Learn like a kid

For anyone trying to learn something new and challenging, it’s going to take a lot of time. Often as an adult, the more you learn, the less expert you feel. As you are exposed to the work higher and higher level experts in a field, it will doubtless seem that you are never going to make it to that level. And you could be right.

Children learn incredibly difficult things in a remarkably short span of time. Why are they good at learning? While there are doubtless scientific reasons, that’s not what I am talking about today. From my own experience as a former child, I think a big part of it is that they don’t expect to already be experts at the tasks that they are doing. They are perfectly happy with a result that an adult would consider a failure.

Every day children try and fail at countless things they want to do. They often succeed at tasks with a lot of help, or after failing several times. You are going to fail a lot if you are trying something that is sufficiently challenging to be satisfying.

If you put a box of crayons and some paper out in front of some kids. They are going to produce some artwork, it will be fun, and they will learn a little bit more.