A mindset for learning

If you don’t take time to sharpen your axe, it will take longer and longer to chop down trees, and you’ll expend more and more energy getting less done. This doesn’t just apply to lumberjacks, in fact it applies to anyone who sleeps all night and works all day, and even those who don’t.?

We are all forced to do some learning, and we are increasingly forced more and more as technology and society evolves at an increasing rate, but do you do enough??

Learning only what you have to is far below optimal and will delay your progress, allow others to get the jump on you, and leave you frustrated and even more time-poor.?

The mindset you take to challenges and situations can fundamentally increase your chances of success. Not only does it increase your own performance and capabilities, but it is an attractive characteristic that encourages other life learners to work with you.

I strongly advise you to consider both active and passive and active learning strategies to take full advantage of learning opportunities:

Actively plan the things you’d like to learn that will have the best impact on your long term success and happiness. This can be technical (hard skills), behavioural (people call them soft skills, but they tend to be far harder to develop than hard skills), or knowledge that interests you. Be ready to take advantage of time to learn them when you can and it feels right.?

Passively be open to learning in every situation you encounter. Have an open learning mindset, be curious and observant and you will consciously, subconsciously and unconsciously develop and refine your knowledge and capabilities. Be careful about subconscious and unconscious learning. It is very powerful, but you want to make sure you are learning things that are useful and progressive, and not things that are regressive and unhelpful.?

I have been travelling this week, delivering some very familiar topics to a new group of people. Even though I’m the person at the front guiding their learning there has still been plenty of opportunities for me to learn things; about the topics themselves from the discussions and questions, for two of my most front of mind active projects I’ve had some great insights that I’ve noted down to reflect on during the flight home, and further learning about myself. I’ve also grabbed some time to do some technical learning on my active projects, and had some great discussions with people that have expanded my awareness. A great learning week.

Too busy to learn? Really? Maybe you are prioritising the wrong thing.

This content by James Carter is licensed under CC BY 4.0