Life's cycle of Learning, Unlearning and Relearning experiences
Sudip Sinha CCRA DTM PMP
LinkedIn Top Thought Leadership, Quality & Project Leadership Voice | Project & Program Management | Digital Transformation, Operational Excellence & Data Analytics | Six Sigma Black Belt | Pharma MedTech Leadership
When each of us pass through different phases of life, be it during our formative years at school / college or career transitions for higher growth through organizations - we inadvertently go through phases of learning when we upskill our work/domain knowledge and enrich professional perspectives by unlearning and relearning along the way.
An important aspect of "unlearning" is important and made me think about this more and more especially since most of us may not take "unlearning" seriously enough.... ?
Have any of you visited a perfume store recently? I happened to be browsing through a perfume store at Delhi Terminal 3 Airport and noted a jar of coffee beans in a perfume store.
This aroused my curiosity as to what a "jar of coffee" is doing inside a perfume store. Why is this important and what is the higher purpose served by this jar of coffee? Is there something we can learn and apply to our corporate life?
The important learning of the day for me was that a handful of coffee beans has its significance when the perfume shop owner wants to sell an expensive bottle of perfume.
How?
When and discerning customer like you or me try different exotic perfumes, after 4th or 6th variety of woody fragrance or lime/lemon or any other fragrance, our sense of smell fails as the human brain cannot distinguish between different types of fragrance.
This is when the special appearance of the surprise element - the "jar of coffee" comes into play & we can smell the coffee beans & each of us mandatorily need to undertake a process of unlearning where due to the strong coffee aroma, each of our brains now only remember the aroma of strong coffee (I can see you envisioning Nescafe/ BRU/ Filter Coffee, etc.)
Now this enables our reconditioned brain to undergo a process of relearning after unlearning using the "jar of coffee" where we can start sniffing perfumes again.
What's the important life's lesson here?
Each of us have an amazing power to unlearn, relearn & move on to new learnings through Charles Darwin's process of evolution, with the humdrum busy lives we go through each day we have forgotten the fine aspect of "letting it go", this is called unlearning. Creativity & productivity gets enhanced when you learn to let things go.
Points to Reminisce about:
2. Unlearning is not forgetting, unlearning only happens consciously
3. Learn to let it go - be it the love of your life or something we treasure the most
Kindly share your insights and observations in the comments section, I look forward to hearing from you.
Full Stack Web Developer | React.js, Next.js, Node.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, AWS, REST API
6 个月Great article Sudip Sinha CCRA DTM PMP. The process I understood is shifting our focus to a different topic and then returning to the original topic. Correct me if I am wrong
RWE strategy, Non-interventional and evidence generation specialist
1 年Beautiful insights... Learning completes when you unlearn something and accept the change the way it is..
Senior Director New Business Development Data, Analytics, GenAI & Site Head Bangalore at Chryselys
1 年Absolutely Sudip. Loved the Phrase: Unlearning is not forgetting, unlearning only happens consciously. Now a days we all Live everyday in Dilemma whether to Learn, Learn more, Learn even more as Learning is so Overhyped!!. Taking a step back by keeping the ego aside always helps. Thank you for this article.