Learning is not a linear process. It’s a spiralling process. In a linear process, you learn and you implement—there’s a fixed start and end. While the spiralling process gives you the opportunity to gradually add new ideas, make connections between the ideas, see what fits, and reject what doesn’t. This goes on and on. It doesn’t matter where you start.

Tetris is an excellent metaphor of how real learning happens. What do you do when the tiles start to fall? You rotate them to see what fits—it involves a lot of trial and error. This activity of continuous rotating and seeing what fits isn’t wasted...