Understanding the concepts using a Holistic Approach

If you have truly understood something you can build more knowledge on it very quickly. Understanding the core concept is the most important thing one should focus on while studying a topic.

When I was in college I had a friend who topped the university. When I closely observed him I found that he was able to solve the Physics problem in more than one way. As compared to traditional book solution. Upon asking he said that his core concepts are very clear so he can easily relate them with other concepts and can use them to solve the problem.

I recently came across the concept of holistic learning when I was reading the book “Learn more study less” by Scott H Young. If you try to understand understanding as a mental model it has 3 pillars.

• Constructs
• Models
• Highways

Constructs

A construct defines a set of tightly interlinked understandings. Think of a construct as being like a city in your mind. Within a city you have thousands of buildings you can travel between. Some are big and important and are linked by roads to hundreds of other buildings in your city. Others are less important and only have a few dirt paths leading to them.

For e.g, if you want to solve this basic math equation

( 2+ 2) *3 + (8/4) + (3+2)

you can easily do that because the constructs for this domain are highly developed in your brain.

Understanding is the result of a highly developed construct.

Ask yourself this question: In a city which building would be the easiest to locate?

• One that is connected to many other buildings through hundreds of roads,
• One that has a single dirt path connecting it to only one other building.

The main reason why you do not understand a subject is that you have poor constructs build around that subject.

Models

Models are simplified constructs. The goal of the model is to compress information in a meaningful way so that you can relate it with existing information. You can think of a book summary or a table of content as the model.

When I was in engineering I created some cardboard boxes to understand the concept of variables. The thing about models is that they don't need to be accurate. They are your mental representation of a concept. Another example of a model could suppose be a sheet of paper to understand a 2D plane.

Highways

The highway is used to link constructs. It is the truest form of Holistic learning. When you truly understand and master the core concepts of a domain and then apply those principles across different domains you can gain tremendous results. For e.g, if a surgeon knows carving and sculpting skills he can perform better surgery compared to someone who is not aware of these skills.

So the key takeaways is that if you are not understanding a topic or concept it means that your constructs are not proper for that domain. You need to take your time to drill down and distill to its core concepts and understand and master them first. You can use models to create abstract images of those concepts in your head. Once that is done you can easily build more knowledge out of it.