A Challenge to Keep Learning
It’s back to school season so, in between procuring school supplies and paying student fees, I’m thinking about the value of continuous learning. Long after we’ve celebrated our last first day of school, after the tests have been passed and the certificates or diplomas have been earned, we obviously still don’t know all there is to know. As high functioning adults with busy careers, how do we make room for lifelong learning?
On paper, we know that growing our knowledge base is good for our business. Upskilling paves the way for new opportunities. Seminars take deep dives into subjects that keep us on the cutting edge. Learning new techniques can increase productivity and boost brain function. But as a practical matter, a lot of us drag our feet. Why is that? Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz saw right through the reluctance when he said:
“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem.”
Aha, there it is. It’s not that there are too many client projects or too few hours in the day. Learning something new means you have to operate outside of your comfort zone. You have to be the newbie, which can feel strange, especially if you’ve been doing what you do for a long time. What would happen if you swapped discomfort for curiosity? Does that make the idea of learning feel a little lighter? I know it did for me, especially when I combined curiosity with a daily challenge.
There’s a specific marketing topic that I’ve wanted to learn more about for a while, but it felt really big and overwhelming, and I wasn’t sure where to start. Then I read about the practice of committing to skill-building for ten minutes a day for six weeks.
That’s it. Totally doable, right?
Just a few days into my challenge new concepts and acronyms were flying at me and I was way over my skis at times. Instead of feeling like I was “suffering injury” I reminded myself that what I was doing wasn’t necessarily hard, I’d just never done it before. Finding answers was the reward for being curious, vulnerable, and patient with myself. And at the end of the six weeks, I had five hours’ worth of self-led learnings to leverage for myself and my clients.
Is five hours enough time to “go deep”? I suppose it depends on the subject matter. But I can tell you creating a habit of daily learning will set you up to either take it further or move on and get curious about something new. That’s the beauty of this practice. It’s accessible so you’ll look forward to following through. It offers all the brain and business boosting benefits of expanding your proficiency without getting in the way of the important work you need to do.
I bet you’ll even learn new things about yourself along the way.
