The Key Skill of All Skills: Learning How to Learn
What's It About?
How do some people become not only experts in a field, but in many fields?How can we relate to other people and be understood by them?
These two questions may seem unrelated, but they are not. Teaching and learning, loving and being loved, are all connected, along with a host of other areas in life you probably don’t realize — but you will come to understand this once you’ve read David Myers’ magnum opus, The Key Skill of All Skills: Learning How to Learn (Gatekeeper Press).
This work is chock full (and we mean full) of well-developed and realized concepts and processes. If you think, based on the title alone, that you are going to learn how to be more effective at studying an area of knowledge or practicing the skills necessary to master an art form, you are in for an Awakening with a capital A.
LEARNING HOW TO LIVE
That’s because Myers’ book isn’t merely about this, but about EVERYTHING in life — from the inner workings of our relationships with ourselves and others to our experience and comprehension of reality itself — with relevant applications to love, teaching, parenting, professional development, organizational management, salesmanship, mental health, creativity, and more.
So how can all of these areas possibly be improved by “learning how to learn”? Like Crick and Watson’s discovery of the structure of DNA — a structure underpinning all forms of life on Earth in all their variety — so, too, is Myers’ “Uniform Structure of Information” one that underpins all systems of thought, bodies of knowledge and forms of art.
The goal of the book, says Myers, is to show people “how to acquire the most basic life comprehension and transformation skills — putting one thing and another together — then putting more and more pieces of the puzzle in their mind together, and using them in ever new ways, the more they know about the process.”
“THE LESSON WITHIN THE LESSONS”
If all of this sounds too heady, fear not. Myers explains his concepts in such detail and in so many different contexts that you will “get it.” Not only get it but understand how to use it.
While there is not enough space here to cover all the concepts within, one thing you need to know, according to Myers, is that everything is learnable because it is connected to what you already know through myriad similarities. Those similarities can be identified, understood and communicated through the correct use of “illustrative anecdotes and analogy.” Aptly choosing and applying such tools is an art and science that Myers’ book will help you develop.
What are anecdotes and analogies but forms of narrative? Here is where the Awakening awaits. Myers lays out a case that life is a “Reading Comprehension Test.” Reality can be understood through language, specifically narrative, the structural components of which include characters, actions, settings and time frames (and the scope, depth, intensity and clarity of these). Perspective is about keeping these details in proportion, identifying what’s in the foreground and background. Your choice of words in the narrative provides additional emotional and sensory nuance. All information is composed of this: content, form, style and tone.
Myers will teach you how to identify these components and attributes, but you may be surprised — as you are already a consumer of stories in books, magazines and newspapers; on television and in film; even in narrative video games — you are already familiar with how it all works; you just haven’t seen it that way … yet.
A WHOLE LIFETIME OF USES
The Key Skill of All Skills gives you not only the tools to learn but builds the confidence that you can learn — anything you want to. It then helps you assimilate and retain that knowledge. And apply it to new areas of learning. It will increase your productivity and creativity.
Myers will help you become a better observer of the world, so your comprehension of it is more accurate (and therefore more useful). You will be able to change the way you process the world around you; be able to take a step back from situations emotionally, improving your motivation, attitude, behavior and day-to-day happiness.
It will also help you see the connections between your experiences and other peoples’, improving your relationships in all realms of your life.
As Myers says, everything is connected.
Learn more about Myers on his BookTrib author profile page.
