Identifying your learning problem is the first step to fixing it

“To live a life without continuous learning is unthinkable. But that doesn’t mean it’s easier or not overwhelming.”

““The only thing that is constant is change,” Heraclitus famously said; change in your career, change in your personal life, change in your community and organizations. One of the most effective ways of dealing with change is lifelong learning.” Source: EdExec

“I think we have to help organizations get out of the way and let people unleash and unlock their capabilities in ways that does not require the organization to be at the center.”

It’s a “totally new age for human capital management that the pandemic has tipped us all into.

Source: Future of work podcast The Skills Obsession: A ‘third age’ of human capital management

And yet….

Information is flowing faster than ever.  We are walking and talking faster than a decade ago. We’re inundated with platforms, blogs, websites, tweets, LinkedIn posts, Youtube videos, online courses, etc., etc.  But who has time for learning?  

The better question is ‘who doesn’t have the need to make time for that all-important, strategic, let’s-get-to-the-bottom-of-pressing-social-problems, learning?’

Learning is key to your professional and personal success and will not only save you tons of time but make your time more meaningful and make you more likely to reach your goals.

And yet….

• You have the best of intentions, but you’re struggling to keep up with learning, with professional and/or personal development.
• You’re confused about what to learn, when, and how.  It’s all just a little much, and it’s easier to simply avoid the whole topic.
• You keep having bad experiences with learning – e.g, you can’t find the notes you took, you want to share your learning, but it’s too time- consuming, inconvenient, etc.
• Regardless of your best efforts, you have no time for learning. 
• Despite putting on a brave face, the whole subject of learning makes you feel disorganized and overwhelmed.
• You don’t know if your learning is making a difference.
• And perhaps most importantly, when you put learning and tech in the same sentence it’s enough to make you want to run screaming at the top of your lungs for the hills.

The first step towards resolving your learning challenges is to identify them.  You can do that here on this editable worksheet.  

And then, you can categorize them into challenges related to:

• Learning strategy; how do you learn best, and using what tools in order to be most successful
• Organizing your learning; how do you remember stuff, document what you learn, etc.
• Sharing learning; you go to all that trouble to learn stuff, how can you easily share it with your colleagues and friends
• Using your learning; ditto – you go to all that trouble of learning something, how do you go about actually applying what you learn

Check out this editable worksheet where you can add your own learning challenges and then categorize them. Bonus: you can see what challenges others face.  ‘Cause you’re not alone!

And remember, identifying your learning problem is the first step to fixing them.  Onwards with the learning journey.

Now go on and learn, laugh and lead

Learn

• Add your learning challenges to this worksheet and then categorize them.  You’ll be able to see what challenges others are facing.

Laugh

• Strong emotions make learning hard.  We all need support, just like this overwhelmed little dancer when her dad steps in.

Lead

• Share this post with a friend and/or colleague and see what challenges they have to add to the worksheet.

P.S. Want to join our community and receive regular invitations to my monthly Learning and Development Roundtables plus get access to all nine-plus years of Roundtable resources? Easy peasy. Sign up for free here.