CL / CI — Continuous Learning / Continuous Improvement!
The more you learn, the more you are exposed to the immense unknown. There is a whole goldmine waiting for you when you gauge your current position and embrace the habit of continuous learning.
To start off with what determines and constitutes the educational system largely, we are often used to hearing this phrase:
- The more time you spend reading, the more you'd learn
We are taught this repeatedly over and over across multiple phases of our schooling & university that we reach a stage where we read in an aim to pass an exam or attain a CGPA / GPA.
But a contrarian view that is a closer representation of the truth is:
More you learn, the more you are exposed to the immense unknown.
Talking of the unknowns, there is absolutely nothing to be frightened about. If anything, it has to be able to motivate and empower one to delve deeper, explore more in an aim to gain more knowledge.
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know!
— Albert Einstein
Often (and I have also been a victim of this much earlier when I started off my career just out of college) we feel in awe of people who know more / are much more knowledgeable than ourselves. We are so used to the competition scheme of things and subconsciously carry that trait embedding it so deep into our systems that it kind of defines a part of who we become – our personality.
But there is a whole goldmine wating for you when you gauge, accept & take a stand regarding your current levels of knowledge whilst acknowledging the fact that it could be an uphill climb requiring you may to spend time constantly & consistently.
CL / CI - Deep-dive
It takes a lot of time, effort and realisation to reach that stage of acceptance. And, post doing that is what will supposedly kick-off the journey of your transformation.
But the moment one starts accepting facts which is often a result of true self-assessment, one drops all insecurities and begins to think in the direction of:
“How do I comfortably get to a more knowledgeable state from where I am today?”
Continuous Learning may most certainly be the answer to that.
Image Credits: https://www.antwalk.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Screenshot-2021-02-03-at-3.25.13-PM.png
CL / CI – Industry Principles
Right from the period of the World War II starting predominantly with the manufacturing and automotive industries many methodologies were invented targeting improvement of business, products, services, operations, quality, process, workforce & teams. We then reached a stage of formalising it as Process Improvement.
Just to quote a few of them:
NOTE: All these broadly converge to one central goal – CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT.
CL / CI – Personal Experiences
Example 1:
I recently met a dear friend of mine who was an engineer and got picked off the campus to work for a big IT firm where he spent almost 15 years rising through the ranks. He now runs his own start-up. He shared his experience (worries) over how he hasn’t been able to find time to read off-late as opposed to the copious amount of time he had for reading when he was employed.
FINDINGS: It is not about quantity as much as it becomes so much about quality – especially when you are bound by a tight schedule and there is a visible time crunch.
Example 2:
Would you believe if I were to tell you that I don’t really prepare for any technical / domain / subject related interviews anymore. I stopped doing that quite some time back itself as I don’t feel the need to go through that exercise.
But, earlier in my career I have had to allot an entire day to reading subject related stuff just before I take an interview the subsequent day to feel any confident and I did see this was a regular habit even amongst most of my peers back then (TBH it happens in most cases even today).
FINDINGS: It is about reading in an aim to reach a goal, in this case – to refresh your memory wrt things you already know but seem to have lost touch of.
The effectiveness of learning / improvement is debatable in either of these cases quoted above here.
An analogy!
Assuming that you don’t have anything particularly to do with the field of Astronomy / Astrophysics currently neither personally nor professionally but you did most certainly go through what might have been a highly consolidated chapter on the topic during your schooling.
Question 1: How many of us remember the Orion constellation or the Orion belt, or Betelgeuse or Rigel?
Answer: That is not too many of us, right!?
Image Credits: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/betelgeuse-star-dim-supernova-death-what-happened
Betelgeuse can be seen through the naked eye as a part of the Orion constellation. It is an enormous red giant of a star that has been in the news for several years now as scientists claim that it is nearing a supernova explosion but that hasn’t happened for reasons that appear puzzling.
They claim that the explosion would be so large enough that we’d almost have like 2 suns in the sky for many days and one of them arising out of the explosion would be a bright persistent one.
NOTE: Head over to the references section of this page for the links if you are curious about these stars and their size comparisons.
Ok. That’s enough about Betelgeuse and the Orion.
Question 2: Now, how many of us remember basic Arithmetic?
Answer: That is almost all of us. Isn’t it?
How is it justified that we have trouble remembering something we learnt more recently which is Astrophysics in high school as opposed Arithmetic that was learnt much before that, may be in elementary / junior high?
The answer of course is – usage & practice.
We have been employing arithmetic in our regular lives over and over again almost every day, ever since we learnt it and that’s why most of us know it like at the back of our hands.
FACT: Not everybody gets to use all facets of learnings over the course of their regular jobs. So, there are certain things that may be deemed important at other workplaces which you would have possibly lost touch of because you haven’t been finding the scope to implement them into your regular workflow.
Hot Tip: Ever since I have taken to this habit of reading regularly covering a wide array of topics, I haven’t felt the chief necessity to take time off to prepare for an interview.
The Value Addition
Here are some benefits of reading FICTION according to Buffer.
Image Credits: https://buffer.com/resources/reading-fiction/
CL / CI - A real-life chapter
Background:
Back in 2006, I happened to spend a lot of time with a close friend whose dad was working as a high-ranking senior technical manager in a large aeronautics’ organisation in Bangalore.
His schedule was a regular 9-5 but then due to the fact that he had to interact with a lot of technical departments / teams and the management both internal and external in lending them direction right from a small task like sorting out a small tech query to solving some major problem related to aeronautics and engineering. So, he usually left home as early as 7:45 - 8:00 AM and was back by 7:30 – 8:00 PM.
He was in his late 50s with a severely impressive and polite personality alongside an infectious smile that he always carried making him the most approachable person, am sure!
Narrative:
The first day post reaching home, I was on a conference call discussing some tasks with team members at my office. He just then arrived from his work that day greeted me with a pleasant “Hi” and I nodded back and he quickly disappeared into his room.
He appeared back in the living room after freshening up in about 10 minutes time.
He finished off his daily prayers being a devout brahmin that he was and then what he did was just amazing to watch for the 25-year-old me.
He walked up to one shelf at the other corner of the room and picked up a thick book (easily about 900 pages) and sat down on the couch. I was calmly observing him from a corner of the living room post finishing the call whilst silently sorting and jotting down my deliverables from the call.
He spent about an hour reading that book which happened to be an aeronautical engineering textbook – I noticed it as I walked past him later.
The subsequent day, he came back from office and went through his routine.
He walked into the living room and asked me for plans about dinner and we planned to go out in about 2 hours.
And then, he was quickly back to his shelf to pick some other book and start reading again which he did for over an hour.
This was his daily routine. I was in awe of him when I observed this reading habit he had.
And then the moment of realisation for me was - if someone aged 55 can read subject related books post a 12-hour workday, I wasn’t even half his age and I was sure there was such a lot to read and learn of both in general and specific to my own domain / subject.
I personally have reinstated the habit of reading, learning ever since & it has stayed with me all through, till date.
Conclusion
You may be anybody from a doctor / surgeon or a general manager at an organisation that manufactures / markets beverages or an engineer or even an actor.
The only way to get to the top and stay there is to focus on improving continuously.
It doesn’t matter who you are, what position you hold. One thing that you should realise is that learning and targeting methods to consistently and constantly get better should be a part of your armoury integrated into your regular schedule and this habit should indeed be position and vertical agnostic.
Make reading a regular habit. It helps, a great deal, it really does.
More info on the Orion & Betelgeuse:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/betelgeuse-star-dim-supernova-death-what-happened
https://www.createdheavens.com/size-and-mass-of-stars-and-planets.html