How to Slow Down, Learn More, and Continue Growing

Benjamin Etzold
2 min readNov 14, 2020

Staring into a spiral, even the one above, gives you a memorizing experience.

There’s so much energy moving, even in a picture!

Energy is required when you want to actively pursue building your skills and passions.

A lot of us are taught to master one area of a skill before moving to the next. In school, this is applied in mass amounts. This often leads to the ability to apply the knowledge or skill until the exam is over and the next chapter starts.

I’m sure you remember memorizing formulas for math class — but do you remember them now?

Test time!

What’s the answer?

I have no clue.

At one point, I had to memorize these formulas so that I could move on to the next ‘level’ of math.

If something significant depended on it, I’m sure I could conjure my textbook knowledge, but… I’d safely say I do not know calculus.

Memorizing facts and learning in segmented blocks isn’t bad, but revisiting what you are learning seems to lead to more growth — and not just in hard skill-building.

‘I’ve been through all this before,’ he says to his heart. ‘Yes, you have been through all this before,’ replies his heart. ‘But you have never been beyond it.’― Paulo Coelho

When learning about new topics or building relationships, try thinking about the process as a spiral.

Learn about it, practice with that knowledge, and then expand upon it each time you revisit.

Why does the spiral work?

Space is created when you take time to rest from learning about a subject.

In that space, you interact with and practice what you have learned. This leads to new ideas and connections that spark more growth when the subject is revisited.

It’s also easier to tackle larger projects when you have the mindset that not everything must be learned at once.

Connections can occur over time when you provide space, this creates more complex pathways to integrate information and understand the world around you.

🌀Spiral on!

--

--

Benjamin Etzold

I’m learning how to write meaningful content, this will be a process.