{"id":52919,"date":"2021-11-07T02:30:15","date_gmt":"2021-11-07T06:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=52919"},"modified":"2021-11-08T12:07:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T16:07:34","slug":"self-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/self-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Teaching: You Are Your Own Best Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What are the benefits of self-teaching? Do you really learn more through slow, directionless learning? Is there such thing as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-is-interleaving\/\">overlearning<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his book <em>Range, <\/em>David Epstein asserts that the slow and directionless self-learning process is more effective than structured learning. This is because when you learn on your own, you&#8217;re forced to struggle through experimentation\u2014which ultimately leads to a better understanding of the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is why learning through self-teaching may actually be better than taking structured classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Slow, Directionless Learning<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When it comes to skill acquisition, Epstein makes the case that <em>slow, directionless exploration<\/em> provides more robust skill than the specialist\u2019s style of learning through intense, efficient drills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To illustrate, Epstein examines the life stories of world-class jazz musicians from the very start of their musical training. He finds that, after exploring and discovering their preferred instrument, <strong>many jazz legends taught themselves how to play, without formal lessons, through an excruciatingly inefficient process of trial and error.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of the greatest jazz musicians learned through \u201cosmosis,\u201d discovering on their own how to mimic the music they heard around them. The struggle of aimlessly fiddling around gave these musicians a deeply ingrained familiarity with their instruments that formal training could never intentionally teach. Just like the other learning methods we\u2019ve been discussing, this untutored learning style is much slower and less effective at first, but in the long run, it provides the foundation to achieve top-level performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By self-teaching, these musicians also discovered the unique skill of effortless <em>improvisation<\/em>. Epstein argues that because they were forced to painstakingly generate their own techniques instead of simply learning to read sheet music (translating something that\u2019s already been written), <strong>the self-taught jazz musicians developed a creative instinct that classically trained musicians never could<\/strong>. For this reason, master improvisors are often able to learn and perform classical arrangements, but classically trained musicians are fundamentally unable to improvise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Epstein implies that <strong>the slow struggle of experimentation provides its own unique<\/strong><strong><em>,<\/em><\/strong><strong> lasting skills in any pursuit.<\/strong> All the time you spend learning and every mistake you make add up to invaluable mastery down the road, even if you can\u2019t see it immediately. There\u2019s no need to worry if you\u2019re not progressing as quickly as specialists expect\u2014they don\u2019t realize that the most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/effective-learning\/\">effective learning<\/a> is slow and difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>The Strengths and Weaknesses of \u201cOverlearning\u201d<\/strong><br><br>Countering Epstein\u2019s argument that efficient specialists miss out on the depth of inefficient practice, recent research has identified the benefits of \u201coverlearning\u201d: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-power-of-overlearning\/\">practicing a skill <em>after<\/em> you\u2019ve already achieved proficiency<\/a>. If specialists can continue to train their existing skills indefinitely, the efficient path to mastery doesn\u2019t seem to miss much. However, research shows that overlearning in narrow specialized domains may limit these specialists in a different way.<br><br>In one study on overlearning, two groups of subjects were trained to identify subtle striped patterns embedded in static on a screen. One group was assigned to overlearn, practicing for twenty minutes after both groups had already learned to pick out the correct pattern. The next day, the overlearners were able to complete their task far better than those who didn\u2019t overlearn. However, when asked to perform a new task\u2014identifying a slightly different pattern in the static\u2014the overlearners actually performed worse than the control group. <br><br>What does this tell us? The researchers concluded that the overlearners\u2019 weakened performance was a side effect of their \u201cresilient\u201d experience with the first task. They had learned the first skill so well that they found it difficult to stray from the procedure. In other words, overlearning narrow skills hinders the application of those skills in new contexts. When specialists attempt to learn adjacent skills, like classical musicians attempting to improvise, their overlearning of narrow procedures may do more harm than good.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What are the benefits of self-teaching? Do you really learn more through slow, directionless learning? Is there such thing as overlearning? In his book Range, David Epstein asserts that the slow and directionless self-learning process is more effective than structured learning. This is because when you learn on your own, you&#8217;re forced to struggle through experimentation\u2014which ultimately leads to a better understanding of the subject matter. Here is why learning through self-teaching may actually be better than taking structured classes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7,43],"tags":[527],"class_list":["post-52919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-lifestyle","category-self-improvement","tag-range","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Self-Teaching: You Are Your Own Best Teacher - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learning through self-teaching may actually be better than taking structured classes. This is because you&#039;re forced to experiment. Read more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/self-teaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Self-Teaching: You Are Your Own Best Teacher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Learning through self-teaching may actually be better than taking structured classes. This is because you&#039;re forced to experiment. 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