Never Stop Learning

It was a normal fall day for Ray. He had his 3-4 cups of morning coffee while reading the news on his Kindle, he walked in the yard looking at the landscape, walked into the woods to check for any wildlife tracks, and to check the mount on his outdoor camera where he could look to see what wildlife had ventured onto his property.

While he was doing all this, Ray spotted something in the leaves, a large stick from a fallen tree branch. Ray thought it looked like it could be a perfect walking stick. The only problem, he wasn't quite sure where to start in making his own. So what did Ray do? He taught himself through books, Youtube videos and trial and error. Ray is my dad and has been retired from the textile and paper manufacturing world for years, but what I admire about him is the fact that he has never stopped learning. From making his own walking sticks to learning how to refinish and repair firearms he has taken his retirement into a new direction of learning,

Looking at Ray's craftsmanship (his first ever walking stick pictured), it made me think about what skill or piece of knowledge I have learned in the past week. Here is just a brief list of very random things I have learned or learned how to do this week:

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was filmed in Sri Lanka.
• Bohemian Rhapsody spent nine consecutive weeks at Number One in the UK at the end of 1975. Its reign was ended by ABBA’s Mamma Mia – a title curiously contained in the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody. This meant the top 2 songs both had Mamma Mia in them.
• How to use stealth features in a new video game.
• The BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) of the FBI has five different units based on different crimes. Unit 1 (counter-terrorism, arson and bombing matters), Unit 2 (threats, cyber crime, and public corruption), Unit 3 (crimes against children), Unit 4 (crimes against adults, ViCAP), Unit 5 (research, strategy, and instruction).

I told you it was a very random list! The whole point of this article is to share that we should never stop learning. Everyday we have the ability to become stagnant and go about our routines or we can actively seek out opportunities to learn.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

In his book Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive, Bradley R. Staats concludes that we are bad at learning the older we get. He presents a framework for us to stay relevant as we learn and to become dynamic learners. That framework is to:

• Valuing failure—Dynamic learners are willing to fail in order to learn.
• Process rather than outcome—Dynamic learners recognize that focusing on the outcome is misguided, because we don’t know how we got there, whereas a process focus frees us to learn.
• Asking questions rather than rushing to answers—Dynamic learners recognize that “I don’t know” is a fair place to start—as long as we quickly follow with a question.
• Reflection and relaxation—Dynamic learners fight the urge to act for the sake of acting and recognize that when the going gets tough, the tough are rested, take time to recharge, and stop to think.
• Being yourself—Dynamic learners don’t try to conform; they’re willing to stand out.
• Playing to strengths—Dynamic learners don’t try to fix irrelevant weaknesses; they play to their strengths.
• Specialization and variety—Dynamic learners build a T-shaped portfolio of experiences—deep in one area (or more) and broad in others.
• Learning from others—Dynamic learners recognize that learning is not a solo exercise.

Staats says:

"But we’re bad at learning. Supremely bad. In fact, we’re our own worst enemies. Instead of doing the things that will help us learn, we often do just the opposite. We are unwilling to take risks that might lead to failure. We obsess about outcomes while neglecting to examine carefully the process through which we achieve them. We rush to answers instead of asking questions. We want to be seen doing something—anything—so we don’t step back to recharge and reflect. We follow the path that others have beaten rather than forge one of our own. We look to fix irrelevant weaknesses instead of playing to our strengths. We focus narrowly rather than draw on broad experience. We treat learning as an individual exercise and neglect the important role played by others."

Never take for granted the daily ways you can learn. I bet if you think about it, you have learned at least something new this past week. It may not be learning to make a walking stick like Ray, (my favorite of his pictured) but I am curios as to what that may be.

Take the time to comment and let people who you may never have met see what you have learned this week, are they as random as mine?