The Importance of Being a Life-Long Learner

The Importance of Being a Life-Long Learner

"As much as we'd love to consider ourselves open-minded and ever eager to learn, our human nature is to disregard information that could cause any cognitive dissonance." - Shane Parrish (Farnam Street)

A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to go into the education profession, and also that I wanted to be a coach. These decisions were very exciting and full of hope. But it was not until I got into understanding both professions that I realized how the word "hope" was an unfortunate word. To hope is leave things to chance. Instead of taking action to make things better, you stay standing and becoming stagnant. What I learned was, that I had to find a way, or better yet, learn a way to not leave things to chance. 

What I learned quickly enough from other coaches, teachers, and phenomenal podcast hosts Joe Ferraro (One Percent Better)  and Jeremy Sheetinger (ABCA's Calls From The Clubhouse), was the importance of getting just one percent better every single day. These increments of getting better don't have to be astronomical, but just a little bit better every single day. Author James Clear states this best by saying, "If you get one percent better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you're done." Still don't believe me? Look at this picture below. 

It wasn't until I took the step forward to become a life-long learner that I realized the difficulty of becoming one percent better every day was. Being a life-long learner is hard because we all have preferences for how we have done things. But as Jeremy Sheetinger stated best, "If you are teaching hitting the same way you have 10 years ago, there is something wrong." That quote was my first introduction into becoming a life-long learner. Within that quote also lives the plight of being a life-long learner, the challenge of our preconceived truths. What we find out is there are no truths in any profession. Instead, there are multiple ways to do a certain task. Simply put, none of us have a perfect understanding of anything that we have learned. In fact, the more we learn about a specific task, the better tools we learn to teach every individual that we educate. 

My next question goes to the reader. How do you handle new information? Do you feel threatened by new information or a new technique? Do you try to understand the new information, or do you flail around bashing the new information because it threatens your "truths?" Remember, bashing new ways and also bashing old ways is a fault that many of us have fallen into. The best way to filter both old and new information is to have multi-layered thinking. Multi-layered thinking is the thinking through of the new and old information to find the truth of both sides. Putting first your opinion, then the other opinion, then the data. When we are like a sponge and soak up new information, we will find a use for all information that we take in, and we will learn a lesson from all of this information. 

When we resist growing and getting better, we are only hurting ourselves if we are on the pursuit of being excellent. If you are stuck in your ways, and not learning, then saying you are reaching for excellence, then you are living your life like an oxymoron. In other words, learn new information as John Wooden says, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." But a bit of a disclaimer, not all knowledge that we learn can be instilled in each and every learner. In fact, that is why we must always continue to learn. New information can help a different person get better, but cookie-cutter approaches only help the few, not the whole.

Challenging our beliefs, or better yet the strain society puts on these beliefs is very difficult. Here is a powerful story about those strains. I will give credit to Joe Ferraro for this story. In Wilt Chamberlain's professional basketball career he struggled with free throw shooting. In fact, Chamberlain was going to try anything to become better at being a free throw shooter. When he searched for help, he was given a radical way of shooting a free throw. That way is the comically looking "granny shot." This shot worked, and made him a better free throw shooter, but instead of sticking with this technique, he went back to his old way of shooting free throws, and his progress stopped. 

What the above mentioned story was trying to sum up was this, being a life-long learner isn't easy. When you dive into research and getting better every day, it will put you into some uncomfortable corners. Corners like what Wilt Chamberlain was put in. Do you continue using this shot, even though it is weird?  Or do you go back to the "normal" way? It is like defensive shifting in baseball. Funky looking defensive alignments have disrupted the "norms" of professional baseball. But just because these shifts look funky, doesn't mean they are flawed. In fact, it has improved run prevention in baseball. In other words, don't judge a book by its cover. Challenging the status quo is what all great achievers thrive at and love doing. As Shane Parrish states when we cave into doing things normally, "We sacrifice being correct for being "right." When we resist growth, we give our careers, relationships, and lives a kiss of death right then and there. My challenge to you this week is to find something you want to learn or get better at, and set out an allotted time to get better at that task. Remember, we are simply trying to get one percent better. My bet is that when you dive into this, you will get addicted to it and will be much happier at all of the new knowledge you have learned. Here is to happy learning and new knowledge for you this week!

Blog Notes:

 Joe Ferraro's "One Percent Better" Podcast: https://www.onepercentbetterproject.com/the-podcast/

ABCA's "Calls From the Clubhouse" Podcast: http://callsfromtheclubhouse.org/

James Clear Blog: https://jamesclear.com/articles

Farnam Street Blog: https://fs.blog/