4 Learnacy
W
HEN MOST PEOPLE THINK ABOUT LEARNING, THEY THINK THEMSELVES
straight into the thick of a learning experience. But you know bet-
ter! You have seen how your mind needs to be powered up before
you start learning. You know you have to have a broader under-
standing of learnacy, or how you learn to learn.
Let’s suppose that you are ready and switched on to learn.
How can you improve the way you use your mind? How can you
ensure that you become a competent learner? Now that you under-
stand the basic information about your brain and why it is easy to
waste your effort if you are not in the right frame of mind and eager
to start, this part of the book contains a few of the answers and
some of the key techniques.
And when you have finished this part, “Go For It,” turn to
Part III. Just as it was important to get ready beforehand, so it is
essential that you get steady, becoming able to change and adapt
the way you do things after you have learned something. In this
way, you will be using your mind more effectively.
It is possible to take a reductionist view of learning that
assumes that it is simply the sum of a few techniques and skills.
However, this is clearly not the case. Learning is complex, slippery
stuff. As you will have seen from the earlier chapters, the techniques
are only a small part of the story. If learning were an iceberg, then
the techniques would be the visible bit above the surface. What lies
below the water, the emotional and psychological self-
understanding that we have been exploring and the areas still to
come, would be the solid bulk of the ice hidden from most people’s
sight. You will see how this is the case when I explain, on page 82,