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How to Learn With Stories

3 min read ·

What are stories

Stories are how we can pass (and get) knowledge to others without knowing how. They are the reason why you should listen to older people and why you can learn from anyone. The definition of a story I’m referring to here is a sequence of facts that happened in one’s life and usually compose a bigger life experience. Notice the phrasing. The story doesn’t need to be about the person telling it or about our world, oral history and fiction depend on both of those and you can also learn from them.

What are stories about?

Be it moving to a new city, falling in love, meeting a new friend, or just walking your dog, stories can be told about all of those things. Maybe it won’t be very exciting or open your thoughts to new ways of thinking and that’s OK, not everything needs to be. Stories are about things of life, any set of things that happened or will, to you or others, in reality or fiction. One type of story I like a lot is stories about the future. They usually are a single scene I’m currently picturing in my mind that I’d like to hear the thoughts of others about it. I recently had a friend’s birthday party to attend, I hadn’t seen high school friends in a few months, and the day before it I asked another friend about how should I tell them about what was going on in my life without making them feel like they are lagging behind, anticipating a catch up on my lives events. He basically told me, don’t brag and you don’t need to tell all the details, I found it sound advice, and so I followed it. I used his opinion on a future story to model how I should act in a real event.

How we learn from them

The keyword here is generalize, meaning abstracting away the specifics and searching for patterns you can apply in your life. Patterns come in the form of human behavior, learning what someone might do in a given scenario, and getting an understanding of the consequences of those actions. For instance, in the story about my friend’s advice, the pattern could be seen as “modesty in sharing personal achievements can foster better relationships”. This pattern can be applied in various social situations, not just in the context of a high school reunion.

Moreover, stories can provide us with a window into different perspectives and experiences. They can help us to empathize with others, to understand their motivations, their fears, and their joys. This capacity to understand and share the feelings of others is a crucial skill in our interconnected world. It allows us to navigate social situations more effectively and to build stronger, more meaningful relationships.

What I learned this week

Google Chrome is getting outclassed by Firefox’s Profiler

A glue solvent and a scrapper are obligatory if you want to repair a phone

There is even more awesome programming content than I realized, this happened in learning about the existence of the The Architecture of Open Source Applications series. They also have the 500 lines or less book, which seems also and I’m certainly going to give some of them a try, it reminded me of the spirit behind build your own X

Making a TikTok is really easy