Digital Ink on Paper

Graphical Reflections: On (Un)Learning

// August 8th, 2009 // Blog-a-holic, Life in General

Back in the day, we talked about how a computer is so unlike real life – how we can’t undo things.  Today, while munching on a stick of deep fried bananas that Filipinos fondly call banana Q (or cue), I thought about the things that I wish I could unlearn.  Apparently, it’s difficult to unlearn things.  Learning is like saving files in your computer (brain).  Most of the time, I save it in Read-Only format so it’s pretty much difficult to “edit” what I’ve already learned.

What is unlearning like, anyway?  According to my boss, I am a visual person.  And because I truly am, I decided to look for a very good representation of the learning and unlearning curves. I wasn’t successful in finding a good graph for the latter so I tried to make my own.  If you have any violent reactions, please feel free to comment but I just want to remind everyone that this is just my interpretation of the unlearning curve, alright? Here goes:

So, the blue S curve represents the learning curve and the red one for unlearning.  My assumption is based on the quote, “It takes three days to form a habit and three weeks to break one.”  Under this assumption, say I attempt to learn habit A and I get to practice four times a day, I already know habit A by the third day in just 12 attempts.  Meanwhile, it’ll take about 3 weeks or 84 attempts before I can actually break habit A.  Knowing me, I think by that 10th attempt, I might have already given up.  Oh well, that’s just me.

Cussing is one of the things that I want to unlearn.  When I was a kid, we lived in the province for about three years.  This is also where I learned how to curse like a sailor.  My cousins were very “proficient” in this “language” and because people learn from repetition, you can say that I was able to add a couple of colorful words to my vocabulary.  As a fifth grader, I thought I was really cool until my mom heard me cuss.  She threatened to feed me with chicken poop!  She said, “If crap comes out of your mouth, then I guess it’s OK to put some in it, right?” That didn’t keep me from cussing, though.  Instead, I learned when to cuss and that is when she’s not around.  Anyway, as I grew older (ouch!) not all people (especially at work) like the bad words-spewing mouth.  They say it’s classless, unprofessional, and plain annoying.  I get the point, I seriously do.  And I’m trying my best not to cuss but then again there are those WTF moments.

I guess the challenge is here is not just about unlearning.  I believe that this is a continuous process of learning, unlearning, and relearning.  Now all I gotta do is to remember to “save” the stuff I learn into an “editable version” instead of Read-Only.