4 Parts to Learning
There are 4 parts to learning.
The first part, for me, is that I have to fuel my intake engine regularly. I fuel that with knowledge, with wisdom, books, Ted Talks, podcasts, one-on-one long-form conversations with people smarter than me, right?
The second part of it, though, is you can't just be a learner. You also have to be a doer. So I want to have an experimenter's mindset. Meaning, I want my life to be a series of experiments based upon what's coming in. So I'm fueling the engine, but I have to go then and do it.
Part three, which is a phase a lot of us skip, especially guys like me who are active, and we're moving, we're doing a lot, but we have to take a step back. We have to reflect. We have to analyze, "What worked from my experiments? What didn't? What should I keep doing? What should I stop doing?"
And then fourth, a critical component that I push everybody to do is to teach. One of the greatest tools for learning in the world is becoming a teacher.
For example, think of the time in your life, where you were a guest lecturer at your university, whether you gave a presentation at work, whether you gave a presentation at school, whether you had to teach a mentee something that they were asking about—all of these moments that put you in the position of being the teacher.
With a lot of pride, most of us want to prepare like crazy to do well for the presentation, do well for the test, and do well for the mentee that we're trying to help. We gain clarity of thought through that preparation, and then we teach it. Once we voice it or write it down, that's when a lot of learning happens because we also start getting feedback. Feedback then can help us iterate, grow, and get a little bit better.
