Learning is a necessary but insufficient condition for working smarter.
Dictionaries define learning as acquiring knowledge and skills. But we all know skilled, knowledgeable people who don’t get things done, don’t we? Learning that doesn’t lead to doing is no better than not learning at all.
The academic literature abounds with models that usually march through four sequential steps. They leave out application of what’s been learned. You could spin around a circle like this without ever accomplishing anything.
Of course, learning doesn’t work like this either. You brain is not a computer stepping through linear processes. Quite the contrary, it’s a network without a center, a complex chemistry set where sparks between neurons form patterns that are always morphing, recombining, and influencing one another. Before I get into re-defining learning, here’s my framework for boosting brainpower.
Notes:
The four-step model is David Kolb’s. It’s one of the better ones out there.
This post is an excerpt from my re-write of
Working Smarter
Boosting Brainpower for Fun & Profit
Kia ora e Jay!
An interesting posit, that “learning is a necessary but insufficient condition for working smarter.”
I was introduced to the necessary shift to ‘work smarter not harder’ in the early 90s. Before that we had been told that working harder was what was needed.
Now the quality of that smartness isn’t cutting the mustard, you say, because learning isn’t enough. I say you’ve got it partly wrong.
What’s happened is that we’ve been conning ourselves into believing that working smarter is all that is needed. In the interim, some of us have forgotten what learning was also required to work hard – and learning (good habits) is needed for that; the alternative is laziness. As well, some of us rested on our laurels during times when working smarter was indeed all that seemed to be needed.
We now have to work harder AND work smarter, for just working smarter is no longer enough. So some of us have to learn how to work harder (the getting things done that you refer to) while continuing to learn other things so that we can also work smarter.
There’s a pattern emerging here.
Catchya later
from Middle-earth
I always thought the model should have back and forth to the learning. I know my behaviors are best changed when the learning takes place over time as I access it as needed.
Kia ora Jay!
I take it all back. I’ve just found the definitive . . . by Shelley Gare, ‘The Triumph of the Airheads’, Park Press, 2007.
It explains it all, and you’re right! “If you’re smart, be smarter: play dumb.”
Ka kite anō
from Middle-earth
I totally agree with this, you have presented it very clearly! In much the same light, I’ve always felt there is a vast different between being knowledgeable and intellectual. Wouldn’t it be great if the education systems began to take all of this into consideration?
Sally
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