Learning is what you learn when no one is watching over your shoulder!
Damodar Padhi
Former Chief Learning Officer of Tata Consultancy Services, Advisor to individuals, teams and start-ups, Author of the self-help memoir 'The Scrapper's Way: Making It Big in an Unequal World'
Simple realisation in life at times end up glowing as guiding light for the rest of life!
When I was in middle school I had this terrible habit of dozing in the evening, especially when reading literature subjects. So my mother used to wake me up, and would at times tell – “Why don’t you close the book now, finish dinner and go to sleep? I will wake you up early in the morning. You would be feeling fresh and you can study few hours before going to school!” That worked for years...
This particular evening, I was reading a book with full concentration. It was well past 9 PM. When my mother asked me for dinner I answered that I was reading something very important and would take some more time. Breaking our dinner protocol of eating together my mother served dinner for my other siblings in the family and then waited for me. My father also waited along with her. Both of them were chatting on some household matters while I remained glued to the book I was reading. Somewhere I got distracted by a random thought and started feeling guilty. I was actually not reading a book that was any important. “My parents are not educated enough to check whether I am reading a course book, or a story book, or even a cheap novel... typical to teenagers! Their relationship compels their love towards me to be blind; their ignorance forces their trust towards me to be blind as well. Is this the way I am going to reciprocate their ‘blind trust’ on me for the rest of my life?” – I asked to myself and began to feel miserable. Few drops of tears trickled down as I closed the book and asked for dinner. Next day I returned the book to the friend I had borrowed it from, and never looked back…
That simple realisation in life made me to take notice of, and respond to the situation of ‘ignorance’ differently. The urge to live up to, and reciprocate to the blind love and trust of parents served as guiding light for the rest of my life. It made me stronger and more responsible as a person.
Someone had said – “Character is what you do when no one is watching you”… Likewise, actual learning is what you learn when no one is watching over your shoulder…
Thank You Damodar Padhi for sharing this excellent post and I completely agree with you on actual learning is what you learn when no one is watching you. Your post made me reflect and sharing some thoughts 1. As human beings I believe we like pleasurable experience over bitter experience. Simple examples are most of us may prefer story books over text books. This is applicable in other areas too such as junk food over healthy food. 2. This leads to an interesting question on how can learning that is relevant to one's careers and organizational benefit can be an experience to cherish for the learner so that we move significantly from push based learning to pull based learning. 3. I realize one possible solution is to start small - Tiny change where 20 minutes in a day one can focus on learning something that is their passion and/or will help them in their work and stick to it for at least one month so that it becomes a habit.
Lead DBA - MongoDB and Ansible/Chef/AzDO automations at MetLife
6 年Excellent article. Can totally relate where remorse becomes our best teacher and keeps us on track !
Senior Specialist, Product Design & Development
7 年Very nice article sir...thanks a lot for sharing
Management Consultant | Ex 3 Global Fortune 500 Companies
7 年Hi Damodar, great post and thanks for sharing. So you see we miss out on so many "deep learning" opportunities in day to day life !