Not learning the way I want to learn
Not learning the way I want to learn
Unstructured learning
The more I want to learn in a structured manner, I more I find my inability to put my head down and learn something. But yet I have learned an innumerable number of things. And that is strange.
Most of my learnings look back are random. Things that were triggered by my curiosity. Things that I wanted to know about more deeply. And converting these learnings into patterns that were applied to other domains. And surprisingly these were useful in different contexts.
At various stages of life, I have gone through structured education. And for the most part, hated them. My early education in middle and high school. My basic degree. My MBA. That part is good since I coach organizations not to do anything that was taught as part of the MBA program. Mostly anti-thesis to these methods and practices.
I have gone through more structured learning programs and certifications. My PMP for example. Most closely to useless. There were limited correlations between my learnings there and what I did learn through practice and at work. Based on real-life experiences.
Most of my real experiences and learnings were through doing. Things that I enjoyed doing. Whatever I enjoyed doing. In the 80’s and 90’s it was coding. Then in the 2000s, it was answering the question “Why does Project Management mostly not work?” and in the 2010s “How to really do software development well?” and in the 2020s “How should be organizations structured to be successful?”. Most associated answers came to me because I enjoyed listening to audiobooks and this led to listening to several hundreds of them over time.
And this unstructured learning continues. My next attempt at structured learning are various AI toolsets. And yet I am struggling with spending time on them. Not with superficial usage, but using them deeply for solving complex problems. I hope to love to live with them and enjoy them to find my next set of unstructured learning outcomes… and enhance my survival this lifetime.