Sunday Summary: Learning to Unlearn

Sunday Summary is my attempt to look back on the week, see what inspired me, reflect on what I learned, and start a catalog of the things that are important to me.  Hopefully you will find some value here as well. The concept was derived from the PKM course that I took with Harold Jarche and his Friday Finds blog post.

Find 1

A blog post by Trevor Black on talking about Josh Waitzkin’s ‘The Art of Learning’ found via twitter (@trevorblack).

Inspiration: His “chewable morsel”  on the need to unlearn. “Once a certain level of skill has been reached, often learning is about refining. In order to refine, you need to be able to go back to first principles and often you have to train yourself out of things that you are good at.”  Trevor talks about building in periods to slow down and relearn as a prerequisite for the good stuff.  Great piece of advise and one I plan on taking.

Find 2

This find is actually an article I’ve had for awhile and when I read Trevor’s post I was reminded of it.  The article is on unlearning by UMBC’s ISD Now Community.  I subscribe to their blog via my feedly account (@ISDNow).

Inspiration:  The description of needing to learn how to unlearn as a solution to “not drowning in the sea of knowledge when it is constantly being saturated by newer concepts that replace old ones.”  I think this is one of the reasons I started this blog – to unlearn all the things that no longer serve he L&D profession.

Find 3

An blog post by Helen Blunden on a way to work, connect and learn in your job.  Found via twitter (@ActivateLearn).

Inspiration:  Helen’s insight on the role of learning & development teams: “What has become evident in this whole process is that social learning guided experience is that it need not have learning and development teams to design or develop the programs.  In effect, these can be created anytime and anywhere by anyone in the organisation who has the skills to use the tools, the curiosity to learn and apply and the drive to connect people.”

Wow!  I love this and hate this at the same time.  As a L&D professional – this is hard to hear but as someone who is trying to challenge their assumptions and unlearn what no longer applies in today’s networked economy, I know it’s true.

Summary (aka reminders to myself)

• Unlearn to relearn: It takes slowing down to unlearn.  I need to give myself the space and time to make connections and re-frame what I thought to be true.
• Let learning happen:  That’s the beauty of social learning.  You don’t need a formal L&D background to create, curate or faciliate these types of expereinces.  In fact, you may just gain a whole new persective by handing over the reigns.