentences. But making every sentence as short as possible makes the text sound like a telegram STOP

It's funny how I have been writing about writing so many times without being too excited about it. Often it has  been just because I didn't have anything else to write about at that moment. Now it has been quite a while since the last one of those. And this one actually isn't yet another of those either. This time I actually wanted to write about it.

One of my aims has been becoming better at writing. I also like learning things and promised to focus more on those learnings. So obviously it's only right to write about the one thing I'm constantly focusing on learning more.

Doing background study on something to write about can be fun. But, unlike when you have actual set goals to achieve there is the danger of getting carried away. There is always something more to learn, or just some interesting side tracks to explore. It's just so much more fun than actually writing about it.

Learning new skills is fun. But the problem with most of the skills you can learn quickly is that there is only rare opportunities to use them. By the time you finally have a chance to use one you have probably already forgotten the whole thing.

Or maybe that chance never comes. There are skills that would be nice i wouldn't ever need to use. Like some survival skills for the worst case scenarios. Is it worth learning those if they are not supposed to ever become needed. And if they do, will I remember them anymore when needed.

Writing, or doing anything else competitively has it's merits. While I try to improve my writing every day, having a competition in mind gives that urge to improve a bit more weight.

If I'm participating in a competition why not try to give my bests. Why else even bother? It gives more incentive to put some extra effort to the writing.

It's also not just trying your best. Often times even that is not enough for the win. What matters is the feedback and learning opportunities you get from it.

At times I get an idea about the topic I want to write. But then I realize I don't know enough about it to write something sensible about it. And I do want to make things properly so I don't give out disinformation. It's a nice motivation to learn something new. It's not like I'd have any lack of such things anyway, but it's just one more of those.

I have never been much of a cook. I can do alright basic dishes, but nothing too fancy or complex. It's one more areas I am trying to improve myself.

Cooking something new is always scary. There are certain list of foods we have used to eat in our household and deviating from those safe defaults is always a risk.

So it's not always easy to just try something new. It's not just the risk that I don't get everything right. It can also be just the fact that those new flavours don't satisfy our delicate taste.

Learning happens all the time. It's hard to choose just one thing I learned yesterday, there were so many. Mostly they were small things. So small that without paying attention I wouldn't even have noticed them. But when I had to keep it in my mind I started to notice many occasions where I learned something new.

Learning doesn't have to be big and remarkable as long as it's continuous. It's not even possible for us to take in too much information at the time. We need some time to process and adapt that information as well. Otherwise, we'll just lose that information.