Make sure the learning never stops
We go to school and are “forced” to learn. At some point, hopefully, we realize that having the time to learn is a privilege and that learning isn’t a passive exercise. We are going to get out of it what we put into it. I remember for me, the lightbulb went off between my freshman and sophomore years in college (late bloomer!). I had been an ok student in high school, with a spotty record- sometimes in honors classes, sometimes not. Sometimes getting A’s, sometimes getting B’s or C’s. There were probably a few lower grades sprinkled in there that I have chosen to forget.
When I got to college I was swept away by the freedom, the social opportunities- overall the excitement and stress of being on my own in a completely foreign environment. I made some incredible memories that first year- and found myself staring at a 1.6 GPA at year end. It was a crystallizing moment for me, where I really sat down and had a long talk with myself about my future. I weighed the pros and cons of leaving school (I would have joined the army) or — if I were to stay- to really apply myself. It was a moment of clarity where I realized that if I was going to spend my time doing something, I needed to do it with integrity- and that meant doing it as well as I possibly could.
From that point on my academic record was pretty flawless- but what I realized was that learning, like most anything in life, is about developing a methodology that works and applying it consistently. The same approach worked for me in graduate school.
Learning on the job is different, but it came more naturally to me because I was genuinely curious and I was already a hard worker- which in my experience are the two most important things needed to get ahead in a professional setting.
What I found slipped away in the years that I was grinding away hard at a corporate job while raising a family (the years when time seemed to be the one thing that there would never, ever be enough of), was systematic learning. There was lots of osmosis but it was haphazard. Once I got more senior in my roles, I realized that there was so much more to learn, so again a more disciplined reading regime came into the picture.
More recently I have adopted a few additional practices to help me accelerate my learning even further:
- I have taken up a new language. That in itself is not particularly remarkable- except that I have always considered myself NOT a language person, and I really don’t like learning new languages. What I have found is that being disciplined about learning something that is so unnatural for me seems to be activating a different part of my brain- in any case it is a daily challenge which creates a level of focus that I can apply elsewhere. Plus I am actually learning to speak Polish which is pretty cool.
- I consistently set aside one hour a day to read on topics that I want to know more about (and in some cases need to know more about for professional reasons). More importantly I have adopted a new practice, recommended by someone I admire greatly, in which I write down things I have learned and don’t want to forget- and then I reread these notes with regularity.
- I am taking time to teach others. For some people (teachers, for instance) it will come as no surprise that the level of “knowing” something goes up considerably when you need to explain it to someone else. In the normal course of mentoring or coaching people, focusing on a new area that I am learning with them sharpens the mind and helps me to see where I might have gaps in my knowledge.
I have mentioned in this blog before how much I admire my mother, who at 78 continues to push herself to learn new things- like how to play the clarinet. To be alive means growth, and growth requires learning. It isn’t always fun- it can be frustrating, painful, and even boring at times to push through and get to a new level of knowing something. But with discipline and consistency the results are the reward!
