Mmm… I am a click-hunter. I keep pestering a topic and returning over and over until I feel it click. I can understand something well enough to start accurately predicting results but still refuse to be satisfied until I feel it click. Once it clicks I move on.
You and I may be describing different types of clicks, however. Here is a short list of things I have observed about the clicks in my life.
The minor step from not having a subject click and having a subject click is enormous. It is the single greatest leap in knowledge I will likely experience in a subject matter. I may learn more in one click than with a whole semester of absorbing knowledge from a book.
Clicks don’t translate well. It is hard to describe the actual path up to and through a click.
What causes a subject to click for me will not cause it to click for another. Clicks seem to be very personal experiences, which is probably why it is so hard to translate.
Clicks tend to be most noticeable with large amounts of critical study. I assume that day-in-day-out clicks are not terribly noticeable but I suspect that they exist. A simple example I can think of is suddenly discovering a quicker route through town.
Clicks do not require large amounts of critical study, however, as I have had clicks drop on me from nowhere with all of the answers to a particular problem laying around in plain sight.
Once a click happens, the extra perspective appears obviously true. Clicks are often accompanied with phrases like, “Oh!” or “Why didn’t I see this before?!”
Even for complicated subjects, it takes trivial amounts of conversation to learn if the subject has clicked in another person. Once you “get it,” other people who get it know you got it.
Some people are much better at producing clicks in others.
Some people have no idea what a click is and have never felt one. Some of these people are very smart, but I seem to notice that they have a weakness for abstract thought or are more likely to be satisfied with stopping once they have accurate predictors. Perhaps learning why the model ended up being that particular model is extraneous and not needed to predict and so is an unwanted extra step.
Mind-dumping helps things click. I find that if I just blah on a page, start over and blah again, and repeat the process a click will probably happen at some point in the cycle.
There are topics that have not clicked for me yet but I suspect they would if I kept pushing them.
Perspectives from other people help clicks happen. Listening to someone else struggle to understand the concept helps clicks happen.
The minor step from not having a subject click and having a subject click is enormous.
To be very true.
Many times in my classes I have barely grasped what the professor was saying throughout the year only to click the subject at a later time when a fellow student explained it to me in a way that grokked. Whenever this happens, I feel like I have learned more in that brief period then in the entire class before then.
This is actually how I approach difficult textbooks. I read through as much as I can before I just totally collapse in confusion, look up related information on the internet, take a few days off, and then go back through from the beginning. The textbook usually makes vastly more sense then, as all the disjointed pieces come together in a way that’s obvious in retrospect.
This is how I was able to read through and understand an algorithms textbook in junior high, even though it terrifies and befuddles people in their third year of college. It’s just not that hard if you attack it in multiple passes, because multipass studying is much more likely to get you to the click of understanding.
I found that this approach sorta-works, but results in much more shallow reading of the material than if you studied the prerequisites first (at least in math, an algorithms textbook might be an exception).
I already had the prerequisites for learning about algorithms. It’s just that the topic itself was hard to fully grasp. I mean, on the first reading I’m sure I could have written a hash table or a mergesort, but it wasn’t until I read it again that I got the depth of understanding that lets me optimize hash tables for special applications, or quickly understand timsort. The multipass approach was how I got past a shallow reading of the material.
More so than with other descriptors of internal mental state, I wonder which people saying “click” mean the same thing.
I feel quite satisfied when I change my mind as a result of a new insight, but also a little hesitant to consider the case closed until time passes—I feel apprehensive that another insight+reversal may follow in the consequent mental shifting. Is that a “click”?
Maybe, but it doesn’t really match my feelings when I get a click. This doesn’t mean you are I have better or worse clicks. It could just mean we react to them differently.
I think if there is a difference between your click and mine it is that my clicks tend to be reactions to things generally considered to be factual or true but something I have trouble understanding. Clicks tend not to be brand new discoveries but rather a full, complete understanding of someone else’s discovery. The easiest example is from mathematics. A complicated piece of linear algebra is True but I don’t fully Get It until it clicks.
OK, I’m not sure I experience clicks the way you do. Thinking for a bit I realize I integrated a fairly decent sized insight in a fairly short amount of time reading this blog post; does the same happen to you?
Erm, not really, no. I learned enough about a subject to regurgitate what someone else has said and can probably start making inferences from the subject material I know, but no click. But this isn’t a field I know anything about. I have no way of knowing if anything he wrote is likely or unlikely to be true. It sounds good, but that isn’t enough for a click.
The best example of a click I can think of is linear algebra. As soon as I finally got my mind wrapped around 3D matrices and could “visualize” it the whole subject clicked and now 4D matrices, 5D, 2x1, rotations, and pretty much everything else was a cake walk.
Comparing that experience to reading this blog, I know almost nothing more now than when I started. I know no more facts; I know only a few theories; I know a few places to look if the subject interests me later.
That being said, the author of the post likely had a click one day when thinking about sexual reproduction. The end result of that click is the post that he wrote.
But don’t forget that “click” is a fuzzy word. Even if we came up with a clear definition another word would slip into its place because this is not a universal experience. It seems to be common enough to get a word but different enough that we are willing to debate what it means for hours. :)
Mmm… I am a click-hunter. I keep pestering a topic and returning over and over until I feel it click. I can understand something well enough to start accurately predicting results but still refuse to be satisfied until I feel it click. Once it clicks I move on.
You and I may be describing different types of clicks, however. Here is a short list of things I have observed about the clicks in my life.
The minor step from not having a subject click and having a subject click is enormous. It is the single greatest leap in knowledge I will likely experience in a subject matter. I may learn more in one click than with a whole semester of absorbing knowledge from a book.
Clicks don’t translate well. It is hard to describe the actual path up to and through a click.
What causes a subject to click for me will not cause it to click for another. Clicks seem to be very personal experiences, which is probably why it is so hard to translate.
Clicks tend to be most noticeable with large amounts of critical study. I assume that day-in-day-out clicks are not terribly noticeable but I suspect that they exist. A simple example I can think of is suddenly discovering a quicker route through town.
Clicks do not require large amounts of critical study, however, as I have had clicks drop on me from nowhere with all of the answers to a particular problem laying around in plain sight.
Once a click happens, the extra perspective appears obviously true. Clicks are often accompanied with phrases like, “Oh!” or “Why didn’t I see this before?!”
Even for complicated subjects, it takes trivial amounts of conversation to learn if the subject has clicked in another person. Once you “get it,” other people who get it know you got it.
Some people are much better at producing clicks in others.
Some people have no idea what a click is and have never felt one. Some of these people are very smart, but I seem to notice that they have a weakness for abstract thought or are more likely to be satisfied with stopping once they have accurate predictors. Perhaps learning why the model ended up being that particular model is extraneous and not needed to predict and so is an unwanted extra step.
Mind-dumping helps things click. I find that if I just blah on a page, start over and blah again, and repeat the process a click will probably happen at some point in the cycle.
There are topics that have not clicked for me yet but I suspect they would if I kept pushing them.
Perspectives from other people help clicks happen. Listening to someone else struggle to understand the concept helps clicks happen.
I found this:
To be very true.
Many times in my classes I have barely grasped what the professor was saying throughout the year only to click the subject at a later time when a fellow student explained it to me in a way that grokked. Whenever this happens, I feel like I have learned more in that brief period then in the entire class before then.
This is actually how I approach difficult textbooks. I read through as much as I can before I just totally collapse in confusion, look up related information on the internet, take a few days off, and then go back through from the beginning. The textbook usually makes vastly more sense then, as all the disjointed pieces come together in a way that’s obvious in retrospect.
This is how I was able to read through and understand an algorithms textbook in junior high, even though it terrifies and befuddles people in their third year of college. It’s just not that hard if you attack it in multiple passes, because multipass studying is much more likely to get you to the click of understanding.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who does this!
I found that this approach sorta-works, but results in much more shallow reading of the material than if you studied the prerequisites first (at least in math, an algorithms textbook might be an exception).
I already had the prerequisites for learning about algorithms. It’s just that the topic itself was hard to fully grasp. I mean, on the first reading I’m sure I could have written a hash table or a mergesort, but it wasn’t until I read it again that I got the depth of understanding that lets me optimize hash tables for special applications, or quickly understand timsort. The multipass approach was how I got past a shallow reading of the material.
More so than with other descriptors of internal mental state, I wonder which people saying “click” mean the same thing.
I feel quite satisfied when I change my mind as a result of a new insight, but also a little hesitant to consider the case closed until time passes—I feel apprehensive that another insight+reversal may follow in the consequent mental shifting. Is that a “click”?
Maybe, but it doesn’t really match my feelings when I get a click. This doesn’t mean you are I have better or worse clicks. It could just mean we react to them differently.
I think if there is a difference between your click and mine it is that my clicks tend to be reactions to things generally considered to be factual or true but something I have trouble understanding. Clicks tend not to be brand new discoveries but rather a full, complete understanding of someone else’s discovery. The easiest example is from mathematics. A complicated piece of linear algebra is True but I don’t fully Get It until it clicks.
OK, I’m not sure I experience clicks the way you do. Thinking for a bit I realize I integrated a fairly decent sized insight in a fairly short amount of time reading this blog post; does the same happen to you?
Erm, not really, no. I learned enough about a subject to regurgitate what someone else has said and can probably start making inferences from the subject material I know, but no click. But this isn’t a field I know anything about. I have no way of knowing if anything he wrote is likely or unlikely to be true. It sounds good, but that isn’t enough for a click.
The best example of a click I can think of is linear algebra. As soon as I finally got my mind wrapped around 3D matrices and could “visualize” it the whole subject clicked and now 4D matrices, 5D, 2x1, rotations, and pretty much everything else was a cake walk.
Comparing that experience to reading this blog, I know almost nothing more now than when I started. I know no more facts; I know only a few theories; I know a few places to look if the subject interests me later.
That being said, the author of the post likely had a click one day when thinking about sexual reproduction. The end result of that click is the post that he wrote.
But don’t forget that “click” is a fuzzy word. Even if we came up with a clear definition another word would slip into its place because this is not a universal experience. It seems to be common enough to get a word but different enough that we are willing to debate what it means for hours. :)
I’ve actually heard that theory before.