Learning is a Life Long Journey

I have been writing on Linkedin for over a year and received many encouragements from friends and colleagues. I find it enjoyable and rewarding. Best of all, writing has been a great way of learning for me as well. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.

Why life long learning is important?

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio once summarized succinctly three critical skills one needs to have to be successful in today’s competitive world: open-mindedness, technology-friendliness, and global thinking. Underlying all those skills are the ability to learn and adapt.

First of all, the world is changing and changing fast. We have to take a positive and proactive attitude with the changes. Change is good, change is progress. For years you had clarity about your career. But organizations now are compelled to change because of technological disruptions and varying economics. For businesses, dealing with these shifts are vital to their survival. They have to adapt quickly with the speed of change. Lifelong learners will have the intellectual flexibility and professional adaptability needed to seize opportunities in new and dynamic sectors as they emerge, as well as the resilience to handle shocks in declining industries. The American philosopher Eric Hoffer put it perfectly, “In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Secondly, the pace of technology advancement over the last few decades has been historically unprecedented. Technology not only permeates every aspect of our lives and work, but is constantly changing itself. Falling behind means that your job could be at risk – not just from higher-skilled people but also machines as well. It wasn’t too long ago that people would finish school, get a job, and then spend decades in the same place. Those days are largely over. In today’s fast-changing labor market, the most in-demand occupations– such as data scientists, app developers, or cloud computing specialists – did not even exist ten years ago. To succeed in today’s fast-changing business world, workers are expected to be agile lifelong learners, especially about new technologies as they emerge, comfortable with continuous adaptation, and willing to move across industries.

Finally, the world is more interconnected than ever before. There are all sorts of great things happening in other countries. Regardless of being in large global corporations competing in the global market, or in start-ups which need to take advantage of global supply chain or low cost manufacturing options, one needs to constantly aware of the interconnected global economy. To be able to navigate effectively in different cultures, successful business people need to constantly learn and make adjustment as the global business dynamic changes. They not only needs to be constantly aware of the global business environment and diverse nature of the labor force, but also develop the ability to fully take advantage of the strength coming with the global diversity.

How to sustain life long learning?

Life long learning has been loosely defined as the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. The key word is self-motivated. On the one hand, advancement of technology has made learning so much easier. There are so many options to learn – attending lectures, watching TED talks, reading books. But beyond the formal learnings, it is more important to have a mindset of learning from daily life and everyday work. 

Learn from self-reflection. We learn by experiences. But, unless we question ourselves about what our experiences mean and think actively about them, we won’t make any changes. Self-reflection enables you to move from just experiencing, into understanding. Only with deep understanding through self reflection, one can truly gain insights and learn the fundamental knowledge behind the experience.

Learn from others. Confucius once said, if you see three people walking, at least one of them could be my teacher. Find the smartest people who disagree with you and the conversation in that disagreement will be enlightening. That's the quickest way to get an education. 

Learn from mistakes. Most people naturally tend to learn from their successes and stay on the same paths which led to their successes. In fact, failure is the fastest path to knowledge. If we treat failure with intellectual honesty, then failure is the greatest teacher in life.

With knowledge comes awareness, and with awareness comes the ability to do better things in this world based on new information that allows you to do so. Lifelong learning can enhance our understanding of the world around us, bring us better opportunities, make us more productive, more importantly improve the quality of life for the people around us as well as our own.

Cheers to a new year – make the new year be the start of your exciting journey as a lifelong learner.

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