How I Learn Stuff

This is called To Describe a Rock, Part 1.

My brother Jonathan and I continue our adventures by selecting an object from the beach and trying to use systems thinking and rapid studying to analyze and describe it.

Swashbooking is a process of quickly skimming books, looking for anything important. My brother and I invented it as a way to supercharge our learning.

In our first experiments, we set a recurring alarm at six minutes, and switched to a new book every time the chime sounded. At the end of one hour, we each gave book reports. Since we read the same books, we were able to compare what each of us had absorbed. We discovered that for most books– even really thick ones– we were able to discover powerful ideas in only six minutes.

Then we hit upon a new idea: Let’s take a stack of books (115 that we had never read) and set a timer for eight hours. During that time (stopping the clock for meals and a few breaks) we would read for the purpose of preparing an oration that would refer to as many of the books as possible.

By the time it was over, Jon had covered 47 books and I covered 46.

Check out our video!

And look at my little presentation at Prezi.com!

I’m going to post more notes on the process, soon.

A lot of my learning is motivated by puzzles. I particularly like math puzzles. Here’s one:

1 2 3 4 5 = 1
5 4 3 2 1 = 2
1 1 1 1 1 = 5
2 2 2 2 2 = 1
3 3 3 3 3 = 6
4 4 4 4 4 = 2
5 5 5 5 5 = 7
6 6 6 6 6 = 3
1 1 2 2 2 = 6
3 3 4 4 4 = 7
1 1 1 1 2 = 1
1 1 1 1 3 = 6
1 1 1 1 4 = 2
1 1 1 1 5 = 7
2 2 2 2 6 = 3
2 2 2 2 5 = 7
2 2 2 2 4 = 2
2 2 2 2 3 = 6
2 2 2 2 2 = 1
6 1 1 1 1 = 2
5 1 1 1 1 = 8
4 1 1 1 1 = 5
3 1 1 1 1 = 2
2 1 1 1 1 = 8

3 1 4 1 5 = ?

This puzzle came to me from Trey Klein. I found it difficult to solve. Took me a couple of hours.

Most buccaneers, I will hazard to say, enjoy the challenge of a good puzzle. If you, like me, can’t resist puzzles, then of course you’ll have to try this one. But, I have a request. Whether or not you solve it, I’d like you to write a comment telling us how you tried to solve it. What steps did you take? What ideas did you have? What techniques or tools did you apply?

To puzzle is to learn.

Puzzles are fabulously educational even if you fail to solve them. So, don’t get too hung up on the solution itself. I could tell you the solution to the puzzle above, right now, and you would gain something. Sure. But if you try very hard to find the answer, fail, and THEN ask me for the answer, you will gain a lot more. The answer will have much more power and meaning for you, because of how you suffered for it. You will learn something critical about your strategy of problem-solving.

I talk about this in my book. I call it the “Sail Power Principle.” If you don’t struggle with a problem at all, that’s like sails with no wind in them. If you struggle too much, then you’ll get discouraged, and that’s like sails with too much wind– blowing them to shreds. You want to find that sweet spot. Put some effort into it, and when you begin to despair, say to yourself “I’m about to learn something important!” then you can LOOK AT THE ANSWER.

Of course, you may solve the puzzle, yourself. That’s cool, too.