Learning

Learning is doing the thing being learned while not being able to do it beforehand. E.g, learning to be a manager is managing while not being a manager.

Learning = time + practice

Learning about is not the same as learning to do. The Body needs to be involved. For example, would you trust someone who has read many books about how to fly an airplane over someone who has actually flown planes before?

Enemies Of Learning

Many of these barriers to learning live in Language.

• Inability to admit “I don’t know”: saying already know declares a context which learning is very unlikely. How much learning takes place when teaching someone who says they already know? Also connected to the mood of arrogance, coming from the belief that those around us have nothing new to teach.

  • Paradoxically, I’ve found that you tend to be good at something when you can readily admit to not knowing, because that sets the context for learning.

• When you don’t know that you don’t know, but you act as if you do: when you don’t know that you don’t know, you don’t acknowledge the blind spot

• Being unaware that we live in blindness (arrogance): not acknowledging that each of us brings perspectives and capabilities that are unique. There’s no way to know of the unique aspects of everyone else

• “I should already know”: common in organizations when you move up the ladder or as you get older

• “I have to be clear about everything, all the time”: this is the barrier to taking action. Sometimes the answers come once you start taking action, but if you never do so till you’re 100% certain, you may never take action and learn

• Forgetting the domain of emotions and its impact on learning: emotions like anger and resentment makes learning much more unlikely

• Distrust: not trusting the teacher so that the student will take action even though they don’t fully understand why yet. If the new action is not taken, there is no practice so learning doesn’t occur

• Confusing “knowing” with having opinions or information: knowing means the capacity for certain action (like flying a plane) vs opinions which don’t give you the same capability

• Addiction to novelty: prevents accumulation of enough time and practice for the learning to occur

• Addiction to answers

• Not granting permission to be taught: connected to distrust or arrogance

• Making everything overly significant

• Making everything trivial

• Living in permanent assessments or judgments

• Living in the belief “I cannot learn, given who I am”: if I saw that I am not a math person, I am very unlikely to ever take new action to learn math. The belief sets a context where I am unlikely to take new action. Since learning = time + practice, I will produce no new results in math. If you say “See, I told you I’m not good at math”, this is due to the belief that came first, then the result. The belief lives in language

• Forgetting the body as a domain of learning

Friends Of Learning

• Willingness to declare “I don’t know”
• Listening
• Openness
• Respect and admiration
• Willingness to question your questions
• A mood of perplexity and inquiry