For Aristotle, "the soul is, in a way, all things" (De Anima 432b20). Your intellect can grasp the form of pretty much everything within reach — and thanks to how connected we all are now, that reach is enormous. Getting to culture and information has never been easier. The secrets of subatomic matter, the most far-flung planets, the endless forms architecture has taken across every era, the mystery of where the human mind ends and neuroscience begins... your chances to learn are practically unlimited.

But that whole landscape can get crowded out by other, flashier stuff. Books and learning can feel dull next to video games, reels, or whatever's trending. What I want to show you is that you really can enjoy studying and learning new things. Building the habit of being a studious person will open up genuine opportunities for you, academically and professionally. But it'll also help you grow in a dozen other ways: your interests, your relationships, your relationship with God, and how you handle the countless challenges life throws at you.

Learning to enjoy studying

A lot of human activities feel tedious at first, but once you get good at them, you start to enjoy them. Think of playing a sport or learning an instrument, for example. Studying works the same way. That's why St. Thomas Aquinas talks about studiousness as part of the virtue of temperance (S. Th. II-II, q. 166, a. 2). And like any habit, studiousness only comes with practice.

Your soul wants to know deep truths, sure, but your body would rather dodge the effort and stay in its comfort zone. Without the habit of studiousness, you won't be able to sit with complex or demanding material. You'll only ever be able to take in knowledge from sources that don't ask much of you. And that makes you easy prey for low-effort content, addictive and unhelpfully stimulating stuff (pornography, half-baked conspiracy theories, the kind of thing the internet has no shortage of these days).

In 2024, after an open vote, the Oxford English Dictionary named "brain rot" its word of the year, defining it as "the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging." Low-quality content can atrophy the intellectual "muscle" you need to push through and understand harder things. Building a habit of studiousness helps you avoid that and instead go looking for reading and conversations that actually make you grow.

So where do you start?

Start with something you're already into. Say you're a huge tennis fan: start by reading a biography of your favorite player. You'll learn a ton about how they climbed to the top, or what it actually cost them to get there. That kind of reading can lead you somewhere unexpected, giving you real insight into the life of a professional athlete, and some reflection on how they handle the other challenges life throws at them.

Being an elite athlete takes more than physical effort. The best players train their minds too. Search Google Scholar and you'll find plenty of research on sports psychology and how professionals prepare to hit their goals. So there you go: your spontaneous interest in tennis just led you into psychology, a subject that might never have caught your attention on its own, but suddenly turned out to be fascinating.

Same goes for whatever subjects you're already into at school or college. That's how you build the intellectual muscle you'll need for everything else. Start wherever's easiest, and go from there. The more you study, the more things start to interest you — learning gets more enjoyable the further in you go.

Reading regularly is at the core of being a studious person. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford's character says: "Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading." Our own experience alone will only get us so far. Reading is how we get access to the experience and reflection of countless other people.

Studying with your priorities straight

In his unforgettable novel The Betrothed, Alessandro Manzoni gives us Don Ferrante, a noble, erudite intellectual. His enormous library holds serious works like Aristotle's writings and Jean Bodin's political treatises, but it's also stuffed with books on astrology, magic, and witchcraft, dueling customs, and treatises on "the shapes and habits of mermaids and the phoenix" or "how dewdrops turn into pearls inside oyster shells."

Take a look at your own internet history. You'll probably find some worthwhile searches... and plenty of totally useless ones too. We can all end up a bit like Don Ferrante. Not all knowledge is worth having. Studiousness has an excess, and it's called curiosity — not the good, intellectual kind, but the scattered kind: wanting to know things that don't actually help you, or that distract you from what you owe to other people and to God (S. Th. II-II, q. 167, a. 1).

One good move is to ask someone more experienced for help learning how to prioritize. And part of prioritizing is knowing when to stop. Remember the man who spent so much time reading tales of chivalry that "with too little sleep and too much reading, his brain dried up, and he lost his mind" (Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote). Studying works best when it's balanced with rest and time with other people. Staying clear-headed is what lets your mind actually reach its full potential.

The motivation that actually holds up

There are plenty of reasons to study: winning an award, graduating at the top of your class, landing a job that pays well. Are those bad reasons? Not necessarily — but they push learning itself into second place. A bigger motivation is serving others and serving society.

St. Josemaría dedicates a whole chapter of The Way to this. In it he writes: "Study — professional training of whatever type it be — is a grave obligation for us" (The Way, no. 334), and "If you are to serve God with your mind, to study is a grave obligation for you" (The Way, no. 336). Being genuinely well-prepared is essential if you want to serve well.

The bigger your dream, the bigger your reason to study. "Add a supernatural motive to your ordinary professional work, and you will have sanctified it" (The Way, no. 359). What kind of motive? The Pope's intentions, the souls who've drifted from God, your family and friends. There are no shortcuts here — just giving the best of yourself. And that's how you'll get the most out of your talents, because "there is no excuse for those who could be scholars and are not" (The Way, no. 332).