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Founded in 2002, the blog here continues to be a space of daily conversation about the science of mind and its implications and applications
There are at least four ways we can make our work itself a prime source of our learning from greater contribution and growth. We can ask more learning questions in any context. We can experiment with new ways of doing things. We can reflect on successes and failures to become more aware of the possibilities of our goodness. We can pair on any tasks with others more capable. We can practice skills into habits. We can share any learning with anyone anytime.
There are at least four ways to learn from experience: experimenting, reflective critique, feedback and learning questions.
Experimenting is trying new things and common things in new ways. Experimenting yields far more learning than analysis paralysis and death by discussion.
Reflective critique extracts learning forward from any experiences on the success-failure continuum. Experience is only a teacher when we reflect back from it.
Feedback is discovering how useful or not useful our efforts are for others. It is particularly helpful when it's based on our learning questions.
Learning questions are what we are most curious about, what we want to explore, discover or master. They make us more attuned to new learning from any experiences going forward.
The more people perform in work with mastery, the more they are performing in territories untravelled. They are pioneers and explorers carving out new opportunity landscapes. Much of their learning is not going to happen by consuming courses or searching for mentors or coaches. It's going to happen through expriments and critiques. Learning how to expriment and critique is vital to their growth potentials.
An important distinction regarding success the distinction between conscious and unconscious success in unconscious success we create an achievement or least experience and achievement and do zero reflection on what exactly we did to help bring it about. Included in this zero reflection is the practice of superstitious explanations, credit and blame.
Conscious success occurs when we actually determine using data the real causes of our achievements. This often entails testing and retesting our hypotheses about the conditions of our success through future experiments and experiences. We know we have achieved conscious success when we can intentionally replicate an achievement. Until we arrive at conscious success we manage largely by hope and optimism.
To a large degree when slow teams get stuck in their performance it can have less to do with how often and how they fail or even why they fail in more to do with their lack of creating conscious success from their achievements.
If we're serious about preparing students for the workplace in the future we need to begin their connection to work early on in their learning process. This means getting them connected to local businesses and organization so that they could see what goes on in what they need to be prepared for in terms of character qualities and basic skill sets and mindsets. This is especially true when we are driving to grow a new generation of entrepreneurs. They need to be in the workplace volunteering, interning, observing and interacting. Workplaces can be amazing incubators for learning and education in ways that isolated school buildings and classrooms could never afford.
