Not Learning Faster

John Broons, “The Family Business Guy,” a Vistage Chair in Australia, told me during a recent Zoom: “The world is moving faster. My members need to learn faster. I am trying to learn how to learn faster.”

If that is your wish, I’d be glad to help you learn how to learn faster.

However, the idea does not appeal to me personally. I seek to learn more slowly, more deeply, more selectively.

I believe that a personal shortcoming has been my learning too many things, one inch deep.

Open For A Test

If you know very little about a subject, I can fake knowing a lot about it.

Go ahead, quiz me about a subject you know nearly nothing about. I will impersonate an expert.

Impressive? No. It’s a skill, but in my opinion, shallow expertise plagues humanity. Confidence ensues. Buffoonery blossoms.

And it’s not just the leaders I don’t like who we suffer on this point. It’s in my mirror, too. Do you see it in your mirror? 

Irony Alert

The very idea of my Zooming with an Australian shows the presence of faster learning through a faster medium. In my ancestors’ lives, the only way to learn from an Australian would be to go to Australia, which would have been a once-in-a-lifetime, one-way migration.

Learn more slowly? 

Now that is an ambition I can achieve!

Artie Isaac writes on ethics, creativity, and dogs at artie.co.