Synaptic Pruning Halts Learning
Welcome to Edition #13 of THE BLUEPRINT
With any technology advancement, many skills and jobs get replaced and society continues to advance. With artificial intelligence, we already see implementation across the business frontier that is changing what skills are important, placing many into fear over a changing job market.
There is one skillset that is most important to acquire to continue elevating position and providing value:
Learn. Unlearn. Relearn.
A quick breakdown:
Learn: To gain or acquire knowledge, skills, or behaviors through study, experience or teaching.
Unlearn: An acceptance that the current knowledge or skill is outdated and an optimism around improvement.
Relearn: To restore or refine previously unlearned knowledge or skills that have weakened over time
Simple, right? Well, not exactly.
As discussed in Ed. #12, the brain prioritizes energy over effort, so we naturally fall into the habits and routines that we know to conserve our energy. This directly means it is human nature to stop learning!
Let’s look at a few examples: if you stop speaking a language for a few years, you will find yourself less fluent than when fully immersed. Even riding a bike, though simple to pick back up, takes a moment to reactivate the correct balance.
The less you participate in a certain activity, the more you will forget about it.
Synaptic Pruning: The brain’s way of clearing out the old to make room for the new. By not participating in an activity, you tell the brain the connection is not important and it will remove it to optimize brain efficiency. Like an automated trashcan feature that removes unused computer files - SO COOL!
Let me connect this. Just as the brain will prune away unpracticed languages and the ability to write an essay, it will also prune away the skill of learning itself!
Why is learning such an important skill to keep?
Learning is how we continue to apply ourself to the world. We pick up new skills, practices, behaviors, and knowledge bases to provide value for others (via friendship, business, service) and ourselves (self-development, longevity, novelty). Additionally, the more you practice learning, the better you will be at it. It will become easier to pick up new skills, knowledge, or behaviors. The current Era of AI is a raging river of new knowledge, practices, skills and learning is the avenue in which it becomes possible to tap into this. I hope this is a straightforward concept.
In order to keep and develop learning skill:
Find a new skill, bit of knowledge, behavior, or process that you want to learn
Apply your unique learning style (you are most likely a combination of these)
Experiential
Observational
Reflective
Conceptual
Trial and Error
Teaching Others
The way that I do this:
New skill + knowledge combo: Agentic AI
Learning Style:
Observational: I watch videos and do deep research dives
Experiential: I build my own systems
Trial + Error: My own systems fail and I have to figure how to fix them
Reflective: I intentionally think about societal implications of Agentic AI
Teaching Others: I explain my systems to a couple friends
Don’t Get Synaptic Pruned! Start Now:
Start with the skill you always wanted to have. Now identify how you learn the best and figure how to match this with learning the new skill.
*To identify your learning style, think back to enjoyable learning opportunities you have engaged in the past and find what made it exciting. Learning should release dopamine because it is connected to challenge, reward, novelty, and curiosity, so think back to events like this and identify what causes this - now curate that same environment.
Much love,
Spencer A.
