Never STOP Learning

Fundamental Principle of Evolution says "Survival for Fittest" which counters the buzzword “Never Stop Learning”. Learning is an integral part of being’s DNA. It may be in the form of formal and informal with consciousness or subconsciousness. As per the human psychology, we learn 80% of our knowledge subconsciously compared to our conscious learning. Then the million-dollar question is, if so, much of learning is happening with every individual, what is the need for this awareness. Because most of our individual DNA driven learning is unorganized. The essence of this awareness is to create an attempt to promote organized learning over unorganized ones.

Most of the learning happens either in “My-way” or “High-way” means the response mechanism to those type of learning is either the way it is designed for or it will not last with self. This form of learning is highly unorganized and to make it organized we have to apply an embracing methodology. The very first step to this methodology is to accept the learning and put a necessity-based filter. Post filtration response the learning essence to outer ecosystem applying with a feedback mechanism. The reactions which turn out as positive to preserve within and rest can be unlearned.

Another prominent form of learning is called intent-based learning. Reaction to these kinds of learning often based on the actual intention behind those learning. For example, nations security personnel in charge of utmost sovereignty of nation has trained to be killed the human in unprecedented situations or a war situation. And these learning and its implementation come up with a heavy reward and recognition because the intention behind the act is broader national interest. When the same act the personnel changed with self-interest intention and killed someone gets punished. We have to very cognizant of intention-based learning and its adoption.

One more familiar and high adoption-based learning is formal guided learning where we are being trained with the subject matter expert in those fields. The benefit to those kinds of learning is that we have been feed with both pros and cons of such learning and as a result of it the preconditioning of the mind happened before applying that acquired knowledge. For example, preparation of KCN (Potassium Cyanide), with guided learning we have been trained with its use, the way it functions and its implications. These type of learning helps to achieve an immediate goal and helps greatly to build our knowledge stack.

Besides guided learning, our cellular DNA has an innate potential to absorb huge information subconsciously which is often referred to as unguided or subconscious learning. These forms of learning are not organized itself and making it organized also not that is. To tap the potential of these kinds of learning we have to condition our body and mind so that the learning we acquire will rightfully places and processes and stored to the right storage volume. A simple but powerful technique we can employ to our mind is bucketing methodology. We have to constantly groom our mind, whenever some information absorbed subconsciously it will be immediately classify based on its utility, intent and impact to self.

STOP – Stop, Think, Observe & Proceed is an excellent methodology which can be used for conditioning to our mind to process the unguided subconscious continual learning. At Stop phase we are taking a bit time to observe the information instead of processing and fast-forwarding it. Think and observe phase moves in iterative fashion before giving the signal to proceed phase. While Think phase focussed on the multidimensional information analysis, observe phase focuses on the outcome of each possible dimensions. Based on the outcomes whether favourable or not the brain decides whether to proceed or not.

Next form of learning is social learning. A substantial amount of these learning put a heavy impact on our mindset and shapes our behaviour accordingly. These forms of learning have the highest thrust to shape our behaviour to either extreme. It is always advised to make it monitored social learning. With regular intervals, we have to monitor and re-access the shape of this information in our reflex action to the outer ecosystem.

 In addition to these above-mentioned learnings, there is one more type called experiential learning. It is focussed and driven by a certain objective. It is highly purposeful and time-bound exercise itself. Primarily it gives an opportunity to reshape the learning stack with greater details of breadth and depth. These types of learning are more common in knowledge workers industry. These types of learning is a concise packaged form of learning full of methods and framework to empower knowledge workers to deal with the aspired positions inherent ambiguity. The knowledge in this type of packaged learning is pretested and validated before it delivered to knowledge workers.

In pursuit of this experiential learning, I have decided to join the Institute of product leadership to enhance my core skills in a specialized way to deal with the end to end product lifecycle. The precise methodology, frameworks, know-how are superb and delivered by the pioneers in their own area. My initial day of kick start program the type of protocol and content I have experienced was a generation ahead of its competitors and gives me utter confidence that I have landed in a right place of my desired education. I am hopeful and clear that this experiential learning will help to shape my aspired endeavour of entrepreneurship.

Finally, before giving rest to my pen I would like to say there is no single sweet spot or single formula to be adopted for learning. No matter what the approach of learning it has to be judiciously employed with well-organised methodologies so that we keep the positive crux from it. Being inspired with professor Murthy’s advised penning this article and in fact the very fast cross topic of my career and wishing it will uncover one more dimension to my learning ability and helpful to reshape my well-aspired work function of next endeavour.

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