Mastery of Learning

In the last several years, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring ways to broaden my understanding of the Universe and of my little corner of it. One way that’s produced striking results was a course I took last summer called Mastery of Learning. It’s taught by Chris Welsh, whom I met by way of Mattison Grey, a client, coach, and friend of mine. (You’ll read about Mattison in future blog postings.)

Chris calls Mastery of Learning “an evolutionary program designed to rekindle your curiosity and give you the tools to satisfy it.” He presents the course as a series of one-on-one training sessions. He customizes his presentation to suit the interests, needs, and schedule of the learner; in my case, there were five sessions, each about three hours long. Each session combines teaching, training in specific learning skills, and some very masterful coaching to bring clarity and focus to what you’re learning.

It’s essentially a course in learning to learn more effectively. But at the same time that Chris is working with the learner to cultivate some very useful learning skills, he introduces fascinating concepts about cognitive science and points the participant toward lots of sources for more learning.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about what Mastery of Learning teaches; if you’re curious, visit the web site, , or better yet, give him a call at 713.439.1442 and ask him about it—he’ll tell you anything you want to know!

Characterizing Mastery of Learning as “evolutionary” is not an exaggeration. The course had a huge impact on me. The module on idea-mapping and the writing technique called looping helped get me “unstuck” in my writing efforts. Someone (or perhaps several someones) had introduced me years ago to the exercise called mind-mapping or idea-mapping. I learned idea-mapping as the practice of quickly jotting down words or phrases in a nonlinear arrangement on big pieces of paper to see what connections or flashes of inspiration might come out, a sort of written word-association test. I’ve used it with some success as a creative brainstorming tool. But Chris suggested a lot of other uses for it: as a tool for planning; for note-taking; for organizing ideas (as an alternative to outlining); for decision-making; and for finding new insight into familiar ideas.

Looping is a technique for writing. It’s a simple idea: as you’re writing, whenever the flow of ideas seems to dry up, you keep you pen or pencil on the paper and draw little loops until something starts to come again. Since I almost never write longhand—my hand is much too slow to keep up with my brain—Chris let me adapt the idea to writing on the computer. When I find myself with no words to type, I drum the fingers and thumb of my right hand on the keyboard, producing something like this:

;lkj ;lkj ;klkj ;lkkj ;lkj ;lj ;kkj ;lkj ;lkkj ;lkkj 

The value of this trick is that it keeps your attention on the activity at hand. Instead of wandering off the page, your eyes remain focused on the paper or computer screen, and your mind stay in your writing “space” or frame of mind. Before long, the words always start flowing again.

Chris incorporates this method in an exercise I’ve found very useful—a series of timed free-writing sessions in which the participant writes in stream-of-consciousness mode, then reviews the results, then writes some more, then reviews again, etc. I’m not going to elaborate on the method, because if I tried to teach you how to do this exercise on your own, you’d miss out on everything Chris adds to the lesson—a deeper explanation of the rationale for using the technique and coaching to help the participant figure out its value for him. Besides, I’d rather leave my readers curious about this remarkable course!

I’ve turned these two techniques into a daily ritual for flexing my writing muscles and stimulating my creativity. Early in the morning, before the workday has had a chance to beat the crap out of me, I sit down at my laptop and do a free-writing exercise. Some days I produce a thousand words or so of nonsense or ranting. But other days, something encouraging emerges from the gibberish—the outlines of a new writing idea, or a few words that capture a flash of inspiration, or some insight into a psychological or intellectual problem I’ve been puzzling over. Some days, I stop when I’ve done the exercise for the prescribed amount of time, but on others, I keep going for as long as the topic keeps my interest.

After the writing exercises, on most days I spend 10 or 15 minutes idea-mapping whatever is on my mind. Usually, the free-writing exercise yields some central theme or striking thought (a “center of gravity,” as Chris would call it), which I make the basis for an idea-map. For example, on November 6 of last year, my free-writing exercise turned into some reflections on organizing. (At the time, I had recently begun designing a system for planning my days so that I’d make better use of my time and get done more of the things that are important to my personal development. That project is ongoing.) When I was ready to set the writing aside, I launched into an idea map on the topic of “What Must a System of Time Management and Organization Accomplish?”:

> Click on the image to see a larger version. <

I draw my idea maps in a 12 x 10 sketch book. Sometimes I find myself idea-mapping away from home on legal pads or whatever scraps of paper I can lay my hands on, and I tape these into the book as well.

Another benefit I received from Mastery of Learning was some of Chris’ insights into what’s going on out there in the world of ideas. Most notably, Chris introduced me to the Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) Conference, an annual meeting of minds in Monterrey, California. The conference features several days of speeches, presentations, and performances (the “TED Talks”) by leaders in a wide variety of disciplines—doctors, scientists, artists, musicians, philosophers, spiritual leaders, community activists, writers, politicians, etc.

Chris played the video podcast of a particularly interesting lecture (Sir Ken Robinson—you can find his talk here) and stimulated my appetite for more. I went to the TED Talks page and downloaded a couple of dozen podcasts, which I’ve been listening to during some of my daily walks at Memorial Park. Almost without exception, they’ve stirred my curiosity about the topics and themes they address. I hope to post some TED Talk–inspired articles here as soon as I get around to writing them. Right now, the one that’s percolating in the back of my mind is something about Aubrey DeGray’s talk (I’ll provide a link when I can get to the site) on the state of the science of gerontology. He posits that there might be people alive today who will live to be 1,000 years old, and I find that idea greatly intriguing!

I’ve been recommending the Mastery of Learning course to everyone I know who seems interested in learning and getting more out of life. I’ve only touched on a fraction of the topics that the course covers here. And six months after going through the program, I’m still discovering new ways that the content and learning techniques are rippling through my consciousness. I’ll share more with you as I discover them!