CHAPTER 11

11. Cross-Pollination and Brute Force Learning

“Who is wise? He that learns from everyone.”

—Jewish Proverb

Now that your passion for learning is matched by your ability to learn quickly and easily, you’re likely to go crazy like a tourist at a buffet. New sources, new subjects, new books, new courses. It’s all so exciting! And just as I did after Anna and Lev’s course, you’ll probably dive in head first, devouring everything in sight, and jumping around like a monkey from tree to tree.

Many students, myself included, tend to beat themselves up about this. One of the biggest “complaints” I hear from students is that they’re unable to focus in on one subject, book, course, or field. “If I could just finish what I started, then I could go on to learning the next thing. Why can’t I just focus?”

But what if I told you that there’s actually a great deal of benefit to jumping around? Or that it’s not only okay to learn multiple subjects from multiple sources, but that it’s actually preferred?

First, let’s start with the simpler version of this behavior: jumping from subject to subject. In my peak learning phases, when my workload was lighter, I’d jump around and learn a different subject every day. One day, I’d be obsessed with Russian. The next, I’d spend hours tinkering away on the piano. On the weekend, I might devour an entire biography in one sitting, practice Olympic weight lifting, or spend six hours in the park learning AcroYoga.

What a mess, right?

Well, in reality, what I came to realize is this: learning anything helps you learn everything.

First off, learning unique new subjects exposes you to all different types of knowledge. This, in turn, expands your mind’s ability to take in new information. From the outside, music is so seemingly different from, say, acrobatics or law. Thus, casting a wide net and learning a diverse set of subjects develops a broader set of skills for learning. What’s more, as a SuperLearner, it gives you more anchor points of pre-existing knowledge to connect to. To someone who has never studied a foreign language or a musical instrument before, learning one is a monumental task. But to someone who already speaks or plays four, it’s a lot easier. There’s just so much crossover.

It’s important to note, though, that this crossover is not limited to knowledge in the same field. After all, the whole of human knowledge is in some way connected. It’s nearly impossible to learn something without it carrying over into other types of learning. When I decided to learn AcroYoga, a form of partner acrobatics that involves dazzling poses, flips, and routines, I didn’t know the first thing about it. But I did know plenty about Olympic weight lifting, hand balancing, and kinesiology. Because of this, I was able to “carry over” a lot of my knowledge and radically condense my learning curve. All I had to do was make use of my understandings of weight transfer, biomechanics, and balance into this seemingly foreign field of study. It wasn’t long before I became quite the accomplished AcroYogi.

In the SuperLearner methodology, we refer to this as cross-pollination. Cross-pollination states that learning one subject will have significant, unforeseen benefits when learning another. This is not only a reason to learn as much as you can about as many things as you can; it’s a strategy you can use to your own advantage. Want to become a better golfer? Put down the clubs and pick up a book on biomechanics, physics, or kinesiology. Want to be a better negotiator? Take a couple courses on body language, psychology, or mirror neurons. The examples are endless.

But there’s another important benefit of cross-pollination. It allows us to take advantage of our enthusiasm and passion for learning in real time. As we’ve discussed, sometimes in life we must learn things we are less than enthusiastic about. Why, then, suppress our passion, motivation, and enthusiasm for learning when they do present themselves? If you’re not excited about studying guitar today and are longing to watch that foreign language movie, I say do it! The motivation and drive to learn are precious resources, and so when you feel them within yourself, take advantage!

Cross-pollination encourages us to jump from subject to subject more freely—but what about within subjects? When I began studying Russian, I couldn’t home in and focus on just one source of learning. There were just too many options to choose from! Online courses, podcasts, textbooks, blog posts, flash cards, meetup groups. Heck, I even began watching the Russian version of Winnie The Pooh to see what I could learn (if you need a good laugh, I highly, highly recommend it). Certainly, doing so hindered my progress, right? I mean, wouldn’t it have been better to pick just one book and read it start to finish?

No way! As we learn, our brains are forming complex neural networks of everything we know and understand about a subject. And no matter how good a particular book, course, or tutor is, nobody and nothing is comprehensive enough to stand completely on its own. Think about it this way: though kale is certainly very healthy for you, you’d be hard-pressed to find a doctor advocating the “nothing but kale” diet. Holistic nutrition, like holistic learning, requires a great deal of variety—even within the same subject matter. Even if a particular resource seems exhaustive, you still stand to gain from approaching a subject in as many different ways as possible. Why? Because different people understand, present, and explain the exact same concept in very different ways. As a learner, it’s impossible to know if the way that you’re first exposed to is what’s going to “click” for you.

I’ll never forget the way I learned about one particularly confusing concept in Advanced Corporate Finance. One afternoon, I stepped out of the lecture hall at INSEAD, one of the world’s top business schools. I’d just listened to my professor explain the concept in depth for over an hour. You’d think that I would have completely understood the subject, right? After all, this particular professor had literally written the textbook on it! He was one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic! And yet, I was more confused than ever. Neither the textbook nor the lecture made the slightest bit of sense to me. Not sure what to do, I went into the library, put on my headphones, and pulled up the completely free website khanacademy.com. There, the same concept was explained in an entirely different way, which, to me, was much, much clearer. Within fifteen minutes, I understood the subject in its entirety. Was my professor a bad teacher? Not at all. It just so happened that the way he understood and explained the subject was not a way that would ever make sense to me as a student. Had I persisted in trying to learn it his way, I might still be sitting in that classroom with my head in my hands.

In the SuperLearner methodology, we call this approach brute force learning. It’s a term I learned from the incredibly clever entrepreneur Mattan Griffel. Mattan himself lifted the term “brute force” from the world of computer hacking. In that context, to “brute force” something means to attack it from as many different perspectives as possible to try and gain complete access. Brute force learning, on the other hand, means learning something from as many different perspectives as possible to try and gain complete understanding.

Doing this has a number of powerful benefits. First off, the more you approach something from different perspectives, the better, more holistic understanding you’ll have of it. If you think about the things in life you’ve mastered, it’s unlikely you did so by simply reading one book or attending one lecture on them. That’s because the first time you’re exposed to a new idea, your brain is still forming a fuzzy understanding of how it fits into your worldview. After all, you have no pre-existing knowledge to connect it to. You are grasping at straws, trying to find ways to link it up to the things you already know. But over time, with repeated and increasingly detailed exposure, your brain is able to figure out where the details fit into the bigger picture. It’s able to connect each new piece of information to the rest of your knowledge, creating stronger neural networks, and therefore, a much more complete understanding.

What’s more, as Mattan notes, brute force learning teaches us that it’s okay not to understand something the first time we learn it. This itself has unforeseen benefits. As we already know, the more spaced repetition and overlearning we do, the more likely we are to remember the information long term. Brute force learning, then, is also a way to overlearn, without the monotony of rereading the same textbook or rewatching the same lecture. Overall, learning this way takes a lot of the pressure out of learning and prevents us from feeling “dumb” if we don’t get it immediately.

I sure wish I knew about this little trick when I was in middle school!

The next time you prepare to learn something, don’t confine yourself to learning monogamously! As you build your learning plan, make sure to include numerous sources, perspectives, and peripheral subjects. Go on tangents, and get lost in the weeds! This not only fulfills yet another requirement of Dr. Malcolm Knowles—self-concept. It will also result in better overall understanding—and a lot less boredom and frustration.