What is learning? Why bother with it?

As I've gotten a bit older, these questions have surfaced, and they seem important to really consider in moving into new stages of life. How I would answer it in high school would be different from how I'd answer it in college, and both would be different from how I'm answering it now as a bit more of a mature (but still young) adult.

Going through grade school, despite the best efforts of many teachers and parents, we tend to view "learning" as a process of consuming and memorizing information given to us by an outside source, and there are expectations associated with how much we "should know". This outside source is usually a parent, schoolteacher, or resource used by such a person in our lives. They often do it with good intentions- to show us something about how the world works or reveal to us a potential area of interest that could turn into a career some day.

However, in practice, it often becomes a bit of a stressful experience- especially nowadays with so much information on the internet coming from different sources. "Learning" can seem like a chore or just something to get through rather than something that we do based on an internal drive to figure something out that's helpful for ourselves and/or other people in our lives.

Because of this, in my own life, I'm seriously making a transition towards looking at learning as a process of "incorporating relevant information and making use of it when the time is right". This way of looking at it implies that learning is less about memorization and more about integration of information into how we look at life and the use of it to do things that are important. What's great is that "things that are important" does not only apply to what others expect us to know, but what we genuinely want to know or be able to do.

This also suggests that there is an emotional connection to what is being learned, and so it means more and is more likely to stick. For example, when I was around 18, my typical approach to learning information would be to take an assigned reading or a random book that caught my eye and go through it in a linear way. There was not much of an awareness of the purpose of my reading or how I may make use of the information in my day-to-day.

Instead, a better approach seems to be asking myself "what is relevant here?" or "what is actually going to be helpful for me or someone in my life?". This not only changes the content I take in, but also the potential of that content to make a positive difference for me or someone I discuss it with.

Examples could include:

-Reading a dense hundred-page book about music theory cover-to-cover versus identifying the styles used by your favorite artist and focusing on the theory needed to learn how to play or produce that kind of music.

-Reading a ten page article about the role of a certain nutrient in the body versus pursuing the answer to a certain question about that nutrient that’s relevant for helping you you resolve a personal health challenge- such as headaches or not feeling satisfied after meals.

-Taking a business course with tens of modules and watching every minute to soak in all the information versus reflecting on which aspects of your company you most need to focus on and honing in on the most relevant modules- taking notes and asking questions of people with more expertise along the way.