Three pillars of learning
Learning is a lifelong endeavor — whatever roles we might assume (student, working professional, parent, boss, entrepreneur) there are always new things for us to learn and excel at.
Willingness to learn is highly valued value and obviously without internal motivation learning becomes an arduous process. Assuming you do have the willingness there are 3 foundational pillars for learning. Putting all these together are essential for success.
So what are the 3 pillars of learning?
#1 Education
This one should not need convincing. The theory behind any topic is crucial to understand the domain well and establish a solid foundation. What you need to do is familiarize yourself with key concepts, first principles, and terminology.
There is so much great knowledge out there both free and paid in the form of courses, books, blogs and videos. Some of the best resources for me have come from entirely unexpected sources.
Choose a format and method of digesting this information that works best in terms of how you retain and process information. Pay particular attention to how you will retain this knowledge and keep it at fingertips for reference later. Some techniques like spaced repetition could be helpful.
Be mindful with this pillar, every single topic out there has research and material that can last you a lifetime. A Just in time knowledge gathering approach can serve you really well. After all there is only so much the human brain can process and master especially in the early stages of learning.
How much should you invest in knowledge gaining? Just enough to move into conscious incompetence. See the stage of conscious incompetence. By reaching and being in this stage you realize gaps and can define what competency looks like.
#2 Emulation
While the first pillar (#1 education) teaches you the theory. You need to put this theory into practice, but knowing what knowledge to apply, when, how and why by doing what the best in the business do. Find yourself a person who you think best applies the knowledge and observe ardently. This person can come in the form of a peer, a colleague, a mentor, coach.
Observing one’s behaviors will help you develop pattern matching, and see how one navigates the complexity and messiness of applying knowledge. If the context in which they operate is similar to yours, then replicating someone’s behaviors can go even further. So find someone in a similar context and more importantly someone you can observe. It’s not very useful to aspire to become a great leader like Jeff Bezos if you don’t get a chance to observe and certainly not replicate since the context in which both of you operate is bound to be very different.
#3 Experience
Practice makes perfect! Do what you can to exercise your acquired skills. Most often this is simple especially if opportunities already existed leading into your desire or prompt to learn. If these opportunities don’t exist then create opportunities for yourself. That’s easier said than done but these don’t need to be “grand" or exactly the same. Are you learning how to become a better manager? Sign up to be a mentor or coach. Are you looking to become an expert at a new language? Join a meetup or language affinity group. Are you looking to become better at accountability? Create goals and track those for yourself.
What else to keep in mind?
- Define a few goals, but more importantly figure out whether you are targeting a performance goal or a mastery goal. You can read more about them here.
- Ideally you have the opportunity to open up a neatly packaged learning experience. In the absence of that you will find yourself pursuing these pillars in whatever order the opportunities afford or do all 3 in parallel. Don’t fear though, there is no correct answer to this.
- Be sure to not leave out any one of the 3 pillars. Catch yourself if you realize a pillar is missing from your learning foundation go after it.
- Set atomic habits for yourself to make sustained progress towards your goals.
Good luck with your learning experiences! Would love to hear how helpful this was.
