Scattered vs Shaped Learning
Learning can take place in two ways — planned and random. Both are relevant and should be included in every learning journey. Planned learning, or as it is called in LeLe, shaped learning is about collecting materials and assembling them into a learning unit. You can even shape multiple learnings and intentionally decide what to focus on and what to ignore. This makes shaped learning very time-intensive and deliberate.
But learning can also happen randomly. Besides taking time to plan a whole learning unit, there are also moments in which you want to learn immediately. You stumble across an interesting article or video and are intrigued by its insights and mentioned concepts. You don’t want to put it aside as idle material for a potential future learning unit. You want to take some quick notes. You want to make use of the insights now.
Random learning, or as it is called in LeLe, scattered learning, is in contrast to shaped learning. Random insights are scattered around us in almost all content we consume, be it an article, book, video, lecture or even image. Instead of collecting and planning a learning unit, you just want to take some quick notes and connect them to your pre-existing knowledge. Scattered learning deals with small insights. One article or one video. Not a series of lectures which might be better suited for a shaped learning unit. This makes scattered learning curiosity-intensive and fast.
how to shape a learning
We talked about shaping a learning in detail in the previous article. But to quickly summarize, shaping a learning is about collecting materials and assembling them into one learning unit. You do this by clearly defining what you want to learn and why you want to learn it. After that, you skim and scope the materials you collected to get a list of concepts you are going to learn about. It shouldn’t be detailed. A rough outline is fine and enough. It’s just to prime your mind and test if you are really curious about the topic. Finally, you also define how you want to practice it and how much time you want to invest.
how to do scattered learning
Scattered learning is more spontaneous and often happens while we are mindlessly scrolling. So, the first step in scattered learning is to mindlessly scroll until you stumble across an interesting insight. Or you can intentionally read an article or watch a video which you saved for later. After that it’s simple. Consume the content, rephrase the insight, and connect it to other notes you already have.
You can use whatever tool you prefer. The important part is to rephrase and connect the insight to what you already know.
Make use of both scattered and shaped learning. Don’t ignore one or the other. You can even combine them. Just pick some of your main notes and insights from your shaped learning and connect them with the notes from your scattered learning.
