Timing in Learning
Recently I came across two happenings that taught me timing can be very important in what we learn. So I thought I would share these two examples with my subscribers so you can learn from them as well.
Timing Lesson 1:
A friend shared recently with me a marketing effort about a company we both are familiar with. He was sharing with me a new marketing feature he learned about while the main topic was about the company.
He was referring a friend to the services provided by the company by sending the company’s URL through a well-used messaging platform. Within minutes, he received on the same messaging platform a marketing message from the company he was referring. Based on this “uncanny timing”, my friend “learned” that the messaging platform offered such a marketing service to increase brand loyalty.
However, I told him that I doubted the messaging platform was that ‘smart’ and I doubt the company’s marketing team was at that level of tech-savviness.
If you are familiar with probabilities, timing coincidence happens quite often across the world but this example highlights what we learn and understand the world can be impacted by such timing coincidence.
Timing Lesson 2:
The first book that I read by Max Tegmark (Swedish-American Physicist) was Life 3.0. To be honest, I was not that impressed by it and I put the book at the same level as Nick Bostrom’s SuperIntelligence. There were too many speculations in my opinion and not many takeaways I can get from the book.
Life 3.0 did not leave a good impression on Max Tegmark and thus I did not read his other books further. However, a good friend of mine recommended another book by Max Tegmark, “Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality”. I value very much his recommendation and thus decided to keep an open mind and took up the book to read. Well, long story short, it blew my mind and very much enjoyed the content from the book. I recommend this book if you want to understand how the world works. It adds a lot of perspectives to me on the Universe and also to intelligence as well.
Again, timing played an important role here. If I had read Max Tegmark’s “Mathematical Universe” first and moved on to “Life 3.0”, I might continue to read other books by Max Tegmark. However, in this case, I started with “Life 3.0” and made a decision not to follow the author anymore, till an influential friend recommended it. If the recommendation had not come along, I would have missed out on learning something very interesting and important.
In this example, the timing or the order of how I read the books by the same author impacted my decision whether to continue reading and learning from the same author.
Conclusion
I wanted to show two examples, of how timing can have an impact on what you learn. This is important in an era of Lifelong Learning. We need to know what are the different factors that can impact our learning so we can improve our curation and critical thinking.
For the first example, designing good experiments can improve our learning and not cause any misunderstanding. For the second example, it shows me at least that I need to surround myself with people who are constantly learning, and willing to share their learning. I am glad and will continue to surround myself with people who are constantly learning. :)
Do you have other examples where you see timing playing a role in how and what you learn? Do share them in the comments below. :)
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