Gap Learning. The Art of Opportunistic Growth

10 minutes at a time

I tend to be an opportunistic person. Especially with food. But also other things, such as learning.

I call it Gap Learning, or the Swiss Cheese Method and it comes from a wonderful book called Someday is Today by Matthew Dicks.

He said something that really hit me.

You can do a lot more with 10 minutes than you think. And you have 10-minute chunks of time all over the place.

That caught me off guard. When I think in terms of getting something done, I tend to place it in the 30-minute to 1-hour range.

But he has a point.

If you put your mind to it, you can do a lot in 10 minutes.

Empty or load the dishwasher

Shower

Write 8-12 good sentences

Learn to cartwheel

Overthink literally anything

You get the idea.

For me, the big lesson was less about what things I can do in 10 minutes and more about just how many 10-minute increments I have throughout my day. They are all over the place. For me, it’s often in transition between one task to another.

I realized this when I started listening to podcasts in these gaps of time. To my complete amazement, I started finishing 2-3 hour podcasts in a day or two. (Sometimes I surprise myself…)

Gap learning

When I first discovered this, I considered trying to become more disciplined and get rid of these little gaps of time. But after careful consideration for my mental well-being and sanity, I decided to leave them there and instead, to use them to learn. Cause that’s fun.

First, I started by leaving books all over my house. Seriously, if you walked in, you’d think my bookshelf grew legs and rampaged around my house. I enjoy reading, but struggle to do it, so I thought, maybe this will help.

It didn’t help me read more throughout the day, but I noticed that in the evenings, I was far more apt to spend 10-15 minutes reading than before. After I cleared a space for myself on the couch.

The next way I tried is perhaps the most obvious. Recordings. Podcasts, audiobooks, and YouTube videos.

This worked incredibly well. For one, I only listen to things that I find interesting, so I’m not tempted to scroll like a degenerating human. For example, I’ve been fascinated by the diets of highly successful people and have plowed through hours of content in the last week.

3 months ago, I would have said that’d be the most boring thing ever, but here we are…

Regret and excellence

A while ago, I was talking with my friend about the mindset of preparation. This idea of continuing to prepare and fortify oneself even in the waiting phases of life.

I told him that I don’t want to look back at where I am now and wish I’d been using my time more wisely. I want to manage it well so the future is less daunting.

That’s a truth about regret that I understand can happen very quickly.

Also, a truth about excellence I understand deeply is the power of incremental improvement. I look at the people around me who are exceptional at what they do, people I admire, and I see that they are always moving forward each day. Even if it’s a tiny bit. Often it’s in the areas of knowledge, and I see quite clearly that they are exceptional in those areas because of incremental progress that compounded over years of their lives.

That’s a little picture of what I’m moving towards and simultaneously moving away from. Positive and negative leverage for my continuation of gap learning.

Attention is the gateway to knowledge

You may be tempted to think, after reading this far, that time is the main requirement for learning. If that’s the case, you’d be like me. Wrong. Time is a piece of the equation, but not all of it.

One of the books I devoured during a week or so of gap learning was on focus and attention. To be honest, it rocked my world a little bit. Here’s a key takeaway for you.

The ability to learn and even our intelligence are directly tied to our ability to focus. Specifically our attentional space. It’s so easy to look at our day and think about all the micro gaps we can use to learn and grow in, and yet totally miss the fact that, without attention, learning is impossible.

It’s like a door; the wider it is, the more you can take in and learn. Time regulates the flow slightly, but learning is mostly confined to our capacity for attentional space.

Why does this matter?

There are a few reasons. First, there’s only so much time you can squeeze out of a day. Time management only goes so far. However, there doesn’t seem to be much of a cap on attention. Your attention muscle is something you can improve, and the limits of that aren’t precisely explored, which is pretty awesome.

Second, we often focus exclusively on time. Most people haven’t specifically dedicated themselves to increasing their attentional space, which means there’s often a lot more untouched real estate, and thus, faster results to be had.

If you don’t want to read the whole book, I condensed just this part down into a post here for you.