by Caroline Leach | Mar 5, 2016 | Change, Learning
Can learning a new sport increase your overall ability to learn?
Absolutely, Gretchen Reynolds wrote recently in the New York Times. Learning a new sport may be good for the brain, she says.
Her “crash course in snowboarding” yielded multiple benefits. Not the least of which was underscoring how we learn – by trial and error and bit by bit.
Stand-up paddle boarding, or SUP, is the new recreational activity I’m learning. And as I do, I see many parallels with learning anything new. Here are 10.
Doing. The way to learn something new is by actually doing it on a regular basis. Lessons are a good way to start. Depending on what you’re learning, a lesson may be best in person (definitely the case for SUP) or online (certainly an option for my data-focused learning journey).
Experimenting. During today’s SUP session, I tried some different things. What happened if I leaned a bit to the right or the left? Bent my arms and legs slightly? Tried to stop by placing my paddle further into the water?
Equipping. Having the right tools is important for any activity. That doesn’t always mean the most expensive equipment, or having every last available gadget. But in my case, the winter jacket I got last week keeps me warm on cool Southern California mornings. And it has plenty of room for my shoulders and arms to move while paddling.
Questioning. What else do I need to do to learn and enjoy this new activity? How can I make it more of a workout? What will I need to change over time to keep the experience new and fresh? Is there a goal I can work toward? In the short term, for this summer, it’s paddleboard yoga. In the long term, for next year, maybe it’s training for a race.
Reading. After our first (and so far only) lesson, I read a few articles about the proper technique. Initially I was so focused on keeping my balance that I needed to revisit the finer points of proper stroke technique, how to turn and how to stop. There are many great articles and videos online.
Committing. What will be the catalyst to continue this activity? In my case it was getting an annual membership today. The more my husband and I paddle, the less expensive each session becomes. It reminds me of my high-school skiing days. I’d motivate myself to take that final run of the day in order to bring down the average cost per run. Maybe that explains my college major in economics.
Scheduling. Beyond the commitment is getting our sessions on the calendar. Each weekend, I look at our family’s school, sports and community commitments. Then I schedule on our calendar when we’ll paddle. It’s the same thing with my Sunday morning yoga class. When it’s on the calendar, it’s harder to skip it.
Sharing. This is special time my husband and I are spending together. And I have a friend or two who will join us this spring. It’s fun to talk about what works, how to navigate on our boards and wonder together why our feet get a bit numb while we paddle. It might be time for more lessons.
Multiplying. The jargon-appropriate term here would be “stacked win.” But whenever you can accomplish multiple objectives with a single activity, that’s a great thing in our busy worlds. With SUP there’s an arm and core workout, family time, outdoor air and the novelty of something new for your body. Which benefits your brain and stimulates greater ability to learn in other areas of life.
Enjoying. There’s a meditative quality to gliding across the water. Listening to waves crashing outside the marina. Smiling at the sight of seals enjoying a marine mammal barge as we paddle boy. Time seems to slow down. Life comes into greater focus. The brain stretches and grows in new ways, right along with the body and soul.
by Caroline Leach | Feb 27, 2016 | Change, Learning, Marketing & Analytics
Does what we say to ourselves influence how much, how fast and how well we can learn new things?
Absolutely, says Erika Andersen, the author of the forthcoming book Be Bad First.
She outlines 4 key mental tools in her Harvard Business Review article, Learning to Learn. They are aspiration, self-awareness, curiosity and vulnerability.
Aspiration. Andersen says “great learners can raise their aspiration level.” How? By focusing on the benefits of what you’ll learn, rather than on the challenges in the learning process. A good question to ask is “What would my future look like if I learned this?”
Self-awareness. This is about seeking feedback and taking action on it. Good questions to ask yourself about feedback are “Is this accurate?” “What facts do I have to support it?” and “How do I compare with my peers?”
Curiosity. Andersen writes that “curiosity is what makes us try something until we can do it it, or think about something until we understand it.”
If you’re not interested in a new subject, Anderson advocates changing your self-talk to ask why others find the subject so interesting.
As a person interested in words, ideas and influence, my curiosity is helping me find where those interests intersect with analytics and big data.
In starting to read Tom Davenport‘s Big Data @ Work, I became more curious about how organizations of the future will better focus on the collaboration and communications activities of their people.
This led me to a footnote that took me to another book called Social Physics. This is defined as “analyzing patterns of human experience and idea exchange within the digital bread crumbs we all leave behind us as we move through the world.”
Now I’m truly fascinated and thinking about the connections with another book I read last year, The Reputation Economy. This is about how individuals can shape their digital footprint at a time when your reputation can dictate the kind of life you’ll live and what opportunities may be available to you.
Vulnerability. This is about the scary prospect of “being bad at something for weeks or months; feeling awkward and slow; having to ask ‘dumb’ questions; and needing step-by-step guidance again and again.”
The cure? Changing what you say to yourself. Andersen suggests that instead of saying “I’m terrible at this,” replace it with, “I’m making beginner mistakes, but I’ll get better.”
As I’m pursuing my own learning project and getting up to speed in a new role, I reminded myself of trying out for a sports team in high school.
When I showed up for the first practice before tryouts, I almost didn’t come back the next day. I felt uncoordinated, self-conscious and silly. But I made myself come back the next day. And the next.
And happily, I made the team. But what if I’d given up that first day? What if I’d allowed myself to believe that I was terrible and had no hope of getting better?
There are very few things we can’t learn if we tell ourselves we can. And if we encourage ourselves with positive thoughts. And remind ourselves that others don’t notice our mistakes as much as we might think.
I have to tell myself that frequently as I walk into yet another figurative wall by mistake. Oops. That hurt. Did anyone notice my mistake?
But the important thing is the dust yourself off. To keep moving forward. And to avoid making the same mistake twice.
What’s a good way to do that? By being kind to yourself. Encourage yourself. Have faith that with grit and perseverance, you can do what you set out to do.
One day this month I came home and a friend from a community group had left a thank-you card and a book on my doorstep. The book is “The Power of Kindness.” It’s about “the unexpected benefits of leading a compassionate life.”
And while the main focus of the book is on being kind to others, there is power in being just as kind to ourselves.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t set aspirational goals and have high standards for ourselves. But it does mean encouraging ourselves and asking how we could do better next time.
In addition to my learning journey in data and analytics, I’ve written in this blog about learning stand-up paddle boarding and learning yoga. My goal this summer is to combine the two.
Today I went paddle boarding and tomorrow I’ll take a yoga class. The benefit to both is a kind of zen that helps me be kinder to myself and to others.
It pulls me out of the moment-to-moment frenzy of everyday life and puts me in a meditative state. A reflective state. A refreshed state.
All the better to keep learning.
by Caroline Leach | Feb 6, 2016 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning
Reading is all the rage among many business leaders.
As a lifelong bookworm, this is welcome news. Something I’ve always loved to do has (finally) become on trend.
The lesson? If you do things you like long enough, they might become popular at some point. Then you can say you were ahead of the curve.
The benefits of reading are vast – there’s focusing your mind and calming your soul. There’s learning new information relevant to your career. There’s exposing yourself to a diversity of viewpoints to understand how different groups of people think and act.
In the year since I posted News Rituals of a Communicator, my own reading habits have evolved and changed.
New on the scene are 3 daily digests pushed to my email.
- theSkimm. This filters news through the eyes of Millennials. It’s a fun read with a fresh take on the world, with quotes of the day, a main story and things to know.
Thanks to colleague Lauren Brown for the recommendation, during a meeting of our company’s employee resource group for women.
It starts with today’s agenda, moves into the world in brief and wraps up with market activity.
- L.A. Business Journal. This is the local look at what’s going on in the Los Angeles business world. It aggregates sources with news that impacts Southern California.
And since I work for a Dallas-based company, I’ve become an avid follower of The Dallas Morning News.
Isn’t this a lot to read? Not really. Similar to other news sources, I scan the headlines in each digest and choose at least one story to read in full.
That’s why I focus so much on the importance of headlines in any corporate communication. Often it’s all people will read. The main point has to be captured in it. If someone read nothing else, would they get the key point? Is it something that could be easily found later in a search?
Beyond news, there are blogs for a variety of viewpoints. And what about books? There’s less of a method to my madness here in creating a reading list.
I keep an eye out in Harvard Business Review posts for upcoming books. Sometimes I’ll discover books through TED talks. Other times it’ll be on best business books lists.
Usually I discover books before their publishing date. So I pre-order on my Kindle app. It’s a fun surprise the day they download. This week’s gift is Adam Grant‘s Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.
Because I’m such a book lover, I haunt my local library‘s new releases section. It’s like browsing the latest titles and taking all the best ones home for free. Even better, they get returned after 2 weeks and don’t clutter my home or office. There’s also an option to borrow electronic books.
How is there time for all these books? They’re always available on my smartphone or tablet. That way I can read on the go whenever I have a few minutes. It makes time fly when you’re standing in line or waiting for an appointment to begin.
When time is tight, I’ll read the first chapter, last chapter and any other chapters in the table of contents that catch my eye. There are plenty of book summaries out there. And you can listen to books in the car.
And I’m endlessly inspired by Claire Diaz-Ortiz and her reading habit. Her post on How I Read 200 Books a Year gives great tips for how to fit more reading into your life.
What are you reading and how do you make time for it?
by Caroline Leach | Jan 31, 2016 | Careers, Change, Learning
When you’re learning something new, there’s often an expectation that you’ll pick it up easily. That it will be smooth sailing. That you won’t skip a beat.
After all, the world moves faster every day. The competitive landscape is more intense than ever. Time is in short supply. It’s one sprint after another to learn what you need to know. Learning curves can feel like vertical climbs.
But when in your life have you learned something new and performed it perfectly right from the start?
As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the book Outliers: The Story of Success, it takes about 10,000 hours to master a skill.
The hard part is the feeling of incompetence that comes along with learning. Two things happened this week that made me think more about being bad at something new.
First was reading the work of Erika Andersen in an HBR post, which was the subject of my blog post yesterday. She wrote about how to identify the next skills you should learn.
In that was an angle on having to be bad at something before you can be good. The important thing, Andersen says, is to continue on through the bad phase so you can get to the good.
In fact, it’s the subject of her new book coming out this winter called Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future. Sign me up. The pre-ordered book will download on my Kindle app on March 8.
In a Forbes post that may have inspired the book, she gives great strategies for How to Get Good at Things By Being Bad First. One of them is managing your self talk and being deliberately encouraging in how you speak to yourself.
That brings me to the second thing that happened this week. I’ve been trying different yoga classes, looking for 2 to do consistently each week. In addition to the serenity, stretching and balance benefits, I’m training to do paddle board yoga in the spring and summer.
And I’m moving through being bad into being good. One of my yoga instructors gave me a little smile this week when I at last managed to transition into Warrior II with the correct arm in front.
And my first experience with stand up paddle boarding last fall left me with a patch of broken skin on my thumb from holding the paddle the wrong way. The skin healed, and I figured out a better way to paddle.
Something the teacher in yesterday’s yoga class said made a big impression on me. He advised us not to condemn, judge or demand. If we let go of these mindsets and expectations, we will be calmer and happier.
These could apply to others. They could also apply to ourselves. By letting go of judging ourselves and demanding perfection, we are more free to experiment and learn.
That’s what Andersen is saying too. Most everyone will be bad at something when they first start. But by having faith in your ability to persevere and learn what you need to know, you can get good.
Another great book, What To Do When You’re New by Keith Rollag gives strategies for you to perform new things in front of people who aren’t familiar to you. Focusing on learning and getting better, rather than being good right away, is a great tip.
And his HBR article on being new gives good guidance on asking questions: consider what you want and why, determine whom to ask and if the time is right, ask short to-the-point questions and express thanks.
It’s humbling to recognize what you don’t know and what you need to learn. To try to ask the right questions, even when you don’t know what you don’t know. To take a crack at doing the new task. To learn from and recover from the inevitable mistakes. To start building competence.
This is what I’m doing in my new career role in marketing. This is how I navigate new community leadership roles. And this is how I approach my exercise classes. It’s not easy, but I keep moving forward.
As I learned from my yoga teacher, don’t judge yourself or demand perfection. Be kind to yourself and let yourself experiment. You’ll achieve much more, much faster and much better than you ever thought you could.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 30, 2016 | Change, Learning, Work/Life
With the torrential pace of change in our world, how will you decide what you need to learn this year?
Even if you’re not tackling a new job as I am, every field is changing rapidly. This makes lifelong learning an imperative for all of us.
Richard Bolles had an early inkling of this. While he’s better known as the bestselling author of the annually updated What Color is Your Parachute?, he also wrote The Three Boxes of Life.
In it he argued that we should not think about our lives in a linear fashion of education followed by work followed by retirement.
Instead, he advocated that all 3 boxes of life should be woven through every stage of our lives. This has never been more true than today, nearly four decades after the book was published.
Our education has to continue in parallel with our careers. For those who loved formal schooling, as I did, this is welcome news.
And for those who didn’t, there are many new ways of learning – by online courses, by doing and by observing, to name a few – that can make it more fun and intuitive.
And weaving in elements of retirement with its passion projects, travel and leisure refreshes and inspires us. This is why what we do on weekends is so important.
Thinking about all the things I need to learn in my new role, a Harvard Business Review post by Erika Andersen caught my eye this week.
How to Decide What Skill to Work On Next gives a great framework to focus your learning efforts. Andersen links the framework of Jim Collins‘ hedgehog concept from Good to Great with learning.
Collins found that great organizations have 3 areas of focus:
- What drives their economic engine
- What they can be the best in the world at, and
- What they’re most passionate about.
Linking that with learning, Andersen advocates asking yourself these questions:
- How can you learn and grow in a way that will help your company succeed? What will drive the bottom line?
- Of those areas, which ones could you become excellent at? If you’re good at similar things, those are ideal starting points.
- How passionate are you about those areas? And she shows that passion can be learned by looking at the benefits to learning and how it will create a better future for you.
This is not only a manageable and efficient way of making a personal learning plan, but it’s also inspiring and exciting.
It’s helping me narrow my focus and pick the highest-impact areas in my learning project. And it’s reassuring to know that I don’t have to learn everything, right away.
Like so many things in life, it’s about identifying the highest priority areas, taking initial actions, assessing progress and course correcting. It’s taking steps forward, day after day.
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