It’s already noon and I’m getting that gnawing feeling in my stomach like a small child making demands in a toy store. I tell myself it’s lunchtime and that seems to satiate me as if I just told the kid he might have the toy if he just shuts up for a bit. The intercom interrupts me and calls me down to the office. What now?
“Looks like you have a test to write,” the secretary says cheerfully. What? I don’t remember being asked to write a test. My stomach seems to snarl at me in contempt of my earlier attempts to placate it. “Just go down the hall, you can write your exam in there.” Chemistry. One of those scholastic contests. Usually multiple choice. Although they are supposed to test you on the course material, they always slip in questions based on stuff you’ve
never even seen before. Probably to separate out the kids that just went to class and those that
went to extended study sessions and bought University textbooks. I just wish I had known
about it beforehand. Just get it over with. We didn’t cover most of the questions in class, but a little bit
of creativity can go a long way. I have sixty minutes, but I finish in forty. Likely a silent
bargain my subconscious made with my digestive system.

Three weeks go by.
“Congratulations. Looks like first place.” Ten names go down in descending order.
I feel a bit of pride being the only person outside the big city to be on the list. First
place and a check for a little under five hundred bucks. Not bad for less than an hour.
Undeserved Talent?
I shouldn’t have been able to win that contest.
I wasn’t taught more. Over half the material on the test was on concepts that were only
vaguely familiar. I had to write an essay on the chemical properties of soap. The only time soap was
mentioned in my class would have been in a reference to washing your hands.
I didn’t study more. My advanced warning hovered at around five minutes. I can only
assume that the other nine names listed along with me on the contest results probably at least knew
they were writing it. Given the prestige of the contest, I’m guessing they probably at least opened
their textbooks to study.
I didn’t try harder. I didn’t bother checking over my questions. I just colored in the dots,
wrote the essay and handed it in.
The worst part though, I wasn’t entirely surprised. Although this was my first big win, I had
always done well academically. I rarely studied for tests and exams and when I did study it was
closer to a quick skim than a detailed session. School was never really more than an abstraction
while I worked on more interesting projects.

To someone who struggled at school or even for someone that could succeed but had to work hard,
my success seems pretty undeserved. This first story may seem like an unnecessary display of bravado.
But I write about my success, however minor, not because I’m so special but because I’m actually fairly
common.
I have met, known and researched many people who had what appears to be a similar gift. An
ability to understand things effortlessly. Whether inside the classroom or in life, certain people seem to
have a knack for quickly understanding concepts. It can manifest itself in the humble genius who works
as a janitor but can tell you about any major historical event or an Einstein who revolutionizes our way of
thinking and the world we live in.
This bothers me. I’m not satisfied with the explanation of giftedness or innate talent. That sounds
more like an elitist excuse devised by the smart to explain why their results can’t be replicated. I wanted
to know how some people managed to learn faster. I wanted to know whether it was more than just a
gift but an ability that could be practiced.
Psychologists have known for a long time that intelligence is partially genetic and partially
environmental. So it can be easy to dismiss exceptional smarts as being from genes, great parenting or
something in the water. But remember, before dyes, hair color was entirely genetic too. A superior
strategy for learning can help shift what was once only a gift to an ability that can be trained

Holistic Learning
To say the difference in intelligence is the result of a single skill would be naive at best and a gross
misrepresentation at worst. Most researchers believe genius is comprised of numerous abilities from
creative problem solving to athletic or musical skill.
But in my observations of how I learn and how other people, far more intelligent than myself, learn
there was one factor that really stuck out. People who learned concepts easily didn’t learn the same way
other people did. It wasn’t that they were using the same strategy more effectively. These people were
operating from a completely different approach that a casual glance could easily miss.
I call this approach, holistic learning. Holistic learning is basically the opposite of rote
memorization. Instead of trying to pound information into your brain with the hopes it will simply fall
out when you need it, holistic learning is the process of weaving the knowledge you are learning into
everything you already understand. Rote memorization focuses on learning through individual boxes of information. Like a computer filing system, everything is neat, organized and separate from each other. You have a box labeled science, one for history, one for the movie you watched last week and another for your
job. These boxes are split into more boxes. Your science box has a separate one for biology and
physics. Physics has unique boxes for different formulas and concepts.

The problem is that your brain isn’t a computer filing system. It’s a network of interconnected neurons.
When you need information you are just hoping that you stumble upon the thread that leads to the box you want. Otherwise you’re screwed. Holistic learning is messy. It doesn’t put things into boxes neatly. Instead it tightly interweaves concepts together. Science concepts remind you of history which remind you of the movie you saw last
week and the project at your job tomorrow. Within each general subject area, your web is even more tightly interwoven. Every concept in physics is linked with almost every other. A tight web means that when one pathway is b. locked, there are hundreds of others that lead to the same point of information. Tight webs may seem like an abstract concept, but you know the feeling when you have one. A tight web results in the feeling of “getting” it. You understand the subject or concept so thoroughly that aspects of it seem obvious and trivial. When I had to write the essay portion of my exam the subject was the chemical composition of soap.
Now our chemistry class never covered soap, or even organic molecules. So how did I write the essay? I used
the web I had created. Thinking about soap reminded me of a brief video I saw in biology comparing soap
molecules to fat. It also reminded me of a trip to a reenacted pioneer settlement where they were making soap
from animal fat and lye. Each piece of information on its own is incomplete, but together they were strong
enough that I had something to write about.

Comparing Rote Memorization to Holistic Learning
Rote Memorization
● Organizes Ideas into Boxes
● Keeps Subjects and Concepts
Distinct
● Few Neural Paths to the Same
Idea
● Views Concepts Through One
Perspective
● Aims to Learn Through
Repetition

Holistic Learning
● Organized Ideas into Webs
● Interrelates Subjects and
Concepts
● Many Neural Paths to the Same
Idea
● Views Concepts Through Many
Unique Perspectives and Senses
● Aims to Learn by Relating

Creating a Construct
A brick on its own is just a brick. Five hundred bricks on their own become just a pile of
bricks. But with the right plan and layout, five hundred bricks together can build a house. Looking at each brick doesn’t give justice to the design and usefulness of the house itself. The linkages in holistic learning are just bricks. On their own they aren’t very impressive or useful. But when you put together properly they form what I’m going to call a construct. Your construct is the sum total of your web. It is how all the ideas fit together to create an
understanding of a complex idea. A construct is impossible to communicate, unfortunately. When you are being taught a subject or you are learning it on your own, you are getting bricks fed to you one by one. If your
lucky you might have a rough blueprint of how to organize the bricks, but if there aren’t enough linkages or they are assembled improperly the result is confusion

“I Don’t Get It”
You can tell you haven’t learned holistically when you don’t “get” the concept. You may have heard
and interpreted the information properly, but you don’t understand it on a deeper level. All you have is a
pile of bricks, but you can’t see how they fit together. The first key to building a house is to realize that’s what you are trying to do. Your goal when learning any complex subject or field should be to build a construct. A framework of understanding in which your web of knowledge occupies. I take very few notes in classes and I study them even less. My goal in every class is to build a construct not to transcribe what was said. Taking notes can be helpful but realize that is only an intermediate tool to your greater goal. Having a workable construct.
The beauty of having a construct and not a memorized list of information is constructs are much easier
to maintain. If I showed you a pile of bricks and removed one of them, would you be able to tell me where
it goes. Possibly if the pile was ten or twenty bricks. But what about a hundred? A thousand? A million
bricks? Would you still know where the missing brick should go?
Now if I showed you a brick building and removed one of the bricks, could you tell me where it is
supposed to go? Probably immediately. Even if the building consisted of over a million bricks, a quick scan
would show where the hole in the building lay and where the missing brick could be found.
You don’t need every brick to maintain the structural integrity of a house. You don’t need every piece
of information to maintain the integrity of your understanding. When you have a construct, you can solve
difficult problems even when there is a lot of missing information. You simply look at your construct, see
where the holes point to and fill them in.
Most people incorrectly assume you can’t answer questions you haven’t been taught how to answer.
But as long as you have a relatively stable construct, you can find ways around the missing information.
When one path gets shut down you take a different route. When I take a test I can usually find a way to
solve the problem even if I forget the method I was taught.

Start With a Model
If you wanted to design a skyscraper, you wouldn’t start by buying some land and laying
bricks, would you? No, you’d start by building a model. A model is not the same as a construct.
A construct is a complete set of understandings. A construct for math allows you to solve any
problem in math. A model is a quick representation of the idea you are trying to relate or understand. It is an
incomplete and temporary solution. Without building a dozens of models any attempts to form a construct
will collapse. Trying to understand everything at once is impossible for the conscious mind to handle.
Building individual models can give you a chance to stitch them together into a complete construct.
Recently I took a course in Vectors and Linear Algebra. A very abstract course where most people
have difficulty forming a construct. When the concept of a subspace was introduced, I was lost. I needed a
construct for the concept, but it was too broad to immediately grasp. So I looked for a model.
The model I chose was a visual representation of what I figured an idealized subspace might look like.
I imagined a subspace as being a plane suspended in three dimensions. The visualization was as vivid as it
was automatic. I can remember the plane being red and translucent slicing through a blue-gray vacuum of
three dimensional space. This model was not a construct. A plane in 3D is just
one of many different types of subspaces. But without it, a subspace would have just been a bunch of rules and
numbers. Even if the model was inaccurate, I could use it as a basis for refining and expanding the eventual construct. Links form into simple models which form into overall constructs. Layered creations of understanding. Effective constructs also link outside of where they are applicable. Once I had a construct prepared for subspaces, I
started to view my own experience as a subspace of reality. Constructs that become islands are worthless when there is a problem that exists between them. Interlinking your constructs helps funnel problems outside of their influence zone into realms of understanding. When I wrote that essay on soap, soap was outside of my constructs. But because my constructs were interlinked, it was funneled into different constructs based on my experiences in
different places.

Comming up Next ->How to learn hostically?
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