Updating

In my other life, I do tech support. After 25 years at that, I find I repeat myself a lot. I started saving emails and documents that I had sent out that had useful or complicated steps, so I wouldn't have to retype it when the inevitable next time came around. I take a bit of pride in my "one-page wonders", memos that provide instructions or explanations in a clear, concise and carefully tested bullets or paragraphs. Feedback from my clients and users suggest that I have learned a bit about how to communicate. So it makes sense, to me, to keep some of these "pearls" around for repeat customers.

However--and this is a BIG however--I have had some reason to actually read some of these boilerplate messages, like when I know that some step has changed or I find that more information would help, etc. When I do, more times than I would like to admit, I find some egregious typo or omission in my "pearl" that I not only missed the first time around, but continued to miss every time I re-used the message.

Our brains work much the same way. Learning something takes time, usually, and varying amounts of work. During the learning phase, we pay attention, check facts, ask questions, edit our understanding, update our model, etc. At some point, we decide we "know" this fact or procedure or belief, and we stop reviewing it, just as I stopped seeing what I had said in my re-usable messages.

Just like my stored email boilerplate, learning something can serve you well. You don't have to remember how to read--you just do it. You don't have to pay attention to recognize your best friend--you just know that face and voice. But things change, inevitably and continually, and if you don't check in now and then to make sure you have all the latest info on a subject, you may find yourself with the neurological equivalent of a typo--assuming you know something that you don't, or believing something that no longer makes sense, or no longer applies to your world.

Learning works best if we keep the info up-to-date with a healthy skepticism of our own knowledge and beliefs, and with attention to the accuracy of our underlying information.