Hello Listeners, it's March 21st, 2023, and welcome to another episode of The Science of Self.
Our podcast is dedicated to helping you improve your life from the inside out, and today we have a fantastic episode in store for you.
We will be discussing Peter Hollins' book, "Rapid Knowledge Acquisition and Synthesis - How to Quickly Learn, Comprehend, and Apply, and Master New Information and Skills."
In this episode, we will delve into the powerful tools and techniques that can transform your learning experience.
Whether you're a novice or an expert, Peter Hollins' groundbreaking book offers scientifically-proven methods to help you absorb, retain, and comprehend information more effectively than ever before.
We'll explore various topics, such as:
1.
Single and double loop learning: Discover how to continuously adapt and grow in your knowledge and skills.
2.
Adapt and grow: Learn how to cultivate a mindset that embraces change and personal development.
3.
The theory-in-use: Understand the importance of recognizing and challenging the underlying assumptions that guide your actions and decisions.
Don't miss out on this insightful episode as we discuss these game-changing concepts and how they can help you become a master of learning.
Plus, learn how to get your hands on Peter Hollins' book, "Rapid Knowledge Acquisition and Synthesis," which is available on Amazon, and the audiobook can be found on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible.
For more information or to connect with Peter Hollins, visit his website at [bitly - PeterHollins].
Let's embark on a journey that will transform your approach to learning and personal growth.
Remember, the key to unlocking your full potential lies in the ability to learn quickly and effectively – and this episode is just what you need to get started!
The double loop model of learning is not so much a fixed technique as a shift in perspective or mindset.
It’s a new approach to taking in, synthesizing and retaining the information we want to learn, whether that’s a new motor skill, a language, or academic material for an important exam.
And it’s one that is necessary for the goals of this book.
To make it work, we need to be willing to abandon the old, conventional learning models that we all learned in school.
Though we may gravitate toward these out of habit, we need to constantly remind ourselves that the knee-jerk way of doing things is not necessarily the most effective or efficient.
The way we’ve done things, the assumptions we’ve held, and everything up until this point could be wrong.
The double loop learning framework makes you embraces this for better knowledge acquisition and comprehension.
There’s a reason that many athletic trainers would prefer to train someone starting from scratch rather than someone with a little bit of prior experience; that prior experience or knowledge can lead to skewed beliefs or habits.
Again, we need to get back to basics and change our definition of learning.
Typically, we think of learning like a predictable ladder—one step at a time.
School coursework is designed like this: you finish one level and then move onto the next, block by block.
A, B, C, D, and so on in a forward, linear fashion.
But there’s an alternative to this linear model—a circular one in which A leads to B, B leads to C, but then C can also lead back into A again.
In a linear model, you can only advance or fall down (reminds you of the fixed mindset and its conception of failure, doesn’t it?)
but in a loop you are always in process, always learning (i.e.
working within a growth mindset and having “beginner’s mind”).
In linear models, learning establishes a hierarchy—twelfth graders know more than tenth graders, and bosses know better than their employees.
In a loop model, people only compete against themselves, and everyone is merely at a particular point in their process, which is neither better nor worse than any other point.
In a learning loop, you can always improve, and in fact you can sustain yourself forever, continually developing skills and knowledge using constant feedback and starting at the “beginning” again.
From this point of view, there is never really any finish line or big prize at the end.
Learning is more like an ongoing way of life, it just requires you to honestly assess yourself from time to time.
Consider a researcher who finds some interesting correlations between two diseases that were previously assumed to be unconnected.
One stage of her learning is to conduct experiments on participants she’s gathered.
She publishes her findings and her work is read by another professional from an entirely new field—and he has some interesting findings of his own to share.
The researcher takes this new data and devises another experiment to test fresh hypotheses, learning more and more from other colleagues weighing in on her original publication…
Here, there is no end goal, no point at which the researcher can say she’s finished, or has reached the top of the pile.
Instead, her learning inspires yet more learning, her questions spur further questions, and she is taking part in a growing and evolving process rather than a simplistic journey from A to B.
Single and double loop learning
Simply being in a loop is not necessarily all that useful, however.
After all, you could be repeating the same error over and over again, or engaging in a feedback loop that only compounds and amplifies any mistakes you made the first time around.
Understanding this allows us to see the difference between single and double loops.
Consider this (simplified) learning loop:
Step 1: Lift heavy weights at the gym.
Step 2: When a weight becomes too easy to lift, move up to a heavier weight.
Return to Step 1.
Following this protocol, you will most likely end up gaining muscle strength and becoming more fit at the gym.
At the very least, you’ll ensure that you’re always lifting the heaviest weight you possibly can.
But compare it to the following:
Step 1: Lift heavy weights at the gym.
Step 2: When a weight becomes too easy to lift, move up to a heavier weight.
Step 3: Track your progress and ask why you’re advancing—or not.
Step 4: Identify possible impediment to advancing with heavier weights—consider time of day when training, diet, supplements taken, hydration, mood and recovery time.
Step 5: Isolate each factor and run experiments—i.e.
does having fewer rest days actually make training more difficult?
Step 6: Adjust schedule according to findings from Step 5.
Step 7: Return to step 3 and repeat.
The above contains more than one loop, and these feed back dynamically into one another.
This is better learning in a nutshell.
It is harder, more involved, and leads to undoubtedly better outcomes.
Professor Chris Argyris at Harvard Business School explains that double loop learning, as you can see, is more complex.
In this learning mode, you are constantly zooming in and out of the process, adjusting, factoring in and re-appraising, shifting mental models depending on what works, and so on.
Argyris believes that we all have mental maps or cognitive schemas that we work from whenever we learn something, but we can become more or less conscious about which ones we use and how.
To put it simply, a single loop has you take an action, see the results, and feed back that action into the first step.
When you engage in double loop thinking, however, you spend extra time considering the mental models and frameworks you are operating within, looking carefully at how they inspire your actions, and in turn the results you’re getting.
Any time you learn to learn, or investigate the way you ask questions, or evaluate the outcomes of your evaluation technique, then you are adding that extra layer of complexity that gives more insight into what is actually happening on a deeper level.
Single loop learning is fine if you’re a machine, but it has its weaknesses.
It’s a fixed process.
If there’s a problem, there’s no real way to see that there’s a problem, or respond to it.
The only choices are to stop or carry on.
In some cases, we can respond to problems that crop up in single loop learning mechanisms.
We take an action, find that the result doesn’t match our expected outcome, make some changes to the action, and hope for a better result.
However, with this method of rectifying errors we only end up working on symptoms, while the root cause of those mistakes is left unnoticed.
Following this model tempts us into believing that if only we modified our own actions a little, our results would be better.
In reality, the number of factors affecting successful learning are far greater than what single loop learning allows for.
With double loop learning, however, you have the opportunity to question underlying assumptions, and the chance to fix and improve them for better outcomes.
You are no longer blindly acting, but consciously designing the most optimal way of proceeding.
To connect this idea to those we explored in the previous chapter, you might notice that a fixed mindset or a need for control encourages single loop learning, whereas a growth mindset or one founded on genuine curiosity is more likely to lead to double loop learning.
It’s simple: fear of failure, craving control and certainty, ego, not wanting to appear wrong or stupid, intolerance for the unknown or for being in process… all of these establish a mental model that, when unexamined, puts you on a single loop path that won’t necessarily lead to improvement.
Double loop learning is harder.
It requires time, patience, and humility to dismantle mental models that aren’t working for you.
Most people would prefer to stay firmly inside their mental model and assume that it’s all there is, and solve their problems from within this deliberately limited perspective.
Some of the hardest work in this area is acknowledging that you are in fact inhabiting a mental model at all.
The most difficult perspectives to shift are those that you simply experience as reality itself, as natural, inviolable laws that you have never stopped to consider alternatives to, or even the possibility of alternatives.
Whenever we face a problem or some novel situation in life, we can deal with it based on our previous experience.
However, the very essence of learning something new is doing and discovering what you didn’t do or know before!
If you approach new information or situations using only the same old rules you’ve learned from the past, you risk oversimplifying things, or missing enormous aspects of what’s in front of you.
Addressing the problem from our static inventory of mental tools is a necessary first step, but if we hope to make qualitative leaps in these skills themselves, we can’t help but focus on our learning methods, and ask how and whether they’re working.
The theory-in-use
You may be entirely unconscious of the inner theory you have about the world—i.e., what Argyris called an “espoused theory of action.” He, along with his fellow researchers, found that our espoused theory of certain actions is often different from our “theory-in-use,” which is the theory based on which we actually act.
Let’s consider an example from Argyris’s research.
A management consultant is asked how he would deal with a disagreement involving a certain client.
The consultant responds that he would start by stating the way he understood the disagreement, and then negotiate how they could come to an agreement based on relevant data.
However, a tape of the consultant when faced with such a predicament revealed that he simply dismissed his client’s opinion and advocated for his own views.
The former was his espoused theory, while the later was his theory-in-use.
Any decision, reaction or challenge that we face can be passed through this theory and interpreted accordingly with single loop learning.
The trouble is when you don’t allow yourself to solve a problem or learn something new any other way.
“Thinking out of the box” is something that sounds great, but is actually seldom done.
When we feel powerless to change the way something works, like if we have a fixed mindset, it can feel comfortable to simply assume that things are the way they are and that nothing you do will impact that arrangement in any significant way.
According to that view, our problems aren’t necessarily the result of our own actions, but merely a consequence of the way things are.
When was the last time you questioned the underlying “rules” of the game you’re playing, be it at school, in the workplace or in your chosen arena of expertise?
When did you last take a genuinely holistic view of the choices you made and accepted responsibility for them?
When did you accurately detect an error in the way you were seeing things, and have the courage to adapt?
This last question is perhaps the most pertinent.
A perfectionist or someone dominated by fear, control, or ego will look at a pristine track record and see the absence of “errors” as a good sign.
Isn’t it great to be right?
However, the opposite is likely true.
Deep learning happens when a person is capable of accurately detecting errors, inefficiencies or weaknesses in their own process, and is capable of making the relevant changes.
When you think about it, how else could learning possibly be?
In the same way as you cannot imagine a person all of a sudden speaking fluently in a brand-new language, you cannot picture a learning process that lacks mistakes, and the detection of those mistakes.
We should be striving not to avoid mistakes, but to continually make higher level ones.
As the author Jules Verne once said, “Science is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make because little by little they lead us to the truth.” The same applies to our lives as well.
We may be disappointed by errors, but ultimately those errors facilitate improvement if they are properly addressed and rectified.
Again, double loop learning does not entail adjustment at a merely superficial level, i.e.
how to run your current single loop more quickly.
Rather, it’s about taking a step back to look at the loops themselves.
Instead of blindly and uncritically following our normal protocol, we take charge and responsibility for managing our own protocols for ourselves.
Ironically, it’s this attitude that offers the prospect of real control!
Let’s look at an example.
A history teacher is struggling to engage his class on a chapter about the Industrial Revolution.
He has his teacher’s toolkit (“The way things are done”) and tries it all: disciplining students who chat during class, issuing punishments for those who don’t submit homework, yelling, lecturing, and so on.
None of these methods work, and his students still aren’t interested in the subject.
After a while, the teacher realizes he’s been engaging in single loop thinking, merely doubling down on his efforts using the same old tactics over and over.
He takes a broader view.
His first question—why are the students so uninterested in this topic?
He chats to some other teachers who all weigh in and give their advice, and reads up a little about student motivation.
And then it hits him—he’s still working within the old educational framework that governs how teachers and students relate, and how classroom problems are solved.
He understands what he needs to do next: talk to the students.
He realizes, with some surprise, that the students themselves are reflecting back the same problem he’s dealing with: they are bored in class because the curriculum is forcing a kind of uninspired single loop learning.
By reflecting on his own process in the classroom, the teacher simultaneously understands what’s missing in the material for the students, as well—critical thinking and reflection (i.e.
double loop learning).
He sees that when single loops are running, people don’t really learn—they just go round and round.
He changes his approach entirely.
The class has a long and lively debate about not only the topic, but about the learning experience itself.
He decides to work with the students to look back at all the ways the previous study plan failed.
The students step in and engage, feeling inspired and encouraged to design their own curriculum to adapt to changes and new developments.
Far from what it appeared at first, the students are actually intensely interested in the topic and enjoy learning about it and engaging with one another.
The teacher finds himself encountering completely new and fresh perspectives that he hadn’t considered before.
In this case, the single loop itself was preventing deeper and more insightful learning, and the students responded well when fear, hierarchies and stale old assumptions were questioned and updated.
This simple example makes it all seem pretty easy, but of course the quality of your double loop thinking will depend very much on the mental models you’re able to use, your decision-making process, your values, your willingness to change and a lot more.
It sounds simple enough to modify your learning based on new evidence and experimentation, but this is seldom a very clear-cut process.
When you zoom out far enough, almost everything that resembles a learning process, every idea, action, decision, thought, and even feeling can be seen as a part of a particular mental model or perspective.
Whatever it is that you’re trying to learn (including the skill of being better at learning), you’ll need some kind of framework to help you assess frameworks.
You’ll need a way to build loops that are dynamic and can grow.
You’ll need to have ways to identify and remove mistakes, so you don’t end up making them again and again.
This is not a merely objective phenomenon—you’ll have to be quite honest and discerning enough to weigh up your process and outcomes against your own deeper values.
Reflection is a rich and insightful process; it’s not merely scanning your code for bugs.
Adapt and grow
Argyris’s research suggests that one way in which we can do this is by considering different strategies to attain the outcome that we desire.
To go back to the management consultant example, regardless of which theory is at work when he contends with clients, the desired outcome is resolution of conflict.
However, instead of going with the theory he espoused or the theory he actually used, he might opt for a third strategy.
This could be simply listening to his client’s issues instead of outlining his understanding of the dispute.
However, this would be an example of single loop learning.
The consultant would only have fixed the symptom—failing to properly resolve conflict with a client—without looking at why he wants to arrive at a peaceful resolution in the first place.
If he were to critically examine his motivations to achieve his desired outcome, he might just shift from simply ameliorating a disagreement to creating a meaningful dialogue that leads to mutual benefit.
This is what would constitute true double loop learning.
Experience is always useful.
But be careful—twenty years’ experience might merely be the same single year’s experience repeated twenty times over.
This is why many experts can actually perform worse in some areas than newbies—they simply face problems in the same way as they have faced all previous problems.
What’s more, experts may be acting from more fear of failure, need for control or ego than people with less knowledge, since their identities are more bound up in their expertise, and they may feel more threatened by error or the shame of saying “I don’t know.”
Intelligent and educated people can thus put themselves at a disadvantage, especially if they are not actively seeking ways to adapt and change their mental models (not just the content of those models).
The world is constantly changing, and those who stay still are actually falling behind.
Being heavily invested in appearing right, in having mastery, and so on, we make more mistakes and are less likely to notice them and fix them.
We may also shy away completely from challenges that could help us grow, or from novel experiences when they fall outside our expectations.
We may get trapped in a cycle of simply solving the problem that’s directly in front of us, again and again, never having the time or energy to wonder if there’s a better way to do it.
We try to avoid pain, discomfort, embarrassment or uncertainty.
So, we carry on doing what we know works, even though in the longer term, this may lead to objectively more disadvantages!
Ours is a productivity obsessed culture that wants profit and advancement at all costs, constantly, and at breakneck speed.
We seldom encourage ourselves or one another to stop and reflect, to appraise, to think more deeply or broadly, to take a more creative route through a problem, or to question authority and convention.
But all the more reason to do so!
Time is a complicating factor when it comes to single versus double loop thinking.
Many people believe that they don’t have time to dwell on hypothetical, blue-sky thinking when they’re facing urgent real-world problems .
It’s hard to commit to something that may or may not work, and will only pay off sometime in the future.
Isn’t it easier to just carry on as we always did, getting the same predictable but comforting result?
The fact that so many people choose the latter is proof of how difficult the former is.
We spend our formative years in schools that teach us methods of thinking that never go beyond single loops (blame the designers of the curriculum for failing to adapt and reflect!).
We may have bosses that want us to work in limited roles that consist of a handful of single loops done indefinitely, with no scope for engaging with or adjusting them.
The biggest culprit in cementing single loop thinking is actually success itself.
If you are used to succeeding, switching to double loop thinking (where failure and mistakes are essential) may make you may feel defensive and resistant.
Smart people may paradoxically be worse learners, because they so seldom make mistakes, and therefore seldom learn from them.
When they do slip up, they may deny it, avoid it, or blame someone else.
Their intellect makes them unable to step up and learn when it really counts.
Imagine an office run by such an expert.
This is the typical boss from hell: they know everything, never admit to mistakes or apologize, and frequently blame underlings for their poor decisions.
This is the person who asks for honest opinions during a meeting and then quietly penalizes those who offer them.
Worst of all, this boss assumes that everyone working for him is an idiot, and needs his constant micromanaging.
Here we see another hidden effect of fixed, single loop thinking: it sets up self-fulfilling prophecies.
The employees, discouraged from critical thinking and never given any chance to make decisions for themselves, end up doing less—why bother when their manager already knows all the answers?
Even worse, some employees start to blame one another and seek underhanded tactics to compete for his favor.
The “expert” has created the very conditions he wished to avoid—he now has a team of people who cannot be trusted, and who only want to do the bare minimum to get ahead for their own benefit.
A teacher or parent may do the same, or you may do it with yourself, every time you self-jeopardize because of poor self-esteem.
We all hate bad bosses and egotistical leaders, but in the above example, did you identify with the employees or the manager?
The truth is, it’s hardest of all to look at ourselves and ask why a problem is happening, or why we’re failing to learn or understand something new.
Simple, defensive loops are a way to avoid effort and pain.
But they’re also an excellent way of avoiding learning.
A foolproof way of noticing whether you’re in a single loop pattern is to look for the tendency to blame others and not question the role of your own perspectives and mental models.
It’s better to be of mediocre skill and intelligence but a master at learning from mistakes than to be a genius who cannot stand to look at his imperfections at all.
Blaming, spinning up complicated justifications or making excuses gets you precisely 0 percent closer to the things you care about.
Invite failure, get experimental, become curious
What paradigm are you working within?
Where did these conventions come from?
Are they working for you?
What habits are you stuck in?
What assumptions are you making?
What unspoken rules are you following?
What is your attitude toward failure?
What’s the bigger picture?
Let’s return to our history teacher.
If he continues refining and adapting his approach as he goes, he may encounter resistance, but he also may start to campaign for real change in not just his school, but classrooms everywhere.
He takes what he understands from the chapter on the Industrial Revolution and realizes that schools themselves have modelled their architecture, schedules and curricula on the design principles and ideology that came with that era.
He notices that the working world is desperately trying to move on from the old nine-to-five conventions, and starts to wonder what a truly modern education system looks like.
His double loop learning, in other words, can carry him through his career, his entire life, expanding and enriching his experience and opening up constantly new horizons.
It's the things you don’t see or give a second thought that most deserve your renewed attention.
But when brought out into the light of conscious awareness, we give ourselves the chance to actively change things, to experiment and adjust.
It may be that the history teacher doesn’t take his ideas far, or his experiment in student-led lesson plans flops.
It doesn’t matter, however.
This would not be a failure, but simply a possible outcome from the process.
The real failure – one we so often don’t see or measure as one—is the unexplored alternative, or the missed opportunity to improve.
We don’t think of entrepreneurship as learning, but that’s precisely what it is—learning about your customer, your market, your best product.
The business that barges ahead while failing to learn the lessons the customers are teaching will fail.
With a growth mindset, an entrepreneur can drop their ego, start from scratch and become comfortable assuming nothing.
Those operating from a growth mindset look at every bit of information that comes to them with the same curiosity—why is this happening?
What happens if I do something different?
What’s working?
What isn’t?
There are no value judgments, just receptivity.
No ego, no fear of failure, no blame, no embarrassment, only a sincere desire to apply oneself consistently to the process of improvement.
At some point, make the conscious decision to choose to value learning over being right.
Actively court feedback from others and notice how the world doesn’t end if you challenge yourself or admit that something could be better.
Rather, notice how dropping resistance to failure seems to bring a kind of relief, and a whole lot of open space to play.
Take fear and ego out of the equation and you will always learn much, much faster.
• Start by asking questions.
• Become curious about your process and honest about how it could be improved.
• Conduct an experiment.
• Use what you learn to make changes, then appraise again.
• Turn experience into concrete action.
Here’s how that may look in real life:
• An artist begins by asking about their assumptions about good art, how one learns better technique, and so on.
• They notice that they are merely mimicking other artists, and honestly see that their technique is lacking in originality.
• They try something new—they paint without expectation, experimenting with a process where they make art they never intend to share with anyone, just to see what happens.
• The art turns out to be surprisingly original, but the technique is still lacking.
The artist begins again and commits to painting more in their own style, now asking what new techniques they can learn instead of the conventional ones they began with.
• They take concrete action—they change teachers and start studying a method that is more in line with their own style and creative expression.
Whatever your field of interest, you will likely find examples of individuals in that arena who have succeeded precisely because they chose to learn rather than to be right.
The irony is that in dropping expectations, pressures, assumptions and our allegiance to old rules and norms, we give ourselves the chance to truly achieve and innovate, and at a far higher level.
Takeaways
• There are two main models of learning: single and double loop learning.
Single loop learning is the way we have been taught to acquire new information all throughout our schooling years.
This is the method that simply involves performing certain actions (for example, rote learning) to achieve certain outcomes (doing well in examinations).
Here, the emphasis isn’t on the learning itself, but the purpose for which we are learning.
• One major drawback of single loop learning is the way it handles errors and mistakes.
If you make one, there isn’t really a good way to resolve that besides simply doing something different (say, rote learning more effectively).
We never consider the underlying causes of our errors, instead dealing with them only on a superficial level.
• This is where double loop learning shines.
It’s a method of information synthesis and processing.
Though harder and more involved than single loop learning, it is substantially more effective at facilitating learning.
Here, we constantly utilize feedback and our own introspection to evolve the ways in which we learn.
We repeatedly question the methods and steps we follow, as well as why we’re following them in the first place.
Instead of simply scoring well in examinations, we learn for the sake of learning, which in turn helps us generate curiosity for our subject matter.
This results in holistic learning, which helps us achieve our initial goal of scoring well too.
• Those with a fixed mindset are generally more likely to learn through single loop mechanisms due to the comfort and lack of self-reflection involved.
On the other hand, those with a growth mindset are more naturally attuned to double loop learning.
It is often hard to look at ourselves and accept that we may be the ones who have a fixed mindset or follow single loop learning mechanisms, but the first step to being able to learn better is to recognize the mistakes we are making in the present.
This inevitably involves getting comfortable with failure, since that is unavoidable.
So, how can you start incorporating double loop learning into your life?
Here are three actionable steps to help you get started:
1.
Cultivate a growth mindset: Embrace the idea that your intelligence and skills can be developed through effort and learning.
This will encourage you to question your methods and embrace failure as a stepping stone to success, rather than seeing it as a roadblock.
2.
Practice introspection: Regularly reflect on your learning process and ask yourself why you're following certain steps or methods.
By understanding the underlying reasons behind your choices, you can identify areas for improvement and adjust your approach accordingly.
3.
Seek feedback and evolve: Actively seek feedback from others and use it to refine your learning strategies.
This not only helps you improve but also demonstrates your commitment to growth, which can inspire those around you.
Whether you're a student, professional, or simply someone who wants to expand their horizons, the principles of double loop learning can transform your approach to learning and help you achieve success in any area of your life.
So, as you continue on your journey towards self-improvement, remember that embracing double loop learning is a powerful tool for personal growth and lifelong success.
By questioning your methods, seeking feedback, and cultivating a growth mindset, you'll be well on your way to mastering new information and skills.
Thank you for joining us on The Science of Self!
Until next time, keep learning, growing, and striving for excellence!