Nothing You Learn Is Ever Wasted

I love to learn new things and new ways of doing things. Even if it is just for the sake of it. I also love to take in new information. I am the kind of person that will read random facts just to know them.

I am a strong believer in constantly learning.

Wasted knowledge?

In our current climate, many people and graduates in particular end up never practising what they studied at school which makes most of them feel as though their education was a waste of time and resources.

I disagree.

Nothing you learn is ever wasted. And education is supposed to sharpen your mind enough to teach you how to combine and apply the different things that you learn to find solutions to the problems that you face as a person and as a society in general.

Learning is intended to push for further learning and for bringing solutions.

Even if degrees have been said to have been rendered useless due to the rising cases of global unemployment and underemployment, the knowledge that these individual graduates possess is valuable. And only requires to be leveraged appropriately for it to benefit them.

Berry Gordy’s story

In his autobiography To Be Loved Motown founder Berry Gordy shared one poignant story about this lesson that his mother had taught him.

As a child, he wasn’t too smart at school. He couldn’t even master the alphabet. To make up for this and to make people think that he was smart, he decided to learn the alphabet backwards.

Such a nonsensical thing to do many might think. What kind of logic was that even? It might have amused many people and even made them think that the young Gordy was the opposite of what he had intended them to think.

Years later when he had moved to Sunny California and had already made his millions from Motown his music recording company and JOBETE his music publishing company, he had an encounter with the police while driving his expensive car.

They stopped him and accused him of driving under the influence. Berry Gordy suspected that this was a racial profiling incident but he complied with the demands of the police regardless. To prove that he wasn’t driving while drunk, the police asked Mr Gordy to recite the alphabet backwards.

He did it impeccably!

Of course, the police let him go.

Nothing you learn is ever wasted.

For this reason, learn everything you can at any point you can just for the sake of it. You never know when it might come in handy.

Your brain is a supercomputer that takes in all this information, processes it, stores it, and retrieves it when needed.

Have you ever wondered how you knew something or how you were able to figure it out? That’s probably because your brain is constantly taking in information even when you might not be cognitively aware of it. And this information is what helped you figure that thing out.

Writers, songwriters and poets

It is said that for you to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. This is because by reading the work of others, you are also consciously and subconsciously learning about the techniques of writing. You are learning new words on the regular and how to apply them in sentences.

As an avid reader, I have found myself using words or sentence structures in my writing that I didn’t even realise I knew! These must have come from the wide variety of articles and books that I read. My brain must have been picking, processing and storing them. Then proceeds to retrieve them for my benefit every time I need to use them.

For you to be a good songwriter, listening to many different songs from diverse genres will inform you of the many techniques of songwriting. The same applies to poetry writing.

Before becoming a writer on Medium, I had written just one poem. After being on Medium where I was exposed to a wide selection of poems daily, I learnt about the techniques of poetry writing and I have written and published about 20 poems so far.

Sometimes we learn things even when we are not aware that we are learning them.

Babies and learning

It is suggested that the brains of babies are the greatest learning machines ever invented. It is also said that babies learn so much so quickly because they spend the formative parts of their lives observing and listening in silence.

This is a tip we should borrow from our cute little humans. To learn, we have to pay keen attention and consistently listen silently.

Wikipedia defines learning as the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. Humans, animals, and some machines can learn. Some plants have even been said to display this.

“I am still learning.” — Michelangelo at 87

Even after he had already painted and sculptured one of the world’s most glorious masterpieces, Michelangelo at the age of 87 still felt that he was still learning.

I find that to be very poignant and powerful.

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I feel any old dog that constantly sharpens its mind through the constant uptake and embracing of new information can learn anything.

It’s evident that the more open-minded a person is and the more willing they are to change their opinions based on new information the more hip they are. And the younger they feel and come out.

Parenting and embracing change

Parents who are willing to embrace new trends and attitudes have better relationships with their children in my opinion because they can understand them better. Even when the factors surrounding age and generational gaps are conflicting, the very fact that they keep current with what’s happening around their children’s lives and environments, in general, helps them view the world from new perspectives and this, in turn, helps them maintain healthy parent-child relationships.

Commercial aspect

In the current environment of change or die out, learning is paramount.

Companies that refuse to embrace the new trends in production and marketing will not enjoy longevity. Those that lead these trends will thrive. And learning is what will guide them.

Personal level

At a personal level, you can watch all you can but until you get hands-on and are willing to get dirty, you will never learn anything!

To learn how to write a book, a song, or a piece of poetry, you have to attempt it and not just resign to reading about it. To learn how to successfully grow crops, to bake a cake or a new recipe, play an instrument or to paint, you have to practice it.

Learning has to come with practical experiences for it to be effective. For it to be useful the lessons learnt have to be applied. And the learner needs to embrace change for them to reap the maximum benefits of learning.

Making learning a habit is something we should all embrace because nothing that is learnt is ever wasted.