5 Common Myths About Learning

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Learning is just one of those subjects, like religion or politics – everybody has an opinion, even though most people know very little about it.

Do YOU believe some of these common myths about learning?

1. You need innate talent to be great at something

Lots of people claim you need to be BORN a genius. That Mozart was always destined to be a great musician, or that grandmaster chess players have some special brain wirings or genes that make them great at chess.

In the mid-to-late 1900′s, there was one man who thought this was utter crap. Laszlo Polgar. He decided to prove that geniuses were made, not born. And he was going to do that by teaching his children to be chess champion from very young age. He found a wife who was going to support this experiment, and together they had three daughters.

From very young age, he began training his daughters to be a chess champions. He quit his job and made training his daughters his only occupation. They were homeschooled so they could spend forty to fifty hours a week practicing chess instead of wasting their time doing more mundane schoolwork. He had several grandmasters tutoring them on a daily basis.

Two of the daughters, Susan and Judit became the world’s top 2 female chess players. Susan was actually winning chess tournaments for under-11′s when she was just 4 years old.

You don’t need any inborn talent to become great at something. You just need the motivation and practice.

2. When you’re not learning as fast as you want, it’s because you’re not putting in enough time

This myth is held especially dearly by people who have tried putting in a lot of time into learning something, without much success.

For example, someone might try learning French by spending half an hour a day reading textbooks and doing exercises. They don’t learn much, so they try putting in twice as much time – an hour every day. And yet they still don’t learn significantly faster! Their conclusion? They’re not putting in enough time! (you gotta love the logic behind that )

We humans love being right. In fact, the need to be right (at least inside our own minds) often makes us less successful and less happy! The people who tried putting in more time and didn’t succeed believe that more time is the answer to learning. So instead of considering they might be wrong, and try learning through a different method – they decide they’re still not putting in enough time! But they can’t be bothered to put in even MORE time… and so they miss out on the wonderful experience of learning a foreign language!

3. To become great at something, you need to put in 10 hours a day

This is related to the point above. Lots of people think that to become really good at something, you need to spend every waking hour thinking about it and doing it.

Now, don’t get me wrong – obsession sure helps. If you spend ten hours a day practicing a single skill (like the Polgar sisters did), you WILL likely become really good!

But, as many top pianists will confirm, you don’t need 10 hours a day of piano practice to become a master pianist. In fact, 1 hour a day is quite enough, if you use the right learning methods! (Source: Fundamentals of Piano Practice)

Before you starts firing off angry e-mails saying “But of COURSE you need 10 hours a day of practice to become great! I heard it from so-and-so…”, pause to think for a moment. Guess who will tell you that you need 10 hours of practice a day to become a master pianist?

That’s right – the people who never made it past being mediocre! Now, call me skeptical if you want… but I think that if you want to learn what it takes to become GREAT at something, it makes sense to ask people who are themselves GREAT at that skill, not people who are mediocre!

4. You’re not smart enough to learn quickly

This is a belief that a lot of people hold. It might seem like it comes directly from a low self-esteem or a bad self-image. Interestingly enough, it usually doesn’t. Instead, it comes from another psychological phenomenon.

We humans like to attribute our successes to things we control (“Oh yeah, of course I succeeded. I’m really smart!”). And we tend to attribute our failures to things we DON’T control (“The sun was in my eyes.” or “I just had a bad day.” or “I’m just naturally bad at x.”)

So when we’re struggling with learning something, the immediate reflex is to say “Ah, I’m just not smart enough” or “I’m just not a public speaker. I was born without the public speaking gene!” (which are things we DON’T control), rather than saying “I’m not using the right approach to learning this.” (which is something we DO control).

5. You can’t significantly alter how fast you learn something

I used to believe this one. Big time.

I used to think that we are all born with a certain IQ, and that this is all that determines your learning rate. Boy, was I ever wrong!

In fact, using the right learning methods is EVERYTHING! You can literally speed up your learning tenfold by using the right methods. I experienced this myself when learning to play the piano. I was struggling, learning really slowly, and ready to give up… and then I came across the free e-book Fundamentals of Piano Practice. Let’s just say I was BLOWN away by the results!

Since that day, I have researched just about everything there is to know about human learning. And it only confirmed my initial experiences. Most people are using such sub-optimal learning methods it’s almost ridiculous. Thankfully, you can easily change your learning methods, once you know what the right ones are!

I’ll share all my knowledge about learning with you on another day. But for now, you can at least check out my article about The one secret behind learning ANY skill quickly.

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Have you ever believed any of the above myths? Do you know any other common learning myths that others should know about?

Or maybe you think I’m completely full of horse crap and I should be hung up by the G’khazar*?

In any case, feel free to leave a comment!

(image courtesy of Cayusa)

*Town Hall