Varied versus Predictable

A related topic to focused learning is predictable learning. You know exactly what you’ll be looking at, because you focus on that thing. You know, when you wake up, that you’ll read the same chapters of your textbook as last time.

An even better example is in physical training. Predictable training would be an exercise like this,

• Your coach throws the ball at you from the same position, in the same way, each time
• You need to hit it with your baseball bat
• Repeat this 20 times

You know exactly how and when the ball comes. It is predictable. Well, the tip below will also be predictable by now.

Random learning is more effective than predictable learning

What’s the difference?

I explained Predictable Learning above. You know what you’re going to get or how you have to solve something. You just need to do it, using the right movements or steps.

Varied Learning means you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get. The exercise is to hit the ball, but how will it be thrown? Fast? Slow? Curve? From where? You don’t know. There is variety and some unknowns to your learning.

Research shows this to be significantly more effective.

With predictable learning, you’re strengthening the thing you already have. Repeating the (physical) habit you already do. This means there’s on experimentation, no significant challenge, and all your feedback is the same.

With varied learning, you get all these good things for free. You experiment with how to consume information, or how to deal with situations you’ve never seen before. That is a challenge, as there are gaps in your knowledge and you need to process what’s happening. (If the ball comes at you the same way each time, you stop looking at the ball and just assume it will be in some place.) And your feedback can come in surprising ways.

Note, again, that this is not random learning. You’re still certain that a ball will be thrown at you and that you need to hit it. The coach doesn’t suddenly roll a bowling ball from behind and expect you to jump over it. That would be a random challenge—one which probably results in injuries and losing members of the team.

Why don’t people do it?

The same answer as in the previous chapter. It’s more messy, it’s less controlled, it’s more work. School likes predictable learning—but ignore school.

If you train one specific swing, from one specific throw, every day … you’re going to be amazing at that thing in a few weeks. That’s tangible progress. You see yourself striking the ball harder and with more confidence each session.

But any other ball? Any other situation in that game? You’re hopeless.

If you train in varied ways, you’ll often be confronted with situations that you can’t handle. Balls you hopelessly miss, because they came in unexpected ways. This can be demotivating or frustrating.

But trust the process. Throw varied challenges at yourself. The fact you can’t do something now, means you’ve just entered an area of great potential growth.

A tip: build your campaign (again)

Previous chapter already showed you how to incorporate this—mostly. By looping through different training sessions, you get variety.

But we can go a bit further now. If possible, randomize your training process or challenges.

With physical sports, you can design situations that lead to unpredictable results. For example, one of the walls of our house is very rough and uneven. If I hit a ball against it, there’s a good chance it bounces in some weird way. After years of playing in the back yard, this turned out to be amazing training. When playing any ball sport, I can usually predict where it will end up (and react) faster than people who play the actual sport.

With other topics, you can do the same, but it might take more effort. You need a computer (or some other person) to randomize your challenges. (Because, well, if you do it yourself … it’s still predictable!)

This is, again, why board games and video games are great. They usually have a lot of randomness.

• How the world is generated
• How a deck of cards is shuffled and dealt
• The turns other players take (and how that affects you)
• How much damage you deal with attacks
• Where a monster spawns
• What items you find in the world
• Etcetera …

You still follow the rules of the game. Your object is the same and predictable. It’s just that a large part of the game loop is varied and unpredictable.

This is the second reason I recommend learning to program. You can use that in many ways to challenge yourself. For example,

• Write quizzes. It asks you a random subset of questions. Or the questions itself can be randomized (if they have numbers, for example)
• Create a website for the topic you’re learning. Each day, press a button to display a random page from that website. Read that.
• Create a tiny game with random setups. One that’s about whatever you’re learning.

If this isn’t possible, or too much work, look for existing tools that do this. There are many websites, apps, games that focus on a gamified (and randomized) version of studying a topic.

Example: sports coaches

Most sports coaches I talked to in my life, subscribed to this principle. They had numerous stories about students who would be exceptionally good during the exercises. In the “ideal situation”, for example, they could that tennis ball amazingly well.

But then, after years of training, they felt confident and entered competition.

There they learned that they were hopeless in an actual match. Because each match produces thousands of situations you’ve never (or barely) seen before. Because your brain is trained to do a few swings very well, instead of the better training method of gaining a general understanding of a skill that can be applied to anything.

Usually, this prompted the coaches to swap out half of their training session for playing matches against random opponents. Sometimes with extra random challenges. (Serve must come there, you may only touch the soccer ball once, etcetera.)

Example: pick your projects

Like with experimentation, a large part of this is decided before you do something. Pick topics or skills that allow you to gamify it this way. Pick projects about which you are uncertain—on purpose!

Sometimes those bad ideas end up being bad ideas indeed. But quite often, I did such a project and grew in unexpected ways. I started that project thinking “meh, don’t know what this would accomplish, but it’s something new to try”. I ended up learning a lot.

Afterwards, though, I do always feel the need to go back to a more predictable path for a few weeks. Because it’s varied learning, not random learning.