The Braining

This annoying behavior of my cauliflower brain was something I couldn’t explain — not to myself and certainly not to others. Especially not back when, as a six-year-old, I became a member of the educational system. Kids of all sorts sat quietly on chairs, staring at the blackboard and at the one person standing in front of it. That person opened their mouth and released thousands of words into the room — hoping that some of them might reach our tiny brains and take up residence there. They called it learning for the future. Or for life.

As a playful boy in the open air, I found this confinement sheer torture — even though I hadn’t yet discovered the fascination of letters and words. Learning was hard work, not just at the beginning of my “learning career.” Things got even stranger when tests suddenly appeared on the scene. Now it wasn’t about learning for life anymore, but cramming for the next grade. We had been downgraded to test subjects.
And where did the joy of learning go? Probably left behind on the school bench.

Those early experiences stuck. Learning was stress. Learning meant effort. Learning meant failure when what you’d just learned was forgotten again.

Ah yes, forgetting — what a tragedy when information quietly leaves your head and never shows up again. How unfriendly! And when something bothers you, most people try to get rid of it. Which means, of course, you need a strategy. And there it is again: effort, knocking on the door. Because once again, the brain has to strain itself to come up with ideas.

Damn it, brain!

Why can’t necessary information just appear when you need it? Google heard that complaint and decided to take on the world’s brains to make them smarter. Or so I thought.
Turns out — not true.

Once more: damn it, brain!

The collecting of information should be left to index cards, books, and computers. The brain, as I once read, is meant for more active, complex tasks.

Oh really?

At least that’s what Richard Feynman, the American theoretical physicist (1918–1988), claimed. He said no brain in the world is interested in merely collecting facts. It’s a living, electrified part of the body that wants to be challenged. According to Feynman, the brain wants to fight — for insight, for understanding, for meaning. Collecting is just a side effect.
Aha.

So what am I supposed to do with that knowledge? Challenge my brain to a duel?
Yes. Exactly that.

So I took a closer look at Feynman’s learning technique, tried to understand it — and eventually put it into practice.

The instructions are surprisingly simple: read something on a topic, then close the book. Try to explain what you just read — in your own words — as if you were teaching it to a class. In doing so, gaps appear naturally, places you didn’t really understand. Those gaps show you what to think about and what to look up again. Then you return to the book, fill the gaps, and connect the new insights to your understanding.

Learning becomes discovery — not memorization.
And suddenly, it’s fun.
Learning, that is.

My brain is running at full speed again, indulging daily in The Braining.

Thank you, Richard.

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