Why you need commonplace books and how to create them - DBR 069

One of the primary uses of information is to help us learn. When we are explicitly learning, we work to collect information. It works the other way, as well. As we are exposed to new information, we have the opportunity to learn.

 

The relationship between learning and merely storing information in our brains is mysterious. Many people would say that ‘learning is more than storing facts’, but when we try to figure out what that ‘more’ is, there is no clear consensus.

 

To help think through the need for information, I’m going to argue that the commonplace book from the previous episode is a great target and goal for post-compulsory education.

 

So one thing that came out in the Personal Information Management podcast (Episode 68) is that learning styles have changed, and certainly the techniques and technology have changed to some degree.

 

So learning has changed a little but we want to think about our goal. Once we get done with the formal educational system, how do we go about learning?

 

Developing a definition of learning

• Learning has a lot to do with recreating the thought processes that another human being thought first,
• How do we go about learning? The modern view of learning in one sense: we practice thinking like the people that we want to think like later.

Learning and practice

AI is a best in class practice machine.

• Part of learning then is collecting this existing information so that we can practice having our brains think in these ways.

If practice is involved, then we have tasks and, thus, attention

• We need to collect and manage information, and organize our attention such that we actually do the practice
• Multiple goals are in play at the same time, we've got to allocate our attention amongst the goals

The historical tie between learning and books is so tight that it must be useful

• Books are, at a minimum, a ‘required feature’ of pedagogy there's huge debate over whether or not the standard pedagogy is the best possible pedagogy
• In the 21st century, textbooks are the teaching books (and primary pedagogy) of choice
• But there was a time before textbooks. What did pedagogy look like then?

What about our own (personal) books and non-textbooks?? 

• When secondary education is complete, some sort of a commonplace book would be a reasonable target for further education
• At some level, this podcast is a commonplace book for me, where I go out and learn things and then try to bring them back in and put them somewhere where you can find them if you're interested.

What would our commonplace book look like?

• A book on a subject that I would write for myself would be structurally different from a textbook.
• We'd want some instruction about different advanced techniques that are rarely used.
• Cases, examples, war stories on applications of the knowledge.
• It's somewhere between authoring and scrapbooking closer to the scrapbooking end of the spectrum.
• Organizing so that you can find things, indexing and table of contents

What tactics would we use? What technology(s)?

• How can we collect in such a way that puts it in this position of being part of the record for what we're going to do anyway?
• Project folders as learning tactics
• I teach clients to collect a project file to have a storage location where data can live
• Let's have both a short term storage location and a long term storage location
• Notebook for the daily, have another one or more to collect up the considered, important information

Attention Compass is an ideal workflow to help you capture a commonplace book in real time.

 

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