Bree finished graduate school over 10 years ago. The first few years of her career were like drinking from a firehose. There was a whole new hidden curriculum to learn for professional success. Now, that phase of her life has started to fade away. She spends more time answering questions than asking them. But being a capable learner has always been part of her identity, and she wants to stay mentally sharp. Daily Wordle doesn’t feel enough for that.

Bree is right that seeing herself as a capable learner, and the act of ongoing learning (either formal or informal), is part of maintaining brain health, including mental health.

It keeps her sense of self rooted in learning and growth. It provides self-efficacy; she can accomplish things. And it keeps her sense of self flexible; when she learns something new, it subtly changes who she is.

You might share her desire to stay connected with the capable learner within you.

Here are five strategies for how to approach learning when your focus has shifted from proving yourself to others to retaining mental agility.

1. Learn and Teach Simultaneously

Bree supervises graduate students at her workplace. These are smart, capable young people but they’re also newbies who are still navigating the intense, overwhelming stage of learning Bree left behind long ago. As well as teaching them career-specific skills, Bree helps them manage their mental game, like handling their anxiety and understanding what’s most important to focus on.

Because she gives learning advice to others regularly, it’s easier to give it to herself when she is in a learner role closer to their stage. She understands that it’s hard to see you’re doing well when topics feel like a struggle, even when that’s objectively true. She understands it’s hard to see what’s most important when you don’t yet fully understand how you’ll use the information you’re learning in practice.

Those mental messages stay salient for her because she is expressing them.

If you’re not in a teaching role, find a way to be, formally or informally; it helps you apply the same mental lessons to yourself as a learner.

When you articulate the strategies, mindset, and focus areas that help learners succeed, giving yourself the same advice becomes automatic.

It doesn’t matter if what you’re teaching is the same as what you’re learning. What matters is that you’re giving smart learners like yourself the learning messages you also need to hear.

2. Every Project Can Have Dual Goals

Any formal or informal learning project can serve two purposes. First, accomplishing what you need to. Second, developing your meta-cognition—your ability to reflect on your thinking. In doing that, you learn about how you learn.

This mindset keeps you sharp because it is reflective and strategic. You’re operating on two levels—completing the task and improving how you approach learning at the same time.

3. Build a Portfolio

Bree keeps mental track of the projects she’s completed, skills she’s mastered, and experiments she’s tried. It’s not about showing off; it’s about having a record she can reflect on. When she looks back at her portfolio, she sees patterns in how she learns, where she gets stuck, and what strategies work.

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Her learning portfolio helps her have self-efficacy and maintain a long-term view. She has a big base, a foundation she is building on. She doesn’t need quick wins, because what she’s building over the long-term is substantial. When learning feels hard, she maintains the view that it’s not her first rodeo.

4. Prioritize Scenario-Based Learning and Answering Practice Exam Questions

When we’re engaged in the type of study that ends in a test or license to practice, we often use scenario-based learning or answer practice exam questions. This is far superior to passively watching videos or reading and highlighting.

When we’re learning on our own, we can default to passive methods. You’ll keep yourself much sharper and more agile by using the most active forms of learning. When those aren’t prescribed to you, be creative. For example, Bree might ask her Spanish-speaking neighbors to role play instead of just earning another badge on her language-learning app.

Passive learning lulls us into mental laziness, the opposite of the responsiveness and mental agility capable learners want to maintain.

5. Use Modern Learning Methods

If you last did formal learning a while ago, you probably didn’t use the same tools that capable learners with competitive learning goals currently use, such as those used by student doctors or pilots.

Learning only from people whose learning experience is old can keep you from discovering the tools and methods current learners are using.

This is a “you don’t know what you don’t know” dilemma, which AI can be helpful with. For example, you might ask AI: “Answer like someone from a subreddit devoted to X about the best learning resources for Y or the most effective strategies for Z. Base your answer on real posts, not guesses.”

With this approach, you’ll pick up useful tidbits and resources from recent learners and early adopters of technology, even when you don’t have those role models around you. New tools help us vary our learning approach rather than get stuck in comfortable ruts.

Mental Sharpness Needs to Be Pursued Intentionally

Being a capable learner isn’t something Bree ever outgrew; it’s part of how she navigates the world, even if she feels she has lost touch with that side of herself. People who want to retain mental sharpness and agility must pursue it intentionally. It doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by maintaining the identity and mindset of a learner, not as an automatic byproduct of our jobs. Formal and informal learning projects can both serve this purpose.

Exploring new tools, deepening meta-cognition, ingraining effective self-talk through teaching roles, choosing active over passive learning methods, and building confidence through a portfolio of achievements are five concrete strategies we can use to retain our skills and identity as a dexterous, capable learner.