Give someone a fish, feed him or her for a day. Teach that person to fish, feed them for a lifetime. Teach that same person how to learn, they can teach themselves other skills besides fishing so that they have a more well-rounded diet (and life).
The ability to learn is powerful. The business community, including the World Economic Forum and McKinsey, are touting this idea lately as a way to prepare for the acceleration of technological transformation, in which hundreds of millions of jobs are replaced by more modern ones .
In order to adapt, people are going to have to retrain and learn new skills to survive. “Even before COVID-19 emerged, the world of stable lifetime employment had faded in the rearview mirror,” according to a recent Mckinsey report. The bottom line: It’s on us to learn new skills.
I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, that’s a pretty depressing worldview. I thought we escaped the “go to school or you’ll be a loser” lectures when we left home. Sure, fear can be a powerful motivator, but positive motivation is much more effective. I’ve seen how this works hundreds of times in my own classroom.
The business folk are right about one thing: Learning is a powerful ability. It’s one that we’re not taught properly in school, but can greatly improve our lives. Sure, it will open new career opportunities.
But it can also help us connect with others, create beautiful works of art, save money, improve our mental well-being, tickle our taste buds, or many other benefits. I encourage everyone to spend as much of their lives learning as possible. However, I insist that you to do it for yourselves, not because the corporate world is telling you to.
The approach mentioned, called ‘intentional learning’, offers some solid advice: Be curious and open to failure, reflect on the process, use intrinsic motivation. Unfortunately, this is not how we’re used to learning, thanks to school.
Think about how the use of grading flies in the face of this. If you succeed you receive a token (and opportunities to earn more tokens!). If you fail (we’ve been through this), you mess up your future. It’s a high-stakes game that engenders a fear of failure, leaving little room for curiosity or reflection.
Whether as a result of grade school or not, many of us carry this fear of failure all our lives. It often prevents us from learning new things because learning involves failure of some kind.
So learn, not because you are afraid not to, but because you want to. Because you love what you are learning. Because you want to improve your life, on your own terms. You don’t have to do it alone. There are fellow learners and teachers all around you (or at the click of your touch screen).
That’s the premise of this podcast. You don’t need to sit in a classroom. You can find people who have learned what you learned so that you can follow in their footsteps.
Not only that, but you can also learn how to learn from successful learners. In other words, we can often apply the same learning methods towards different skills. This is why learning is such a powerful ability.
It can also be a pretty kick-ass journey. That’s what this podcast is for me. A journey in learning to learn. Thanks for joining me!