Have you ever tried tying a knot and failed miserably?
There are all kinds of knots that we can use on a daily basis to make our lives easier, and yet few people know how to tie them; many who learn to tie them, forget how.
The one knot we all know, we learned to do as kids—the shoe knot.
But our parents didn’t just explain how to do it and then check back to see if we remembered later. We learned to tie our shoes by actually tying them.
You know, around the tree, into the hole…again and again and again, until we got it. That’s learning to do by doing, and it’s a powerful technique for making skills stick.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
-Confucius
While it might sound pretty self-explanatory, there’s a knack to learning to do by doing, and much of it has to do with memory.
See, most of what you learn in a classroom setting starts in your short-term memory (which is actually super short—like 30 seconds). Needless to say, short-term memory doesn’t last long. So how do we learn anything?
Our brains help us move the stuff we learn from short-term memory into long-term memory in a process called consolidation. This is a fairly complex process that our brain manages in seconds, but essentially, our recall is tied to neural connections. We can strengthen these neural connections in our brain through things like repetition.
According to one source, few short term memories actually make it into our long-term memory, but learning to do by doing can actually help facilitate this process.
Scientists also generally believe that once we learn something, it’s forever stored in our memory, so the trick then is to strengthen our ability to recall that memory. This is another area where learning to do by doing comes in handy!
By physically performing an action we are assisting our brains with the ability to recall what we’re learning. This is because learning through doing combines cognitive and motor functions (ever heard of muscle memory?) which can help establish memory triggers. These triggers can help us find our way back to the thing we learnt.
If we use knot-tying again as an example: you may get halfway through tying a particularly tricky knot, and without knowing how to get to the finished product, use the early steps you do remember to remind you of consecutive steps as you tie.
Other triggers you might be familiar with are acronyms, melodies, or rhymes. Repeatedly reciting these out loud can help us store and recall information for years!
No doubt you’ve heard people say, “don’t think, just do.” Well when it comes to how we learn by doing, the idea of “just doing” something definitely applies. But there are also some practical ways you can start integrating learning by doing into your life right now that we’ll share with you. For example:
Next time you’re watching someone explain something to you, ask them if you can practice along with them or have them walk you through doing it yourself.
When you want to learn something new, try picturing yourself doing that thing in your mind’s eye repeatedly to help the learning set-in.
Think about logical points in the process you’re trying to learn that you could commit to your memory. These could be the steps to tying a knot, or an acronym used to remember a chemical formula. If you can memorize these, you can repeat the entire learning more easily the next time you do it.
Our memory is key to learning, and learning becomes more natural for us the more we do the thing we’re trying to learn. Try repeatedly doing the thing you want to learn next time you’re learning something new to help move the knowledge from your short term into your long term memory.
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Have you ever tried tying a knot and failed miserably?
There are all kinds of knots that we can use on a daily basis to make our lives easier, and yet few people know how to tie them; many who learn to tie them, forget how.
The one knot we all know, we learned to do as kids—the shoe knot.
But our parents didn’t just explain how to do it and then check back to see if we remembered later. We learned to tie our shoes by actually tying them.
You know, around the tree, into the hole…again and again and again, until we got it. That’s learning to do by doing, and it’s a powerful technique for making skills stick.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
-Confucius
While it might sound pretty self-explanatory, there’s a knack to learning to do by doing, and much of it has to do with memory.
See, most of what you learn in a classroom setting starts in your short-term memory (which is actually super short—like 30 seconds). Needless to say, short-term memory doesn’t last long. So how do we learn anything?
Our brains help us move the stuff we learn from short-term memory into long-term memory in a process called consolidation. This is a fairly complex process that our brain manages in seconds, but essentially, our recall is tied to neural connections. We can strengthen these neural connections in our brain through things like repetition.
According to one source, few short term memories actually make it into our long-term memory, but learning to do by doing can actually help facilitate this process.
Scientists also generally believe that once we learn something, it’s forever stored in our memory, so the trick then is to strengthen our ability to recall that memory. This is another area where learning to do by doing comes in handy!
By physically performing an action we are assisting our brains with the ability to recall what we’re learning. This is because learning through doing combines cognitive and motor functions (ever heard of muscle memory?) which can help establish memory triggers. These triggers can help us find our way back to the thing we learnt.
If we use knot-tying again as an example: you may get halfway through tying a particularly tricky knot, and without knowing how to get to the finished product, use the early steps you do remember to remind you of consecutive steps as you tie.
Other triggers you might be familiar with are acronyms, melodies, or rhymes. Repeatedly reciting these out loud can help us store and recall information for years!
No doubt you’ve heard people say, “don’t think, just do.” Well when it comes to how we learn by doing, the idea of “just doing” something definitely applies. But there are also some practical ways you can start integrating learning by doing into your life right now that we’ll share with you. For example:
Next time you’re watching someone explain something to you, ask them if you can practice along with them or have them walk you through doing it yourself.
When you want to learn something new, try picturing yourself doing that thing in your mind’s eye repeatedly to help the learning set-in.
Think about logical points in the process you’re trying to learn that you could commit to your memory. These could be the steps to tying a knot, or an acronym used to remember a chemical formula. If you can memorize these, you can repeat the entire learning more easily the next time you do it.
Our memory is key to learning, and learning becomes more natural for us the more we do the thing we’re trying to learn. Try repeatedly doing the thing you want to learn next time you’re learning something new to help move the knowledge from your short term into your long term memory.
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