The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough.

Eventually, you will learn for the right reasons; to begin with, it is only necessary that you learn at all.

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge

When learning is in focus, arrangements are made in the environment of the learner that communicate the learning task, and learning resources are made available to learners so that they can explore and master learning tasks.

Avoid thinking in impossibilities. If there’s a skill or piece of knowledge you need for a particular project, you can do the homework and work toward it over time. You can train for anything.

If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Instead, you need to learn as you go, solving more and more complex problems. And with luck, learning the answers to your questions just in time.

True learning is a permanent change in cognition and/or behavior. In other words, learning involves a permanent change in how you see and act in the world. The accumulation of information isn’t learning. Lots of people have heads full of information they don’t know what to do with. If you want to learn something quickly, you need to immerse yourself in that thing and immediately implement what you’re learning. The fastest way to learn Spanish, for instance, is by immersing yourself in a Spanish culture. Flash cards for fifteen minutes a day will eventually get you there. But you’ll make deeper connections with a few days fully immersed than you would in months of “dabbling.

HOW TO LEARN ANYTHING<p>As far as I can tell these are the techniques used by bright people who want to learn something other than by taking courses in it. [...]<p>1. DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN. But you can't know this exactly, because you don't know exactly how any field is structured until you know all about it.<p>2. READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON IT, especially what you enjoy, since that way you can read more of it and faster.<p>3. GRAB FOR INSIGHTS. Regardless of points others are trying to make, when you recognize an insight that has meaning for you, make it your own [...] Its importance is not how central it is, but how clear and interesting and memorable to you. REMEMBER IT. Then go for another.<p>4. TIE INSIGHTS TOGETHER. Soon you will have your own string of insights in a field. [...]<p>5. CONCENTRATE ON MAGAZINES, NOT BOOKS. Magazines have far more insights per inch of text, and can be read much faster. But when a book really speaks to you, lavish attention on it.<p>6. FIND YOUR OWN SPECIAL TOPICS, AND PURSUE THEM.<p>7. GO TO CONVENTIONS. For some reason, conventions are a splendid concentrated way to learn things; talking to people helps. [...]<p>8. "FIND YOUR MAN." Somewhere in the world is someone who will answer your questions extraordinarily well. If you find him, dog him. [...]<p>9. KEEP IMPROVING YOUR QUESTIONS. Probably in your head there are questions that don't seem to line up with what your hearing. Don't assume that you don't understand; keep adjusting the questions till you get an answer that relates to what you wanted.<p>10. YOUR FIELD IS BOUNDED WHERE YOU WANT IT TO BE. Just because others group and stereotype things in conventional ways does not mean they are necessarily right. Intellectual subjects are connected every which way; your field is what you think it is. [...]

Learning is something I’m good at, given the right conditions. Drop me in the middle of an academic subject I care about, and that has relatively clearly defined boundaries, and I can do "expert" more quickly and more comprehensively than most. It’s not vacuous memorization: I’m no savant. What I do is create a schema of fundamental knowledge and understandings, usually over-learned using SQ3R, and that schema then becomes a powerful magnet for related information.

In a world in transition, students and teachers both need to teach themselves one essential skill - learning how to learn.

We are meant to be learning at every stage of life. Think about life as a series of classrooms or ashrams in which we learn various lessons.