RSS at Feed BurnerWhat did you learn today?
I student taught (in the second grade) and one day I had the class lined up and ready to leave, but we had about 2 minutes before the bell rang to let them out to the bus. As you probably know, 26 second graders standing in line is an eternity. So I asked them a simple question. “What are 5 things you learned today?”
Every hand shot up and we got to the fifth thing right before the bell rang. The interesting thing was that we had a quiz a few days later. One of the questions on the quiz was something one of the kids brought up when talking about the 5 things they learned that day (it was a coincidence, I didn’t plan it). EVERY kid got that question right. I like to think it was because I was such an awesome teacher, but in reality, it was more likely a result of the kids reflecting a little on their day and about what they learned.
As many people will tell you, experiencing something is probably the best way to learn something (and that is usually done in the form of a mistake). But one problem some people have is that they don’t learn from their experiences or mistakes. That is likely because they do not take time to reflect on it. Without reflecting, hopefully you will learn something subconsciously, but taking time to think about what it is you learned and defining it is a much more effective way to learn.
You probably have the chance to learn 50 things every day, whether they are new or just reinforcements of what you already know. The problem is that most people don’t actually get as much from the day as they could since they don’t reflect. Everyday at 4:45pm, I have a reminder that pops up reminding me to “Reflect” for the day. So I try to think about what it is I learned that day and I write these things down in a file. Some are from reading (blogs, books, magazines or something else), some are concepts I come up with as a result of something that happened that day, and others things come out by accident (maybe while driving).
But even though I take the time and effort to reflect, define what it is I learned, and write it down, I still have the challenge to get myself to go back and read what it is I have learned for some reinforcement.
I decided to do this post as a result of a post on Brad Feld’s Blog - I’ll Never Do An Investment In That Kind of Thing Again.