How to Become a Better Learner

Earlier this year, I shared a series of posts about the future of work, exploring the societal challenges we face regarding accelerating technological developments, how to prepare our children for the workforce, and disruptions we may see to how work is done. 

To better prepare for the future of work (and increasingly its present), we must become better learners. As our world changes with an accelerating rate of technological advancement, an increasingly global talent pool, and the ongoing reinvention of many professions, continuous learning is a fundamental condition for excellence and self-fulfillment.

Consider the impact machine learning will have on human learning over the next few decades, when digital assistants will be able to predict our needs and guide us step by step through almost every decision we need to make. Small examples of this already abound, such as Apple’s and Google’s considering our location, preferred mode of transportation, live traffic data, and other inputs to tell us when we should leave for an appointment.

It won’t be long before machines can similarly guide us through our work lives, telling us what tasks we (or they) should do next and whom we should involve or delegate to, advising on trade-offs, and reminding us of what happened the last time we tried a particular approach. In fact, at Globality, our machine learning applications already guide professional services users to efficiently and accurately define their project requirements, and our technology can learn to refine suggestions based on users’ past preferences.

The good news is that these technologies will simplify and empower workers to deliver better outputs at an increasing speed. They will reduce coordination and administrative work, reversing a longstanding trend whereby growing bureaucracy has deteriorated the work experience in almost every profession. They will help people focus more on core deliverables and outputs. The bad news is that more and more skills will be commoditized while certain skills and knowledge requirements evolve, especially with respect to developing, processing, and governing machine outputs.

The pressure to learn constantly will be high. However, I believe that increasing our rate of learning and becoming better learners will ultimately make us much happier—both at work and in life.

One of the foremost experts I know on how to become a better learner is University of North Carolina Professor Brad Staats, who led cutting-edge research on this topic for over a decade and last year authored the book Never Stop Learning. This book is rich with insights that resonate with much of my own experience, and it covers a set of core mindsets that enable more effective learning and personal fulfilment.

I wanted to share seven takeaways, drawing heavily from Brad’s research and weaving in some of my own experience. 

1. Acknowledge failure

Too often we reject both needs and opportunities to learn because we’re preoccupied with thoughts of failure, and most people respond badly to negative feedback. Brad and fellow researchers shed light on this in a study that focused on an extensive set of 360 assessments, comparing the initial responses with employee performance over the next year. Those who responded the most negatively also experienced the worst deterioration in their performance. This finding is indicative of attribution bias, which is our tendency to blame external factors for our failures and therefore miss out on learning opportunities.

We are all familiar with clichés such as “no risk, no reward,” but most of us are still embarrassed when the risk plays out. We can learn from many small failures if we can recognize good failures, such as when the risk was worth taking, trying it was necessary to produce results, and it produced valuable insights. As business management author Tom Peters says, we should “reward excellent failure and punish mediocre success.”

2. Focus on process, not outcomes

Another major barrier to learning is outcome bias. Case in point: basketball games that end with a one-point difference in scores (i.e., the teams’ play was even regardless who won). Research shows that while coaches should take similar actions after both a narrow win or a narrow loss, when teams have won their previous game by a point, they almost always start the same lineup the next time out, whereas they usually make a change when they’ve lost narrowly. 

To learn, we must step back from outcomes and constantly evaluate the process we are taking toward them. After all, world-class excellence is often achieved via numerous micro-improvements. This was famously illustrated by the “lean” Toyota Production System that allowed Toyota to leapfrog other car manufacturers in the 1970s and 1980s. The mindset of Kaizen (a pursuit of continuous improvement) and other core elements were exported to all operational processes, empowering everyone involved to suggest improvements. Endurance sports also offer myriad examples of how dozens of “1 percent” micro-improvements enable an unreal level of performance.

If you’ve heard that the focus should be on outcomes, not process (which Amazon and Netflix are famously obsessive about), let me clarify why there is no contradiction when you consider the specifics of each idea. A good process is only good insofar as it serves a desired meaningful outcome, such as financial, customer, or social impact. When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and others criticize “process as a proxy,” they refer to organizations that measure the success of the process independently of the outcome for which the process was invented.

 3. Ask many questions

This is too obvious, right? Well, another barrier to learning is that we rarely ask enough questions or take the time to discover the “unknown unknowns.” We face pressure to do things quickly and with a bias toward action, which not only jeopardizes our ability to perform well but also diminishes our ability to learn.

Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman (and many behavioral scientists who followed him) identified countless biases that block us from what he refers to as “slow” (or “System 2”) thinking, which activates our more inquisitive planning approach. (“System 1” is fast but flawed intuition.) Questions automatically activate System 2, helping us overcome pitfalls like selective attention bias, availability bias, and confirmation bias, which improves our decision-making when we have to think fast.

Journalist Warren Berger, who refers to himself as a “questionologist,” wrote a couple of books full of “beautiful questions” to guide anyone looking for inspiration. He includes some questions designed specifically to test our intellectual humility, such as these: Would I rather be right, or would I rather understand? Do I solicit and seek out opposing views? Do I enjoy the “pleasant surprise” of discovering I’m wrong? 

Finally, University of North Carolina professor Brad Staats makes three very practical suggestions: (a) Look to work with people who have different perspectives than yours; (b) embrace a “falsification mindset,” whereby you try to disprove hypotheses you believe to be true in order to test them; and (c) listen carefully and summarize what you understand to improve your retention of new information. 

 4. Make time for reflection

Research using fMRI imaging and neural science has proven that reflection is a cognitive step required to embed learning. Experiments in which subjects reflected and wrote down two to three learnings for just 15 minutes per day led to a 31 percent improvement in retention over the control group. Reflection also boosts confidence because it leads us to recognize how our knowledge has grown.

As a leader, I believe it’s important to support a culture that values taking time for reflection instead of rewarding people who try to look busy all the time. This could encompass project-specific activities, such as pre-mortem and after-action reviews, as well as blocking out time to reflect for a moment during whichever time of day is best for each person on the team. 

My best thinking time is early morning, and I often use it to do stuff alone. My commute to and from work is excellent for reflection, and my iPhone notes are full of ideas from these quiet moments.  

 5. Be yourself

An environment that allows us to be authentic harnesses the right kind of motivation. Suppressing our identities to fit in is psychologically depleting and can lead to health problems. Just as positive emotions can help broaden our views, anxiety leads us to narrow our views and take in less information.

I like the notion of a level of “optimal distinctness”, where people can be individualistic but remain sensitive to not becoming outlandish relative to norms. In this vein, it’s a good practice to surround yourself with small cues that remind you of your individuality, such as a unique pen, a favorite jacket or necklace, or a picture of your family.

 6. Play to your strengths

We learn more when we enjoy what we do and gain recognition for doing it well. Top performers typically develop spikes while maintaining at least hygiene-level competence otherwise. For example, a salesperson’s claim to fame might be her ability to quickly and authentically build great personal connections. She will still need to be very good at explaining the details of the service she is selling and know how to close a deal, but she may see higher dividends from learning more ways to cultivate personal relationships.

Most people are poor judges of their relative strengths, but others are very good at discerning them. While at Harvard Business School, I took the Reflected Best Self Exercise (RBSE), which was telling for me regarding my strengths.

 7. Strike the right balance between variety and specialization

Specialization unlocks new learning curves and higher potential productivity through increased practice and focus. Similarly, variety helps people avoid tunnel vision and brokers knowledge from one area to another. While specialization can become an automatic mode to the detriment of innovation, variety helps prevent burnout and makes work more engaging and interesting.

How can you balance the two? You can use a T-shaped model for learning, where the depth of the T is something you are strong at and enjoy doing while more variety is added through a range of other activities. (But don’t confuse variety with multitasking, which diminishes the ability to focus and learn.)

For experts in senior roles, a valuable learning technique is occasionally taking on challenges designed to remind you what it feels like to be a novice. It may help if you look at old problems with fresh eyes, for example, and try to remember how hard it once was to learn something, especially as you work with junior colleagues who lack your expertise. 

Make learning a habit and a priority, and you will be ready for an exciting future.