How to Keep Learning After 50 — Ways to Hack Your Brain at Any Age

And Now: Functional Programing

Functional change is where your brain uses several regions when you use a certain skill, each of which becomes excitable and easy to use repeatedly. This is sometimes called muscle memory.

Think about how once you grasp a concept it becomes simple to repeat it — like when your motor skills finally enable you to express your musical self on a new instrument, or you feel confidence in your skill with a new sport.

After a hockey practice, Wayne Gretzky would often stay on the ice with a bucket of pucks. He would shoot repeatedly at the same corner of the net. He was building structures and behaviors that he could recall when the opportunity to make that shot came up. Even if it only came up rarely in a real game, his brain would be prepared to take the shot, and if he made it, it would seem like magic to the fans. But wasn’t magic. Gretzky was hacking his brain to make functional changes.

Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks

Of the those who participated in the survey, many expressed similar sentiments when asked how they stay relevant and learn new things. They talked about reading, watching videos, continually learning new things, and taking on new challenges.

Personally, I’m very intrigued at the thought of “hacking” my own brain. It’s fascinating to see how learning works and how changes in the brain aid in retaining long-term skills and mastering behaviors.

I can relate as a self-taught musician and a self-taught software developer. It does take time, practice and repetition to overcome what initially can be difficult skills to acquire. A great example is that after many years of jamming with a few friends, we actually became passable as a band. We did it by building on small things each week and creating those behaviors and muscle memory.

Eating An Elephant

In the world of software development, the same seems to be true. It’s hard (impossible?) to learn all of it at once, but you can learn various parts of an app, in small pieces, by going through the iOS tutorials on this site.

Break the task down into digestible pieces — as Dr. Turknet calls them, micro skills. Over time, they build up to an impressive repertoire of knowledge.

I know that like many of you, I can have a hard time grasping a concept. However, repeating a course, reading another book, looking at things from another perspective or watching an instructional video, are how I go about building an understanding of a new concept. Each time I look at it again, it becomes clearer.

Many of us old dogs continually learn to this day — hey, I learned about neuroplastcity writing this article!

One benefit of getting older is that you learn not to sweat the small stuff, like those times when you don’t grasp a concept right away. With this new knowledge, you can build the behavior you want, and now that you have an idea of how you learn, you can start to hack your own brain to learn new skills.

go out and build the brain you want.” – Dr Lara Boyd

Where to go from here?

I encourage you to look into neuroplasticity, how your own brain works, and how you learn. People tend to make great progress at first as chemical signals move around and neurons fire away, creating short-term memories. Then structural changes come with repetition and exercise. Finally, functional changes build up specialized areas of your brain.

Now you also know why you don’t retain things without practice and repetition — these lead to structural, and eventually, functional changes. They’re how you hack your brain and build those important long-term memories and neural pathways. They’re how you continue learning after 50.

Above all, work on the things that interest you — practice and persevere. When you get to be an old dog, or even if you’re an older dog than me, you’ll understand how your brain has transformed itself, and what you can do to transform it again.

You might enjoy reading our article Learning Techniques for Programmers, by Programmers.

Thanks to those who helped out on this article:
Bob, Phil Curry, Antonio Bello, Jack Cox, Colin Mackenzie, Mark Rubin, Elaine Manganello, Johanna Rothman, David Wasser, Gareth Burton, Aruna Mitra, Terry Brown, Eugene Knapik, Wendy Petcoff, Heath Freel, Charlene Winger, Irene Meitardjian, and Jean MacDonald

Sources:

Neuroplastcity – Wikipedia

The 9 Ways to Practice Smarter workshop (clawhammer and fingerstyle banjo)

After watching this, your brain will not be the same | Lara Boyd | TEDxVancouver