“A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.”
– Tom Peters
On the brink of a new year it’s a natural time to reflect on successes, failures, and most important of all – what was learned. Some of what we learn comes through daily interactions, trial and error. But learning also comes from self-directed tactics and methods.
Paul Jun has studied learning carefully and is the author of “Connect the Dots: Strategies and Meditations on Self-Education.” In his book and his blog postings, he lays out a variety of ways to sustain a passion for learning:
- Start with heroes. Select models of aspiration, people (alive or dead) to motivate you to find your own rhythm and exert a bit more effort. Study their work and journeys, and identify the specific elements that make them great and utilize those lessons in your own life.
- Explore unrelated subjects. Dive into subjects that you’re unfamiliar with and extract insights that have potential for connection. It may not be important now, but who knows what frontiers will open up. Lifelong learners collect dots, but they are even better at connecting them.
- Make learning a habit. Learning is the lifeblood of a fruitful career. It takes humility to admit that we have much to learn, but this realization can be a catalyst to the kind of lifelong learning that helps us improve, thrive, and contribute in a way that is deeply meaningful to ourselves and others.
Jun also suggests ways to energize the quest for learning:
- Set up a mastermind or study group – find a way to gather with like-minded learners.
- Apply what you learn – don’t just collect ideas, implement what you learn.
- Question everything – trust but verify, and do additional research.
- Share what you learned – write about it, present it, teach it.
Have a great week.
Kindest regards,
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