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Learning Anything?
A few short years ago Agriculture ceased to be the number one occupation for humankind. It was overtaken by the Services industry. This is momentous news given that this is the first time more humans were occupied by something other than agriculture in over 10,000 years.
Learning and teaching are clearly the currency of the future. 66% of us are already knowledge workers. This is where the real leverage in today’s society and economy are. Simply put, the people who can learn and teach effectively will be the people who have the most success in the future. I recently attended a conference on the topic and decided to share my notes with you… enjoy!
Our obstacles to learning:
First off, the two greatest obstacles to learning are:
1. I already knew that.
2. I disagree.
As you read this material, you will probably have those reactions a few times.
One of the reasons could be that you’re an entrepreneur (or an aspiring entrepreneur.) As an entrepreneur it’s likely you’re a “difference” person. That means your brain is very adept at spotting the differences between things.
Some people are “sameness” people, some people are “difference” people. (There are also mis-matchers who are the “yeah, but…” people.) None of these types are good or bad, they’re just different ways of looking at the world.
There tend to be more “difference” people among entrepreneurs… so the odds are pretty good that you’re a difference person, which would make you especially vulnerable to these two obstacles of “I already knew that” and “I disagree”.
In any case, please try to fight those two urges as you read this. It will be a huge obstacle to your learning process.
Guidelines for optimal learning:
a) Don’t become too invested in your positions… things are bound to change and
b) Never believe anything too much
In other words, stay open to learnings and change. Otherwise you will stop learning.
Every time you say “I already knew that”, you are closing the door and preventing yourself from learning. Every time you say “I disagree” you are blocking yourself from learning.
Become “not me”
Another key to learning is becoming “not me”… if you lock into your current self-image and behaviors, then you lock yourself out of learning.
You want to become “systematically outrageous”.
You want to be open to new experiences and new learnings. If you aren’t, then you’re not going to grow. You’re not going to change. You’re going to keep getting what you’ve gotten in the past.
Do what you’ve always done and your going to get what you’ve always got.
Get outside yourself. Become not me. Stay open. MOVE OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE. Learn.
Learning = behavioral change
Perhaps you’ve already had some insights and ‘aha’ moments in the past. Maybe you even get a surge of adrenalin or good feeling in your body when you make such a connection.
No real learning takes place with an insight… It’s just trivia, or data collection until you use that insight to create some behavioral change in yourself.
Some attendees stated: “I’ve learned to get very clear on the specific steps I need to get to create my vision and attain my goal.”
Sounds specific, right?
Well sorry… that’s not learning either. There is actually nothing specific or measurable in the statement.
To turn that into real learning, you would need to state something like: “For the next 10 days, when I sit down at my computer the first thing I do is close my eyes and visualize my day for sixty seconds. I then write down my action plan for the day.”
It’s kind of like taken something that you have read and putting it to work for you and then measuring the effectiveness.
Here’s a way to judge whether you have had a real learning experience. If a week later you asked 10 objective people to judge whether you had actually changed your behavior, would the learning be specific and measurable for them to come to a simple conclusion?
It took many of us a few days to get a real learning experience under our belt. Mine was a simple learning, but it was very specific and measurable. It had specific time frames and specific actions. And over the next 20 years that learning will probably have an enormous impact on my life.
The reason it took me and everyone else a long time to achieve this learning objective is primarily because we are all masters of self-deception. But the benefits are rewarding when you get there. It will likely change your life.
Give it a try…. Be specific. Be Measurable.
or just plain get out there and learn, learn learn.