Learning should be driven by curiosity, and curiosity is driven by incomplete, or complete lack of, knowledge. The lack of knowledge can be daunting, even depressing. Following are some of the important things I have realized in the process and I have been working on.

1. The key to learning is to tackle the fear of unknown.
   Everytime you are afraid, it is because of something that you don’t know. You are afraid about finding a job, because you don’t know if anyone will take you or if you are good enough. You are afraid to start something, because you don’t know. This was and mildly still is one of my weaknesses. The starting resistance is too high which keeps me from starting something new. I have been working on it and have learnt that the golden solution is to divide and conquer. You know that you have to start, so start small. Divide the task into subtasks, and conquer them. Remember the #Lesson 4. Once you divide and conquer, you uncover many of the unknowns and this diminishes the fear. The confidence you gain creates the snowballing effect. To divide, you need to start. You start by outlining the task. That is an easy task since it requires only high level knowledge. Once you have the outline, aim for making each of the sections detailed. Break it down into what you need to know to solve that. Finally, start conquering. To conquer, you need to ask questions, sometimes to yourself, sometimes to the internet, and a lot of times to the peers.

2. It is important that you keep away from the fear of being judged.
   Another fear that keeps you from learning is the fear of being judged. One of the most important things to learning is to ask questions. As mentioned, to conquer, you need to ask questions, sometimes to yourself, sometimes to the internet, and a lot of times to the peers. Fear of being judged can keep you from learning from your peers. I have met many people and, if not for them, I wouldn’t have been where I am today. The way to solve this is to analyze the cause. You are afraid that they might judge you about you not knowing things, or that you are stupid. You need to know that no one person on the planet knows everything. It is okay to not know something. It is okay to accept and say “I don’t know”. Being able to say “I don’t know” and being able to accept that you were wrong is important to learn. What keeps you from accepting that you were wrong or that you don’t know, is the ego. It is okay to let your ego down, because keeping up the ego is just another difference between the real you and the you that you display. The differences only hurt you as I mentioned in the previous post The Mask. Next time you see arguing, be a good listener and ask yourself if it is the ego that is keeping you from accepting what the other is conveying. Accepting that you don’t know or you were wrong, lowers your guard. The others reflect and lower their guards. The environment is more conducive for learning from each other. It is a win-win situation, go for it! It helps you know and accept what you know, and eventually what you do not know. Known unknowns are better found than unknown unknowns. Illusion of knowledge is more dangerous than the lack of knowledge. Because one helps you learn, the other holds you back.

3. Making and connecting the dots
   When you have the information, it is crucial that you know how to store it. Some of the things which are new and not related to what you already know need to be hard-wired. The only way to hard-wire things is by practice. Practice it enough that it becomes intuitive. This is something I caught from my time at the Dance Troupe of NIT Trichy. We practiced until it was stored in the muscle memory. Conscious space is like RAM, much limited. You cannot dance for long and effortlessly if you had to consciously think of the following step. Having it in muscle memory after practising enough, it just comes naturally when you perform. It did not take long to realize that this is true for any skill in life. Practice it until it comes naturally to you. Now that creates the base for myriad of other things. Most of the things you encounter will be related to something you already know. The way to grasp these things is very different from the previous one. The things that you can hard-wire are limited. They slowly fade away as you go out of practice. That is a way we evolved, so that we make way for the new information. Therefore, limit your hard-wiring as much as you can. Pre-process the information, know if it is supposed to be hard-wired. Only do so when you are certain that it is not linked to anything else. If you realize there is a link, the way to absorb that is the following. Spend most time figuring out the connection between what you already know. Know how they are related. It becomes much easier to store it once you know the connections. It would feel as if the neurons have connected. There will be a sense of happiness when you figure out the holes in the understanding. Connecting things don’t require you to practice them as much. These things follow from the base. These things come naturally to you. Grasping concepts becomes much easier, and when you master the art of connecting things in your own ways, reading things even once would help you know the concept for a long time.