The Relentless Push Forwards of the Learning Process

The Learning Process is defined by a Relentless Push Forwards. A constant, almost masochistic, search for skills beyond our ability, knowledge beyond our comprehension that unveils itself in experience as a steady state of discomfort, uncertainty, confusion, and failure that defines the experience of progress.

To be comfortable at any stage in the learning process, might very well mean that we are not learning — at least not anything substantial. Since to truly learn means to attempt what is beyond us in some way, implying inherent challenge, difficulty, and adversity, which in turn will generally be defined by some degree of pain, discomfort, and uncertainty.

In many ways, the learning process is a relentless push forwards from one uncomfortable, painful situations into the next, precisely in the moment that we become comfortable with the old scenario. As soon as you achieve comfort, as soon as the pain abates, it is time to move forwards.

The Relentless Push Forwards In Learning

This is the relentless push forwards in learning. It is honestly a relatively strange experience. You are constantly pushing forwards just before you feel ready to. Or at least, just before you feel that you feel you will be ready to move on to the next stage.

What I mean by “just before you feel that you feel you will be ready” to take the next step is that in my experience, that moment never comes. I never feel like I am ready to do something when I start doing it, because I am extremely aware of my current flaws, limitations, and the objective level of my stage of development. So always have things to work on.

For me, that moment of “feeling ready” never comes by itself. You usually have to jump first, into the unknown, and deal with the chaos that ensues. I designed my first website (my first WordPress theme) using HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript before I had a complete grip on any one of those languages. The results were as expected. It took about a month working 10 hours a day to get an approximation of what I was trying to create, at roughly the level I was expecting. Nonetheless, the design is filled with issues, some of which I simply don’t have the knowledge or skill to address at this moment (which are not resolved even as I write these words).

Yet, what you will find, is that you learn what you need to learn by attempting the project. While I was nowhere near ready (and felt that I would feel ready with another month or two of work) it turns out that I was ready. I had enough knowledge and skill in theory, which required only the act of doing to sharpen that into a refined skillset. More importantly, I would have faced many of the same challenges anyways even if I took that extra month or two. I would have known more, which means I could have built with a little more complexity. But everything I needed to learn was, at that stage, in the path itself of creating what I had envisioned as best as I could.

That is just how the learning game works. You have to throw yourself into the fire relentlessly, consistently, because unless you get into the fire, you will not know what is hiding within that fire. You cannot be forged in theory. Nothing real about you can.

Learning Stops When You Do — Comfort Kills Learning

You cannot stop, because then learning ceases. Learning comes to an end with the cessation of pain, which is why a relentless push forwards is a necessary part of the learning process. I think that this is one of the things that people have the hardest time with, that the psychology and mindset of the average person has the most difficulty coming to terms with.

Whether you like it or not, there is a relationship between pain, discomfort, and learning — and the relationship does not go in the direct that you want it to. It is directly proportional. Adversity, pain, failure, uncertainty, vulnerability: these are all essential parts of the process that cannot be avoided. Thus the only rational solution is to learn to love the pain of adversity.

Most would wish that better learning means less pain, but the reality is that more pain = more learning. The harder the challenge in front of you, the more that you are going to learn. And when you are faced with that challenge, the only way to surmount it and succeed, is to continue moving through it.

This is one of the things I realized I missed about the educational system after a decade of reflection, is the pace dictated by an outside force. When you are in it, the workload can be hard, and you will find yourself having to run from time to time just to keep up. However, the beauty of this is that if you do keep up, in four months no matter what you will reach the finish line, and at very emerge with a good fraction of the knowledge and skills expected.

Learning on your own, on the other hand, with no whip behind you, can be tricky. It is too easy to move at your own pace, go off on tangents, and fixate on details along the way beyond what they deserve (which you can’t know for sure as your moving through them). For me, this idea of a relentless push forwards in learning was a mentality I had to develop to internally direct myself, and create the sense of urgency that I needed to progress at the pace that I wanted.

On The Leading Edge Of Transformation

Learning is literally a balance right on that leading edge of transformation. That perfect balance of you leaning forwards just far enough before you fall, but not so far back that you stop moving. (Like riding those one wheel scooter-type-things which, to be honest, I have never ridden. Nonetheless, the principle applies to their function just as it does to learning.)

Within the Art of Learning is finding that balance between staying with something long enough that you begin to start to understand it deeply, integrated intuitively into your mind and into your ability to perform the skill, but not so long that you forsake forwards progress by fixating on pieces that don’t require perfection. (Not now at least.)

Moving forwards at the right pace for you where deep, permanent learning is taking place — a deep development of knowledge and skills that are immediately made real through application — where you are not rushing.

The Balance Between Perfection and Progress

That is a mistake that many on the path of mastery make. I have made it countless times. (Perhaps hundreds, if not thousands, of times.) Seeking perfection before you can possibly conceive of what that means. Fixating on a tree in the forest for far too long, at an early stage when what you really need is to expose yourself to the forest first. To get a thorough lay of the land at what is a superficial level, so that you can have a better idea of which trees you both want and need to fixate on, which is knowledge that you generally will not have at the beginning.

I am sure that everyone can think back to an experience in their lives where they prepared, learned, studied, practiced extensively for something, only to find out later that it simply wasn’t relevant.

This balance between perfection and progress is necessary. While perfection in some skills is necessary in the long-term, perfection is usually only achievable in the long-term because of consistent, broad, steady, and deep progress.

When you are just beginning and have 10,000 things to learn, skills to develop, perfection is not your concern. At this stage, the most important thing is to understand, build that foundation, which you do by gaining a basic, necessarily superficial understanding of those 10,000 things.

Then, maybe by the time you have touched quality on 1000, 2000, maybe 3000 of those 10,000 things then — and only then — will you have the foundation to at least consider what perfection might look like in one of those things, and the understanding to know what the most important pieces are for you to perfect your knowledge, skills, and ability in.

When we are learning, a great deal of knowledge and skill comes with time. You get better at the fundamentals as you progress, because you give yourself time and exposure to understand them on a deep level, on the one hand. But also because the fundamentals are viewed in so many contexts that your understanding of them is enhanced by that extensive contextual exposure.

Moreover, challenging more advanced skills makes less advanced skills easier to master. And on top of all of that, critical mass of knowledge (or skills) makes connections within itself reinforcing the whole. Smaller pieces fall into place naturally as you progress, as you gain more experience. So, like building a puzzle, maybe it is best to move through the learning process making the connections that you can make along the way, and not stressing about the pieces you can’t figure out yet. Trust that as you near the end, their place will become increasingly obvious as you go.

So, in essence, the idea of this relentless push forwards in learning is prioritizing finishing the puzzle as a whole, rather than fixating on a single piece and finding the four specific pieces that it fits into.

So, have patience in the process. Depth often comes with time, and it will come with time, if you are consistent and give it time. Steady progress will result in accumulation of knowledge and skills.