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Learning is personal
When I first started working after grad school, a coworker friend told me about a book that I just "had to get". It was The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. My friend was a husband, a new father of two, and a researcher, and he was trying to buy a house in the Bay area on a single income. So, he had lots of pressure in his life. My life was pretty simple since I just finished my thesis, tripled my income, had grad student living expectations, and wasn't trying to buy a house.

Time had passed and I didn't get around to buying the book, but my friend thought it was very important that I read it. So, he sent me an email with a web link, and all I had to do was click on the link to buy the book. So, I ordered it.

The book arrived a couple days later. But every time I tried to read it, I fell asleep. I tried again and again, but I kept falling asleep. So, I finally gave up and put the book on my bookshelf to rest.

Over the next couple years, I became a manager and started grappling with issues that all managers face. One day I was perusing my bookshelves and came across the book. I flipped it open and I couldn't put it down! I stayed up all night and read it from cover to cover! It provided an interesting perspective on different problems I was facing and it provided lots of valuable insights.

How could a book that made me fall asleep turn into a book that made me stay up all night? How could a book be so important to my friend but not at all important to me?

I think it all boils down to one point: Learning is personal.

There is a time in life when you're ready to learn about something and there is a time when you're not. The timing depends on the experiences that you and those around you go through and the challenges you face. It depends on when you become sensitive to certain issues and when you decide you want to understand and solve them. It also depends on your interests at a particular point in time. Each person hits the point where a lesson becomes meaningful at a different time in their life. Learning is personal.

When I gave my Top 10 Career Tips and my Softer Side of Research talks, I began and ended with the point that: Learning is personal, so some tips may be meaningful to you now while others may become meaningful to you later.

Do you have an example of a life experience that made a learning become meaningful to you? Which tips are meaningful to you now? Which tips are not?

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Posted 03-27-2007 3:30 PM by susie.wee
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Comments

Krishnan Ramanathan wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 03-28-2007 10:53 AM
I must confess I tried reading Stephen Coveys book and got bored. Maybe, its a book for managers :-) I had tried reading philosophy in my late teens and could not appreciate it. I re-read some of the books in my late twenties and what had looked dry and abstract ten years back suddenly made sense. If the cotton is dry, even a spark is enough to kindle a fire. Experiences in life are the cotton driers that make us ready to absorb new learnings.
Susie Wee wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 03-28-2007 3:37 PM
rkrish67: Philosophy is a great example! I think the experience that made 7 habits meaningful to me was that my work goals started to require many people's efforts, not just my own, so I needed a way of understanding different people to make this happen. This may or may not just be a manager thing, since there are many circumstances that that require many people's efforts. However, being a manager certainly does force the circumstance by the nature of the job. Great cotton analogy!
erikmazzone wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 03-29-2007 3:24 PM
Great post, Susie. I guess we really start to learn when we decide to, and not a moment before. What's that old saying: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear . . .
Susie Wee wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 03-29-2007 3:46 PM
Erik: That's a great old saying. For readers who don't know Erik, you can take a peek at his blog: http://erikmazzone.wordpress.com He's a lawyer who turned into a lawyer career coach. I think his insights and career tips apply to people in all industries.
Sebastien_Andrivet wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 03-31-2007 11:47 AM
With enough imagination and empathy, the student can be ready at any time. Even when the learning covers unfamiliar situation, the student who manages to really imagine how the situation would be, how it would feel to be in that case, how it feels to be that person in that situation and to walk in his or her shoes... can make the situation concrete and relevant to him, greatly facilitating learning. It's a bit tiring though :-)
Susie Wee wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 03-31-2007 6:06 PM
Hi Sebastien: Very interesting perspective- it really got me thinking! Could it be true? Can a student learn anything at any time? Is it just a matter of imagination, empathy, and determination? When I was a kid, the history classes that were the most meaningful to me were the ones where the teachers talked about the people, not just about the events and dates. So for me learning was a matter of imagination and empathy, but I didn't have to work hard for it since those teachers provided it for me. From your lesson, I see that for the events+dates classes I should have pushed myself to stretch my imagination and empathy to make them into meaningful learnings. Very interesting. I wish I learned this lesson at an earlier age! Though I'm not sure when I would have appreciated the lesson.

Sebastien and all: What are your thoughts on when you can appreciate a learning? Does appreciation deepen with age and experience, or is it also a matter of imagination, empathy, and determination?

Sebastien_Andrivet wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 04-01-2007 1:21 AM
Age and experience... Mmmm...

I guess there's a reinforcing and a balancing loop. The reinforcing one is that you get a greater breadth of experiences to anchor new knowledge on, to make new material relevant to your life.

The balancing one is that you have a sharper definition of who you are, how the world works and what sorts of action work. The sharper the definition, the more learning-proof you become... I hate to say good things about The Other School :-), but C. Argyris wrote very interesting stuff about how the consistently successful people are the worst learners. What they do works already - why would they learn different tricks ?

Susie Wee wrote Re: Learning is personal
on 04-01-2007 5:20 PM
Sebastien: I like your visual of "anchoring new knowledge on your experiences". And, it's a good lesson to make sure we don't become "learning-proof". I haven't read Argyris' work yet, but I would like to believe that moderately successful people may become learning-proof, while the wildly successful people are those who stay on their toes and keep learning!

Thank you for your comments and discussion!

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