When to quit learning?

A couple of weeks back I signed up for an online program on Food Sciences. I was super excited about it, the course had some interesting instructors. I got a series of messages from the organisers, some of which included:

• “During the session, do ensure your audio and video are both off.”

• “Below is a google drive link which has the recording from today’s session. Once you click on the link, an automated request to access will come to us. Once we enable it, you will get an email notification and you can refresh and access it.”

• “We do not share any speaker presentations. Hence do take notes during the session/ while watching the recordings.”

As someone who designs learning experiences, I was appalled. I tried to not let this cloud my judgement before the program started.

Once the sessions started, I realised that the learning method and culture was something that I personally could not relate to. I was also not sure how the course added value to my life. I attended 2 sessions, missed the third one and immediately felt guilty. Leaving a program mid-way seemed like quitting.

I pushed myself and tried to attend a couple of other sessions. But the experience was more or less the same. Learning is not supposed to be easy and I wanted to make sure I was quitting for the right reasons. To help me make this decision, I though of modifying the action priority matrix for learning:

Effort and impact can seem a little vague in the learning context, so let me unpack these a little bit:

Effort

Arguably all learning requires considerable effort, this could be one/ more of the following:

• Duration
  How much time you need to spend learning something
  Example: Doing a course that takes 3 months vs one that takes a year

• Density
  How much learning is packed in a given amount of time
  Example: Spending 10 hours leaning in a month vs spending 10 hours learning in a week

• Convenience
  How easily does learning something new fit into your life
  Example: Attending sessions from 10am - 11am vs 10pm - 11pm everyday

• Cognitive Load
  How new something is to you
  Example: Learning the basics of cooking vs learning new dishes once you know the basics

• Second Order Consequences
  What you are missing out in order to learn something
  Example: Sacrificing Friday nights every week for 3 months for a class means not being able to meet friends on that day

It’s important to know that all of the above parameters are dynamic and change depending on your life stage, workload, emotional and physical wellbeing among other things.

Impact

The impact that learning have could mean one/ more of the following:

• Relevance
  How relevant the learning is in your context
  Example: Learning a new language for the sake of it vs learning a new language once you’ve moved to a new country

• Problem-solving
  Learning to solve a specific problem in your life
  Example: Learning excel to reduce the effort it takes for you to do something manually

• Growth
  Learning something helps you transition and grow
  Example: Learning something new to break into a new role

• Progress
  Learning helps you progress more in a field of your interest
  Example: Getting more proficient in a language - increasing complexity

• Goals
  Learning towards achieving specific goals you might have
  Example: Learning how to cook a whole meal by yourself in 1 month

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of sunk cost fallacy when we have invested in learning something. But learning inherently should be challenging and fun (yes really)! Try to use this framework when you feel like quitting something and make sure you’re quitting for the right reasons.

Quitting doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means it’s not what you need at that point in time. And if anything, quitting helps you learn a bit more about yourself.

And hey, it’s never too late to start quit learning.

Thumbnail gif