Technology has advanced greatly over the past century. Back in the days, sending a simple text message would take several minutes, but nowadays we can send high definition audio and video in a matter of milliseconds.

With this drastic improvement of technology, came a wealth of knowledge, in virtually all fields, such as biology, chemistry, mathematics, social science, linguistics, computers, architecture, and many others.

This is, of course, due to technology being accessible everywhere, and adapting to a person’s disabilities. For example, a blind person can’t read, but he could listen to audio books. It’s not only audio as well, technology can exist in many forms, such as video, PDFs, illustrations, simulations among others. It is becoming more apparent that technology’s evolution heavily favors interacting with the material.

Active learning, for those who do not know, is a method of learning in which students are actively interacting with material, and receive the feedback from the material itself.

You most likely have experienced Active Learning before, for example, studying for a test, learning to juggle, or maybe even writing essays.

That’s essentially what Active Learning is, it’s consistent practice. The power in it resides in its philosophy, that a learner will digest the material better by interacting with it.

With Active Learning, you do not have a deadline. You focus on putting in your reps and teaching yourself, and over the years you achieve a level of mastery in that field.

An added benefit of this is that you never stop learning, you continuously improve until you stop existing.

Contrast this to Passive Learning, where your knowledge is dependent on the teacher, you do not create a long lasting habit that’ll improve for years to come, you end up creating an over dependence on another person to acquire your knowledge.

Who is, by the way, most likely paid very little or does not have the energy to cater to your problems and/or misunderstandings. It is not a matter of good instructors and bad ones, it’s a matter with the method. There are simply too many students that need catering, but time and energy does not allow for that.

This is especially prevalent in universities and some institutes, where a teacher will teach the students about the subject, and expect them to study later on their own and experiment with the material.

Such an expectation is not bad, considering that most masters, that I have observed, have always been active learners, even from the start. And it’s not just essayists, or computer scientists, it’s in all fields from sports, to engineering, to art, to music, to other fields aswell.

One of the most famous masters, is the late Kobe Bryant. For those who do not know Kobe, Kobe was an excellent basketball player. He has 1 MVP Award, 2 Final MVP Awards, and 5 NBA Championships under his belt. He is often referred to as the greatest of all time in Basketball.

From an early age, Kobe knew what he wanted to do: Basketball. Since he was 13, he would stay for 4 hours after middle school ended, just to keep practicing. He made it a point to himself to keep on improving and work on himself, like an artist molding clay. His work ethic, and desire to improve made him an NBA star at the ripe age of 18. Not a coach, or some gift, just plain old consistent practice.

And it’s not just Kobe, Mark Zuckerburg famously taught himself how to code, Elon Musk learned about rockets through several books, Football Player Mohammed Salah, Painter and Artist Vincent Van Gogh, The Father of Electricity Nikola Tesla were all reportedly active learners.

Some fields nowadays favor Active Learners more than Passive Learners, such as artistic fields like music, photography, drawing, video production and others.

This is, of course, not to say that Passive Learning is obsolete, quite the opposite actually. Kobe, for example, has always had a coach to guide him throughout his career, since he was in middle school and until he retired and became a Basketball coach himself.

What I am advocating for, is being an active learner first and dabbling in passive learning. Many people do not understand how hard the learning process is, you do a task routinely, that you’ll fail over and over again until you master it. It’s a tiresome but worthwhile process. Active learning eases the learning process by not caring for an immediate result, it emphasizes the process of learning rather than its fruit.

Being an Active Learner First will you make easily adapt to any future hardships in that field, because you are already have experienced hardships and frustrations with the learning process and you know how to deal with them.

Active Learning also does not allow for any excuses, I believe, excuses are blamed on the student not the lecturer. It is a common theme nowadays, that education is bad or subpar compared to what it was, we always hear about a student complaining about a teacher, saying that his method of teaching is bad, or that I do not understand anything in the class, and it’s the teacher’s fault.

These students often blame the teacher for everything, and lack taking responsibility for their bad grades or misunderstandings. Active Learners simply do not have this issue, because they depend on their practice and themselves to learn. A teacher to them, is like a piece of ice cream or a chocolate cake, very good to have but not necessary.

At the end of the day, time is running by so swiftly, it’s better to invest it in a learning a new skill, or improving an old one, rather than waste it like we usually do. Active Learning combined with today’s technology makes for an easier and more pleasurable learning process. Which is something that past generations only dreamt about. Harness the power of active learning, use it, and maybe you too could become like an Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerberg, and achieve great success in life.

One last thing I’d like to add is, there is a very good book by author Robert Greene, in which he examines the way of historical figures such as Charles Darwin and Henry Ford and today’s contemporary leaders like Paul Graham, and examines what made them successful. The book is titled “Mastery”, and I highly recommend it for people who want to master their craft.