This article is reposted and expanded (slightly) from the original on my LinkedIn profile, here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/paradox-quick-learning-journey-continuous-diligence-john-stough-slvje/

I have been accused in the past, in fact the very recent past, of being a “quick learner”. This would be a mistaken label, I fear, and I would offer some advice to save you from a perilous journey down a road marked “shortcut!” In our fast-paced world, the allure of becoming a ‘quick learner’ often overshadows the profound journey underlying this apparent skill. In fact, you can see from the AI generated image I am using that I am still learning how to get the AI to spell correctly! What the heck is “PhisLoophy” or “emgrienerting” anyway?!

If you want to be accused of being a quick learner, then you should learn deeply, slowly, and continuously to only find at the opportune moment that an answer quickly comes at the time of need. C.S. Lewis, in his insightful essay “Learning in Wartime”, written against the backdrop of being a college professor during World War 2, illuminates the constancy of learning amidst life’s tumult. Lewis penned, “If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life’. Life has never been normal.” This perspective is pivotal in understanding that quick learning is less an inherent talent and more a fruit of relentless, diverse scholarship.

My own experience as a perceived quick learner can be recently demonstrated in the field of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). Let me first say that I am not an expert in this emerging field, and my rapid uptake of the skill is witnessed by leaning on actual experts who will provide a testament to this! However, I am still much further down this path than others who leapt at the same crack of the starting gun. This ability didn’t emerge in a vacuum; it’s rooted in a long-standing engagement with software development, coupled with a passion for philosophy and logic. Frege’s idea that “The thought, in and of itself immaterial, wraps itself in the material garment of a sentence and therefore becomes perceivable to us” resonates deeply in this context. It underscores how abstract thinking, fostered by philosophical inquiry, can be pivotal in grasping and applying complex concepts in areas like systems architecture.

In fact, I would go further to speculate I am even more aligned with Lewis’ thinking on this point, that a depth and breadth in study is critical to finding the insights that you need to be accused of picking up new skills quickly. Diverse topics such as history, art, physics, and religion will all help you develop the skill to think critically. Critical thinking will then help you learn new skills more quickly, and hopefully will also keep you humble enough not to claim mastery too early in such a journey when you achieve exciting quick wins. Lewis continued his essay, noting:

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many place is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”

This call for intellectual rigor and clarity echoes in the realm of systems engineering and complex systems architecture (unless you thought I was speculating about reading history for its own sake). The skill in MBSE, which might appear as a swift acquisition of a new discipline, is in fact an application of a profound understanding of abstract relationships and logical structures, honed over years of diverse studies. These studies include the history of logical analysis that, ironic to many who parrot what they have not actually studied, has deep roots in the study of ontology by Blaise Pascal, Sir William of Ockham, and Thomas Aquinas. Hint – they were not students of computer science.

Thus, the journey to becoming a quick learner is not about rapid assimilation of information, but rather about the depth and breadth of one’s foundational knowledge. It is about the unseen hours spent wrestling with complex ideas in various domains – philosophy, logic, software development – and then synthesizing these into a coherent understanding that can be applied to new fields. This process builds a rich, fertile ground from which the ability to quickly adapt and learn in new domains can naturally arise. The true essence of being a quick learner lies in a lifetime of continuous, multifaceted learning. It’s about nurturing a versatile intellect capable of drawing from a wide range of disciplines. This journey, challenging yet enriching, shapes not just a quick learner, but a solid thinker equipped to navigate the complexities of any new discipline with ease and insight. Before you aim at speed, focus on accuracy. Speed comes with practice, so said every coach for every sport (or martial artist, or mathematician, etc.). If you want to be a quick learner, then never stop learning!

Additional Thoughts

After posting my original article on LinkedIn, I thought it needed to be expanded upon. I am making an assumption that it was brief and to the point, crafted for readability, and intended to just be a quick read on an interesting topic. However, the point I was trying to make continued to gnaw at my heart, because the basic underlying premise is that “quick learning” is not only a myth, but perhaps even a dangerous tendency in taking shortcuts towards what learning actually is – the application of new information into a critical thinking apparatus called the human being. We learn bad habits as well as good ones. In fact, I will expand further to say that many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of ideas such as “Ockham’s Razor” (simple explanation here on Wikipedia) because they tend to just (mis)quote the paraphrase (“the simplest explanation is best” or similar) instead of diving deeper into the principle of parsimony that developed from his theological studies. I did not learn that from the many shortcut answers (even from science professors) that misquoted Ockham’s Razor, I learned it from Alister McGrath’s Christian Theological Reader during my theological studies. Ironic that I should learn about the real philosopher, so often quoted in defense of an atheism to which I once ascribed, then to only read his actual writings from a theology textbook. I should not be surprised, however, as that is what deep study is all about – doing your own research, challenging your own assumptions, and not taking shortcuts!

In fact, much of philosophy that underpins logical analysis began in theology, looking at the parsimony in Judea Christian thought in order to make sense and order from very complex concepts. The shortcut says “Ockham’s Razor tells me to avoid complex answers”, however this is a path not to being a quick learner but to being dismissive of the hard work that is needed to work out the details and, only then when you are faced with multiple unprovable possibilities, leverage the principle of parsimony to make an educated preference towards the answer that requires fewer assumptions. There is dreadful irony in the abuse of this principle, as only the assumptions are in view regardless of the simplicity or complexity of the provable facts. It has little to do with simplicity and everything to do with what you have to assume because you cannot prove it. Shortcuts in anything, particularly in learning, lead to bad assumptions. These, in turn, lead to errors that may foretell foolishness or even disaster. 

I am still working on this, so will likely post some additional thoughts here if they bug me enough to write them down. Of particular interest is the recurring theme by CS Lewis (I only quote the one essay here, however it came up often in his works) of “working out a sum” and doing the homework of detailed effort when wrestling with a difficult topic. This is closer to what I was aiming at. I applied it to the MBSE example for the quick article, because that was a simple example of learning a new skill; however, what I am really talking about is training the mind to learn, a topic that I am continually exploring.