You are fed building supplies, bricks, mortar
and glass. It is up to you to assemble the building. Unfortunately, most learning
strategies fall into two basic types:
1. Memorization – Instead of building anything
you simply stare at each brick for several minutes trying to record its
position.
2. Formulas – This is the equivalent to being
blind, fumbling around a new house. You can’t see the building itself but you
learn to come up with simple rules to avoid walking into walls.
There is nothing particularly wrong with
either of these strategies, assuming they aren’t your entire strategy. The
human brain isn’t a computer so it can’t memorize infinite sums of knowledge
without some form of structure. And formulas no longer work if the questions
they are designed to solve change scope.
The alternative
strategy is to focus on actually using the information you have to build
something. This involves linking concepts together and compressing information
so it fits in the bigger picture.



