Find the Alphabets First
Have you ever been in a room full of people where you don't speak the language? Learning something new is exactly like that.
What should you do? Find the alphabets first 🔤
In the book Thinking Fast & Slow, Daniel Kahnemen writes -
"Learning medicine consists in part the language of medicine"
This holds true beyond the world of medicine as well.
Learning anything new requires you to learn a new language at first. A language is composed of alphabets, words, grammar - all needed in order to form sentences and be a fluent speaker.
Each field has their own language:
Cooking has flavours, textures, ingredients - coming together to compose a dish
Crossfit has exercises like squats, lunges - a combination of which make different wods
Music has notes, octaves, scales, rhythm, harmony - making up our favourite song
This sounds fairly obvious, but can be quite easy to forget.
Exhibit A - my tryst with learning the Ukelele. Story time…
5 years back, I bought a Ukelele. I'd been wanting to learn how to play an instrument for a longest time and a friend told me it’s easy to pick up. Once I got my hands on one, I did what most people do...
I googled how to play my favourite song on the Ukelele. And then another, and then one more.
In a couple of months, I lost interest. I was learning new chords and new songs but I didn't think I was getting better.
In 2020, during the pandemic I picked it up again. This time I asked a musician friend of mine to help me out. He started with a 90 mins session on Music Theory with me.
This changed everything. The change was so apparent, it made me feel stupid for not having done this before.
From songs being a mix of chords → they suddenly had a meaning
From memorising of my hands → I understood the logic they were based on
From trying to speed up my fingers → I knew how to use a metronome to progress slowly
Because I understood the language of music, I was able to progress faster and learning became easier.
So the next time you’re struggling to learn something? Ask yourself one simple question -
“Do I understand the language?”
Remember to find the alphabets first!