Learning Nerd’s Diary #33
Welcome back Learning Nerds!
This is me when I found out the newsletter has reached 100 subscribers! Thank you for being here ❤️
👀 Sneak peak
Here is what I have in store for you this week -
💭 Learning About Learning: T-Shaped Learning
🥜 Learning Nugget: Messy learning
💥 Coolest Thing I Learnt This Week: Weeding your to-do list
🔦 Spotlight: ThoughtLab for the APAC Shakers
Let's jump right in!
💭 T-Shaped Learning
While learning something new, remember that learning needs to be T-shaped -
Let us unpack this a little bit..
Going Broad or Building Familiarity 📏
While learning something new we don’t know where to start. Once we do start, we don’t know where to stop - we don’t know if what we know is enough or not. This is where going broad helps.
Going broad is like looking at the table of contents or the summary of a book. It gives you a quick overview of what to expect and gauge how much time it might take. It helps you figure out before you invest deeply into it, whether learning it is for you or not.
Going broad builds familiarity. Here are two ways to go broad:
Talk to people who are ahead in the journey. These could be experts, mentors, peers. Drew Houston, the Dropbox cofounder talks about this - “Look for people who are one year, two years, five years ahead of you. You will learn very different and important things.”
Find the alphabets first. Learning something requires you to learn its language first. Learn the fundamentals first.
Going Deep or Building Mastery 🥽
Once you’ve decided to learn something, focussing on too many things can be distracting. At this point it is important to dive head first into it. This is where going deep helps.
Going deep is like reading an entire PhD on something. It helps you full immerse yourself in the topic and get to know the details.
Going deep builds mastery. Here are two ways to go deep:
Find a credible structure. This could take the form of a course, a book, a class, a paper - find a format that works for you!
Remember to take a learning breath! While learning something new, make sense of it for yourself. Consumption and creation are both important for learning
So the next time you’re learning something, find your T. Go broad 📏, build familiarity first and then go deep 🥽 to build mastery.
🥜 Messy Learning
Being messy makes it hard to find things.
Just like our lives, our learning requires organisation too.
💥 Coolest Thing I Learnt this Week
Weeding your to-do List
My sister shared this framework with me the other day and I can't stop thinking about it. Everything on your to-do list can fall into one of the 4 quadrants below -
We need all 4 kinds of tasks to feel satisfied and stimulated. A single task also journeys across the 4 quadrants - from Indirect & Shallow to Indirect & Deep and so on.
For the longest time, I could not explain how things I do for fun (Indirect and Shallow) add to my work. But this framework captures that really well!
In which quadrant do most of your tasks lie in?
Bittersweet Goodbyes
Last week also marked the end of the first cohort of the Product Design Fellowship at NextLeap. I was leading the learning experience design for the fellowship and boy 8 weeks do fly!
We did a virtual graduation party with all the fellows, and I feel a part of me ‘graduated’ as well.
🔦 Spotlight
Here is a sneak peak from last week's ThoughtLab on Learning Museums for the L&D Shakers -
We had about 45 people across 15+ countries that joined us for the event. SO MUCH FUN! 🎉
Love & Learning
Until we meet next week!
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