Desirable difficulties
Remember all of those essay questions in homework and on tests? I think it is safe to say everyone universally hated those. They required more effort that multiple choice or true/false questions. They made us slow down and actually work. And yet, those essay questions probably taught us more than any of the others.
Writing is a magical learning tool. It’s why college includes oh so many papers to write. Writing forces us to recall information and then elaborate on it. Retrieval and elaboration are two of the evidence-based strategies that support learning. They work because they create what we call desirable difficulties. (You can check out my other post on effortful learning and desirable difficulties here). We have to use effort to recall what we know and then use even more effort to take what we know and apply it against our writing prompt.
You may have heard the idea that you don’t truly understand something until you can teach it. Well, writing is a form of explaining or teaching what you know to a reader. You have to connect all the independent things that you know and synthesize them into something new. You have to elaborate on what you know to create a cohesive thought that readers can follow.
Blogging is a great example of this. In fact, blogging can even add another component, known as generation. Generation is where you attempt to solve a problem without having been taught how, otherwise known as trial and error. Often, a blogger will sit down with a general idea of what they want a reader to know, but with no idea of how they want to get them there. When we write, in effect, we are making up as we go. Generation is another desirable difficulty, an effortful strategy that reinforces learning.
If you’re looking to master a new subject, skill or habit, try blogging or journaling. Write out why you want to master it, what you hope to gain from it, and what you’ve lerned so far. Pretend you’re teaching someone else what you’ve learned. Don’t worry about being an expert before you start. Just start… and perhaps you’ll become an expert along the way. And even if you never become a world class expert in something, know that you will have improved your own mastery of the subject just by forcing yourself to connect your thoughts.
Writing = learning. Go write!
