🪜Systematic Learning VS 🧩Non-systematic learning.
Why do we feel disconnected to a subject being taught in course or university after a certain period, although we first approached the subject with lots of enthusiasm. Most of us can relate to this scenario.
⚖️ Laws of nature are universal and apply everywhere. Consider, the second law of thermodynamics, which states any spontaneous process increases entropy of the universe.
✨So, what is entropy? It is the degree of disorder or randomness in the system. Greater the entropy, more possible variations, or configuration in the system, therefore, greater disorder. In any natural process, entropy of a system will either increase or remain constant, in order to spread energy evenly. The universe itself moves from a highly disordered state to even more disordered state. Consider a neat and clean room, it will eventually become messy over time, unless energy is added to maintain order.
⏪Let us understand this in reverse.
Suppose a person is given task to sort a room from a disordered or messy state to a clean or stable or ordered state. The person will have to expend energy to solve this puzzle and fit pieces to their respective place. While doing this exercise, a person will get familiar with possible variations (items or components of the room in this case) and next time while performing the same task, he would be able to do it with certain ease.
What happens when the same person starts out the same task but is given a neat and clean room to begin with? Initially, there will be very less work as the system (room) is already in a stable (clean) state. However, say one day, a cat enters the room and wreaks havoc inside. The person charged to keep the room clean and neat, is now tasked to bring the room back to the original state but with a lesser time frame, as he has been exposed to the surroundings of the room for a certain period now. However, due to less work in the initial state, it is highly probable that the person might have not analyzed all the items and their respective positions carefully. After all, not every one of us are Sherlock Holmes by default, who pays attention to the details all the time irrespective of the situation. Moreover, why would the person try to touch something which does not need to be moved in the first place, as it would result in expense of energy only to put it back to its original position. In fact, this is our natural impulse. We do not try to disturb an already stable setting. At least, those of us who do not want to watch the world burn. 😉
When a student tries to learn about a particular topic, say a programming language for the instance, one approach would be to directly take a problem statement and try to solve it in the new programming language. In order to do so, he would list down the steps required to solve the problem and then he would need to know how to perform these steps in the specific programming language. He would search across internet, read blogs, visit stackoverflow, look at various tutorials, browse through GitHub repos, etc. While doing so, he will be exposed to different perspectives about the language. He would see varied use cases and their implementation details provided by developers. His learning speeds up. Here, the student starts from a state with higher entropy and expends energy (by using his brain) to bring it to a more stable state (his understanding about the usage of different components of the language).
However, if the student tries to follow the alternate approach of first learning the programming language via some dedicated course, he would be starting from the very basics. The course would progress in a linear fashion with a certain narrative defined the presenter. More often it would be the case that the narrative might not be similar to the problem statement which needs to be solved by the student. As a result, it will take a lot of time for the student to navigate through the entire scope of programming language. Not all the components will be required to solve a specific problem statement. Here, the student starts from a state of lower entropy. The structured course is already in a stable state. He does not have to expend much energy to enter and understand the system. More often, the student will feel disconnected from the subject after certain period, as the brain will start rejecting anything which is monotonous and boring.
In the earlier approach, it was the problem statement which resulted in the increased entropy of the system and demanded effort from the student to solve it on its own. During a systematic approach, the student already feels secure as he knows that the solution already exists and the brain is not engaged to its full potential, which results in lack of concentration and enthusiasm after a certain period.
🧑🏭The reader is not supposed to accept the perspective presented by the writer here and is welcome to disagree. However, the writer would like to encourage the reader to try the non-standard approach of learning for once.
🧠It is the thrill of unknown which excites the brain!