How to level up your life in an era of AI

Everyone wants to know what their kids should be learning to “get ahead.”

“Is it coding?” Is it biology?”

“What about math, or communication skills?”

“I’ve heard that emphathy is the real currency of the future?”

All great questions and hypotheses. But they miss the point.

As the pace of change continues to ramp up, learning how to learn (and unlearn) is quickly becoming a superpower.

So as much as I like to geek out on the tech side of change, I think it’s worth thinking about how we can learn faster.

Let’s start with 6 levels of learning

In the 1950’s, Benjamin Bloom and other educators put together a framework for learning in order to encourage higher orders of thinking at all levels of education.

We refer to it now as Bloom’s Taxonomy (Credit to Justin Sung for the reminder. (If you’re interested, he has a great breakdown over on YouTube here.)

In this framwork, there are at 6 levels:

1. Remember: Memorization and rote learning

2. Understand: Comprehension of concepts

3. Application: Using knowledge to solve simple problem

4. Analyze: Comparing and contrasting information

5. Evaluate: Making judgments and prioritizing information

6. Create: Synthesizing new information and hypothesizing

At first glance, it might seem obvioius that you’d want to start at level 1, but that might not be the most efficient except for a few fundamental skills.

For the large majority of skills and topics, however, starting at Level 5 is both more efficient and effective.

Why?

1. Efficiency: Starting at level 5 and working downwards is more efficient than starting at level 1 as higher-level thinking engages the brain more deeply, leading to stronger memory formation. Additionally, when you focus on evaluating and prioritizing information, you naturally engage with the lower levels (analyze, apply, understand, remember) as a side effect.

2. Reduced Knowledge Decay: Learning from bottom-up, knowledge decay occurs as you move through the levels, where’s starting at level 5 reinforces lower-level knowledge.

3. Time Efficiency: Most learners don’t have enough time or attenion to master each level sequentially from bottom to top. Starting at level 5 allows you to cover all levels more quickly and effectively.

4. Aligns for career success: Higher education and professional environments often require level 4 and 5 thinking. As a student, practicing these higher-level skills from the start, you’re better prepared for advanced study and work.

5. Deeper Understanding: Evaluating information forces you to understand, analyze, and apply concepts more thoroughly than simply memorizing or understanding them in isolation.

Consider this as you think through whatever you’re doing next, whether that’s reading the news to picking up a new skill at work.

Start asking questions like, why does this matter? Where does it fit with what I know currently? Is this approach better or worse than other approaches? How does this reporter cover the topic versus another? Which seems more correct and why?

Warning. This will feel harder. It will feel like it takes longer. But stick with it.

FYI, I’m considering making this into a series.

If you like it, let me know and I’ll dig deeper into other ways of approaches to acclerated learning.