5 things you didn’t know about knowledge acquisition as a multipotentialite

5 min readJun 7, 2022

Learning is a short-term process that happens when you engage in activities including lectures, and textbooks.

You know how the goal of a lecture is to impart knowledge? That’s learning. You know when you sit down and study for a test or quiz? That’s learning. You know when you spend time in the library reading about a particular subject, whether for school or just because you’re interested in it? Learning again! You get the picture. In short, learning is any activity that involves acquiring new knowledge. It can involve trial and error, observation, imitation, or memorization (like rote memorization) — it all counts as learning.

So what does this have to do with having multiple interests? Remember: multipotentialites sometimes feel like they’re regularly switching gears from one field of interest to another. Because we don’t stick around long enough to gain true expertise in one area of interest at a time, we’re more reliant on methods of gaining information that are most effective for short-term processes — that is, how we learn instead of knowing

Knowing is the long-term, effective retention of information in a way that you could share it with others after you’ve learned it.

Knowing is done by reviewing what you’ve learned and recalling it over and over again. This doesn’t mean taking notes, or even writing about what you learn. It means being able to recall the information at will — this allows for deeper learning.

The process of knowing requires putting in effort over a long period of time to internalize information in a meaningful way.

For instance, if someone asked you to explain how your digestive system works, would you be able to? If not, then chances are that this knowledge isn’t “in your body” yet.

Your brain is like a sponge — it takes in the most water when it’s dry and before it’s been wrung out.

You’ve decided to become a multipotentialite. Congratulations!

This is an exciting time. You have the potential to achieve greatness, make real change in the world, and even earn a lot of money! You just have to know how to keep it all straight as you learn all this new stuff. Fortunately, there are some guidelines that can help you navigate through all your new knowledge acquisition processes.

The speed at which you learn affects how much you retain.

Have you ever tried to learn something at a pace that was too fast for you? This is a common problem that happens to me all the time. When this happens, I don’t retain much of what I’m supposed to be learning.

In fact, research shows that learning is maximized when information is presented in short bursts, not all at once. When we try to bite off more than we can chew and take in too much information in one sitting, our brains aren’t able to hold onto it as well as they would if it were delivered gradually. (As a multipotentialite, this is something worth bearing in mind!)

There are many different ways to acquire knowledge, and some are more useful for multipotentialites than others.

Perhaps you’re a visual learner, or an auditory learner, or a kinesthetic learner. There are many different ways to acquire knowledge, and what works for you might not work for someone else.

For instance, I’m primarily an auditory learner — I learn best by listening. Reading information doesn’t usually stick unless I say it out loud while reading it. When taking notes in class, I have to read them out loud when studying in order to remember the points.

But everyone is different! If written words speak to you more than sounds do (or vice versa), then that’s your learning style and you should use it to your advantage!

Learn about your learning style to maximize your ability to acquire knowledge quickly and effectively.

Take the time to learn about your learning style. We all acquire knowledge differently, and there are many different learning styles out there — from auditory to visual to kinesthetic to read-write. Knowing yourself and what works best for you will help in your quest to acquire knowledge quickly and effectively.

For example, if you are a verbal learner, listening along as audio is played back from a lecture on the history of wine might work better for you than reading through a written text on the same subject. If you’re a visual learner, watching YouTube videos about how to make homemade bread could be a more effective way of acquiring this information than looking at pictures in a book or magazine or listening to someone talk about it. There are so many resources online nowadays that can help you figure out what type of learner you are — and once you know that, you can tailor your learning experience accordingly and get better results.

There are a few tools and techniques that will help you become a better knowledge acquirer as a multipotentialite.

There are a lot of unknowns about our learning style. We know that we’re multipotentialites, and we get easily distracted when there are too many options available to choose from. We also know that we have trouble staying focused on just one thing at a time. To help us deal with these things, it’s helpful to have an understanding of the techniques and tools you can use to learn effectively as a multipotentialite.

First, you need to understand your learning style (or “learning preferences” in some studies). This is very different for everyone, but there are several popular types that you might be familiar with: visual learners (like me), auditory learners (like my husband), verbal learners (like my mom), etc. The most common ones tend to fall into two buckets: “contextual” and “sequential.” The former emphasizes association between ideas through similarities and context — for example, if presented with two concepts at once that relate in some way, the person will associate them together more readily than other types would because they see how similarly they work together or how similar their contexts might be. Meanwhile, the latter prefers information presented in a sequential order — say I had three pieces of information to remember: A is B is C; what order should I apply those three items? That sequential approach is easiest for people who prefer logical sequences over associative ones.