Every so often, I try remembering what Isabel was like one year ago. The more I cringe at younger me, the better – it means that I changed, though I’m often unable to explain how. Perhaps the cringe-meter captures something which traditional end-of-year reflection prompts don’t: my cringe-meter appears to measure the extent to which I’ve internalised new ideas, whether truisms about life or theoretical frameworks. Naturally, I’d like to speed up this learning process – in a sense, I’d like to grow older faster.

In my experience, this is largely a matter of getting exposed to new ideas. I’ll list a few classic ways to get exposed to new ideas and then offer some comments.

Examples #

Traveling might well be the definitive way to open one’s mind – young people have always gone abroad to do soul searching. In the 17th century, European aristocrats often undertook ‘grand tours’ around the age of 21; today, students are highly encouraged to do exchange programs.

Similarly, starting a new role is should expose you to new ideas. If you spend 40h per week at work, I bet something happens with you – whether you notice or not. Maybe it’s a change in attitude, values or language usage. For example, observe how quickly friends doing internships begin using business acronyms in everyday speech.

Studies can have the same effect. As a student, you spend much more than 40h per week at ‘work’, and you’re surrounded by like-minded people. The university experience often entails complete immersion in some geek culture.

Of course, the content you learn can also have a mind-opening effect. For example, doing pure mathematics makes you appreciate precision (and see the lack of it everywhere). However, I assume subjects like history, literature or economics – which concern our society more directly – have a bigger potential to change one’s outlook on everyday life.

Another class of ’learning experiences’ come from particularly intense experiences: getting married, watching your favourite movie for the first time or having a good madeleine. Traumas, negative intense experiences, also fall under into this class.

Comments #

What can be said about these examples?

The extent to which I internalise new ideas appears to be a function of both intensity and duration – it’s the integral that matters, as it were. Not all stays abroad are formative experiences: I need to be away for sufficiently long, and the environment needs to be sufficiently different. Likewise, for work and studies, I need an element of novelty and time to parse the new information.

But a major life change isn’t enough – there’s also the need for introspection. This might well be why traveling is so effective, at least for me: being abroad puts me in a reflective holiday state of mind.

Finally, observe that the common theme for the first three examples – traveling, work and studies – is novel encounters. My most meaningful learnings have come from conversations with people I trust deeply (whether dead or alive). Perhaps growing older faster is largely a matter of making new friends?

This blog post was inspired by a conversation with Elias Koschier about ‘going OOD’.