We’re pretty much done with learning, right? After all, our education system pain-stakingly puts us through around 15 years of learning at school, and anywhere between 3 to 6 years at university. As the old life-script goes, we are born, we go to school, we work, we retire and we die. The suggestion is that we spend the early part of our life learning, until we hit the working age where we are doing until we retire.
Of course, this model accepts there will be some learning; for example as we grow older, get married, have kids etc. But for the most part, our formal ‘studying’ has ended. The life script says that we look to build that 40 years of experience in our field before retiring.
In modern times however, this script no longer works. We are now looking at new technologies and opportunities regularly: for example we are using new software and tools every five to ten years. And probably more importantly, people are wanting to do more with their careers than previous generations. We have far greater opportunities to learn, change and shift than ever before.
This life script was built in an era of sending the majority of the population into factories for manual-labour work, and doesn’t fit in the modern realities we live in today. We now look to move jobs every few years and want the autonomy to do things we enjoy, or switch it up once we want a new challenge.
Unfortunately our education system was not built to prepare us for these new realities. Instead of instilling us a learning mentality of picking up different skills, it rather encourages us to find what we are already good at and specialise in it from an early age. In the UK we usually pick only three to four A-Level subjects by the age of 17 before heading to university to pick one or two.
And whilst specialisation in of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it does narrow our choices quite quickly. The real problem though is how this builds into our own understanding of learning and being ‘good’ at something. The narrative is that we are naturally good at some things, and bad at others, so it is best to pick your good subjects and leave the bad ones. This leaves little space for us to pick weaker subjects that we learn to improve and picking up the life lesson of perseverance along the way. And whilst not every school can offer courses in fashion design, video editing or coding, schools can instil a mindset of learning new skills whatever your more-traditional subject route may be.
This idea I describe is explained more fully in Mindset by Carol Dweck, an excellent book which sets out the idea of a ‘fixed mindset’ vs a ‘growth mindset’. Essentially, an individuals ability to learn and grow is predominantly based upon their belief in their own ability to learn, rather than any inherent intelligence. If they hold a fixed mindset, they believe their attributes and skills are broadly static, as such they will make little effort to learn and grow outside of what they already know. A growth mindset however is the idea that you can learn and grow, and with this belief you can make efforts to learn new traits and skills.
The book actually demonstrates that we over-emphasise the importance of ‘natural intelligence’, and that in reality people who have exceeded in their fields are mostly ordinary people who worked extremely hard to develop into the best they can be. Examples used are Charles Darwin and Leo Tolstoy, who actually were seen as very ordinary at school, but as we know are household names to this day due to being pioneers in their respective fields.
So bringing this back to us. The modern world gives us more opportunities to shift, learn and grow, even if we weren’t necessarily brought up to be prepared for this. What we do have control over though is our own relationship with learning. If we can shift to a growth mindset, along with the idea that if we work hard enough upon something we can get better, we can succeed in doing things we never believed we could.
As part of this, we need to let go of the notion we are ‘bad’ at something inherently. People I coach often find this idea difficult, as they think they are good at their subject, and bad at others as a matter of fact (which by the way, also puts an unhealthy pressure on making sure they can demonstrate they are good at their ‘good’ subject, leading to efforts of needing to constantly prove themselves). This is not easy, as when we are bad at something, we get frustrated and want to stop. Don’t. Learning doesn’t happen overnight. You have to persevere to learn.
For me, I never wrote articles before, now people tell me they find them valuable. Neither was I a coach, but I just decided one day to take a course because I thought I would enjoy it. Now these are both things I do and no one questions me on it. I wasn’t ‘inherently’ good at either of these, rather I learnt by practicing, and had to overcome being pretty shoddy at first. I should add as well that neither of these are skills I necessarily ‘need’ for my career, and yet by developing them I have far more opportunities for myself in the future.
So, take a moment to think about what new skill you want to learn. How are you going to shift your own mindset to work and get better at this new skill?