We Learn by Doing
Jamis Buck of 37signals posed the following question on Twitter earlier today:
At what point do you transition from ‘learning’ something, to having ‘learned’ something?
His question reminds me of a passage from Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.
Not many years ago I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what I am doing is “learning to play” the cello. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exists two very different processes: (1) learning to play the cello; and (2) playing the cello. They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the process and begin the second. In short, I will go on “learning to play” until I have “learned to play” and then I will begin to play. Of course, this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.
- John Holt
Nothing more to add here.