We learn by doing

Not many years ago I began to play the cello.  Most people would say that what I am doing is “learning to play” the cello.  But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exists two very different processes:

1. learning to play the cello; and
2. playing the cello.

They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second.  In short, I will go on “learning to play” until I have “learnt to play” and then I will begin to play.  Of course, this is nonsense. 

There are not two processes, but one.  We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.