How does learning work in practice?

Learning often takes a long time. Not always, perhaps. But learning anything with any degree of complexity is likely to take a long time, and a lot of trials (and tribulations).

When we talk about "meta-learning" (i.e. learning about learning), we are assuming there is something there to learn, in other words, "knowledge about learning". A reasonable question to ask is whether this is a general "body" of knowledge about learning (something we might go to school to study), or whether it is a specific sort of knowledge that can only be developed in practice (e.g. learning "how I learn best").

So far, the wording of the principle is vague, but let's say: anything that we can identify as a general body of knowledge about learning will be useful, surely (psychological theories of learning, abstract theories of learning, etc.). As for the kinds of learning that have to happen in practice, here maybe we can draw on theories of practice (I am thinking primarily of Buddhism, but marxism or gnosticism etc. also come to mind).

Indeed the word "learning" suggests that there is something concrete or objective to be learned (like the French language), but many things that we "learn" are more personal or subjective (like table tennis). The concrete things have more of an edge, and tend to have right and wrong answers. By contrast, assuming you stay within a few basic rules, there's no right or wrong way to play table tennis. Some techniques may helpful to learn, but on the whole each person will play using his or her own style.

Of course, people speak in their own style, too. But a certain degree of mastery is needed before "style" can be achieved. Before that point it's not even clear that the person is speaking the language (they may just be making sounds, or reciting a few memorized phrases).

And this seems similar for "emotional learning" or "thinking". It is possible to experience something emotionally in a more articulated or less articulated way. Typical not-well-articulated ways of thinking and feeling are termed "reactive", since they are associated with simple rules (imagistically, "seeing red"). More articulated ways include "responsibility" -- the ability to take a situation into consideration without an immediate reaction. Here instead one takes into account things like the possible consequences of a given action, patterns learned from experience associated with previous actions, and so forth. In particular, there is a degree of self-knowledge and an understanding of the consequences of a given course of action.

Both of those tend mainly to come from experience, though there are also "expedient means" like learning from the experiences of others. (A recent study said that people who watch sitcoms tend to increase their degree of social comfortability, through observing how the television characters relate easily to one another.)

The human mind is only so complex, so learning about learning about learning in practice is bound to swamp everyone. And anyway, it's not necessarily so practical! What we typically tend to need is practical knowledge about how to become sufficiently competent with a given practice to get to a certain goal (if we think in an ends-driven way) or to maintain or develop a given condition (if we think in a more procedural way).

For example, what does it take to cross two or three things off of some todo list each day? Obviously the answer depends on what sort of todo items we're talking about. But it is indeed an interesting question to look at just how!

Some things (breathing, eating, shitting) more or less take care of themselves if we let them. Other things don't happen so automatically, and circumstances need to be engineered for them to work. Or, if not engineered, then otherwise developed. For example, dating, where it's possible to "just meet someone", but even then life is complicated. People for whom everything "just works" are probably entirely mythical. Most of us have some difficult problems to solve.

Or at least it sure seems that way. Nevertheless, difficulty is somewhat subjective, and using things like the principle of simple machines, even "difficult" tasks can be accomplished a little at a time. So we can ask things like "do I really want this, and if so, how am I going to get there?" Buddhism says "Desire is the root of all suffering", but surely this applies to unsatisfied desires, otherwise we would say "Desire is the root of all satisfaction".

It is very easy to tout principles like "Break complicated tasks down into smaller parts", but in practice, there's often considerably more complexity than one initially expects!