Do you ever “learn” something, but still have no idea what it really means?

Imagine that you were to start teaching yourself to read Russian. You’d have to learn the alphabet, familiarize yourself with the sounds associated with each letter, and then memorize a few pronunciation rules. However, after that, you’re pretty much set up to read. In a lot of cases, you’d be able to squish the letter sounds together in a way that could probably get you where you need to go if you happened to be stranded in downtown Moscow.

However, just learning letters and sounds and having the ability to “read” a menu and order a glass of vodka (because that’s the only drink you’re allowed to order in Russia, those are the rules), doesn’t mean you understand what you’re reading. You could open up a newspaper, sound out the whole first page, but have no idea what any those words meant (“America is terrible” might be a lucky guess).

You learned to squish the sounds together, but you that didn’t mean you knew the actual meaning of the words. You went through the actions, but didn’t understand what you were saying, because you weren’t operating within the full context of the language.

Learning something does not necessarily equate truly understanding something.  

I discovered this today as my parents and I had a planning meeting for a new event for the farm. We’re in the process of taking our very old, very run-down, almost-century-farm and transforming into a place where people can gather for food, fun, education, growing community, and kind of just an all-around party.

Because I’m 1) a semi-adult who’s able to contribute in ways a 7-year-old can’t, 2) still around and able to help, and 3) actually interested in developing the farm into a business that can sustain our family, they’ve allowed me to come along with them on this business-growing adventure.

Today was pretty major for me because I realized that learning skills is hard to do in a context that’s removed from the setting where those skills are actually used.

Reading a lot about organization in a business, or how sales and marketing relate to a business, or how you create a solid workflow in a business is really great. However, it builds up a bunch of head knowledge that doesn’t necessarily always relate to true understanding of how those concepts play out in the real world.

I love reading and absorbing wisdom from those who are smarter, savvier, and successful-er than I am. However, I’ve found that sometimes all that learning doesn’t really make sense at a core level until I’m applying that knowledge to a real-life situation. Then, in a situation like today, it kind of just clicks.

Learning stuff to learn stuff is awesome. But if you want to learn stuff to truly understand when, how, and why it works, context is absolutely necessary. Understanding how that skill or piece of information fits into the grander picture somehow just makes everything make a little more sense.