My learning - Part 18 - Reflections

Seven, for me, important insights

1. The hourglass model and the learning modes were both very interesting concepts I had never formalized before and both turned out to have far bigger implications than I anticipated.
       
2. Only focusing on the big lessons and basically ignoring all other content is something I've used pretty much everywhere for a very long time but after making myself more aware of it I feel less guilty of doing it and I feel like I will be able to do it in a more deliberate, effective way.
       
3. I need less stuff not more.
        
4. Over the years I've looked far and wide to improve my ability to learn. What this experience has taught me is I forgot to look in the most important place: Myself.
         
5. Sometimes I feel like my motivation is the most irrational thing in the universe. But it turned out the old saying is true:
   "To be understood you must first understand".
   These blog posts made me understand what's happening when I gain or lose motivation and this knowledge has already helped me better control it.
        
6. My old way of thinking (avoiding not being great) still haunts me and writing this blog series made me realize I'm far from done replacing it with a "better why".
         
7. I want to get back to that action-oriented learner I use to be and I think these blog posts have both inspired me and shown me how to get there.
       

Three things I'll try

1. Self-coaching in a more formal way.
        
2. Deconstruct the concept of learning.
       
3. Learn something and immediately teach it to someone else
       

How to get more action-oriented

• More and better self-coaching.
• Even more emphasis on experiments.
• Remove some passive self-education to make room for more "doing".
• Reform my "why" to create a "why" that matters to me and that truly centers around actions.
• Hang out with more action-oriented friends as well as friends who might not be very action-oriented but open to join me on this journey.
• Define and perform actions based on things I learn. Keep doing it until it becomes a habit.
      

Removing is more important than adding

I started this series assuming I needed more:

• More time
• More learning resources
• More information to process
• More people
• More models
• More everything

But now I sit here thinking I need less:

• I don't need more time
• I want to limit my learning resources to better learn from the ones I use
• I want fewer resources to create less distraction
• I want to spend more time with the people I know rather than look for new
• I want to actively forget/ignore things so what's left becomes more clear
• I want to simplify concepts and focus more on deconstruction
• I want to stop gathering information and instead use what I already have

The problem is not that I have too little information; the problem is I have so much information that what's relevant becomes hard to find.
 

How will I follow this up? 

First of all I'm pretty sure I'll get plenty of reasons to follow up these posts thanks to friends reading them and asking questions (true so far).

However, on my phone I've also scheduled a reminder to revisit each of the blog posts individually about two months after they're published. Probably not necessary but better safe than sorry.
 

Bottom line

This has been a tremendous journey which I'm happy I stuck with and I'm proud of the result!

At the same time I'm happy it's over. I've spent more hours than I want to admit writing it and it's time to catch up with friends, family and other parts of my life I've had to cut back on (sorry Louise, Jesper, Helena and others). In the end I'm more motivated than ever to learn but also more aware than ever that some things in life are more important.

From the bottom of my heart:
Thank you for joining me on this adventure and good luck on your own! ♥