Why learning fast now matters more than knowing more

In the Intelligence Age, expertise dates fast. Prue Jones, executive creative director, experience design at R/GA, argues that learning, unlearning and adapting quickly now matters more than what you already know.

Like many people trying to drink from the ‘AI development firehose’ (without feeling waterboarded), I subscribe to one of many email updates that distill notable developments in the field into a five-minute-a-day read. I’m ashamed to admit that many of those updates have jacked my unread mail counter up into the thousands.

It feels cognitively tedious to process those, and I seem to think that by having the information in my inbox I somehow absorb it by osmosis.

AI presents us with an Inception-style learning dilemma. You have to learn what you need to learn exists, before you can learn the thing you need to understand. Every day brings another shiny tool that promises capability uplift, but also requires an investment in exploration to assess its real value. Half the time you end up wondering if you are learning fast enough or just getting better at sitting in ambiguity.

Regardless, these days none of us can rely on what we learned, even as recently as last week. Developments shift too rapidly. What matters now is how fast you can adapt.

And adapt we must. In the past we were taught to hoard knowledge, cram facts, and polish neat little skill sets. The Intelligence Age makes that redundant. What you know matters less than how quickly you can form a new mental model and toss the old one out.

This is not easy, especially for people who built careers on being the expert in the room. But if you cling to fixed mindsets about expertise and learning right now, you’ll be left behind. Think of AI not as a threat to your identity, but as a training partner that invites you to evolve beyond.

I experienced this firsthand at R/GA’s recent Creative Summit in New York, where we ran an intensive 48-hour lab dedicated to delivering on a complex end-to-end brief.

We executed multiple workflows entirely with AI, putting our principle of 'making things that make things' into practice. The entire process was an illustration of how we bring Intelligent Brand Systems to life. This required heavy computing: of the human brain variety.

Constantly inputting, outputting, evaluating. I actually felt my brain fusing previously unconnected neurons. Far from being a rote activity, if you are using these tools to create and refine rather than simply generate, they demand a different kind of cognitive process. We were literally rewiring creativity.

This evolution is not just theoretical; it’s a physical process. As someone of a certain age, with a skillset forged by many years in the creative industries, I thought I would be somewhat at a disadvantage. But I’ve always been fascinated by the science of brain plasticity, so I did a little digging and found out something interesting.

Women often show higher functional connectivity and more dynamic reconfiguration in certain networks, which may give them a slight edge in picking up complex patterns and shifting gears between tasks and mindsets. In a world full of new AI tools, that flexibility is highly advantageous.

Plasticity appears to be limitless. You can train your brain to respond faster and more flexibly. You can make changes at 46, 56 or 86 that are just as real as changes at 16, even if it takes a bit more conscious effort. Sleep, novelty, resistance training, rich conversation, problem-solving and exposing yourself to tasks that make you rethink things all help. The brain loves challenge the same way it loves oxygen.

To bring this back to actionable insights, here are three shifts you can make.

1. Treat learning like reps in a set rather than a destination. Your goal is not to know everything. Your goal is to build the muscles of testing, trying, and tossing. Think of skills as things you warm up rather than things you master.

2. Practice clean unlearning. Catch yourself when you automatically reach for the way you have always done something. Ask why. Often the answer is habit. Often there are better ways to do something you haven’t discovered yet. Switch off autopilot and embrace the ‘autopivot’.

3. Make space for stretch. My biggest learning out of New York is that plasticity feeds on discomfort. Set challenges that force your brain into new patterns. Aim for that feeling you get when you’ve relocated your underwear to a new drawer and open the old one by habit when you get dressed in the morning. If it feels annoying or frustrating, you’re doing it right.

The Intelligence Age rewards minds that stay loose, curious, and fast. You do not need to drown under the onslaught. Stay soft and malleable enough to go with the flow and you won’t go under.