Vertical Learning Curves
When The Learning Curve Is Vertical
Whatever your politics, yesterday’s inauguration was historic and moving. Now that the ceremonies are over, it’s time for the real work to begin.
We’ve all had the experience of taking a new job, and facing down the learning curve. I suspect, however that the job of president has a steeper learning curve than most. (And that this is true for anyone who takes that particular office.) This got me thinking about vertical learning curves and how to scale them.
The Yerkes-Dodson law tells us that optimum difficulty leads to optimum performance. The trick is finding optimum. Too much difficulty and we burn out. Too little difficulty and we tune out. Find the right balance, and you reach the state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi http://www.brainchannels.com/thinker/mihaly.html refers to as flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) – that place where you are fully immersed in what you’re doing and most likely to be successful. The power of flow is one of the reasons learning through well-designed games is so powerful.
To get to that state of flow, we first need to manage our on the job learning so that we don’t hit the burn out state. Jim McGee offers four keys to more effective on the job learning.
- Be mindful – People who are expert at something often stop thinking about what they area doing. Instead, keep your attention on what you are doing and why, and pay attention to what is working.
- Take time to reflect – Once a piece of work is complete, ask three simple questions:
- What just happened?
- How was that different from what we expected?
- What does that suggest we should do differently next time?
- Map your ignorance – because new learning always connects to something we already know, it’s important to pay attention to where the holes are.
- Enlist your social environment – Be willing to admit when you don’t know something, and to connect with others who are learning the same sorts of things.
The world felt a little different when Brazen Careerist wrote that training is the new office currency, but in a world where everything is uncertain, learning certainly can’t hurt. Harold Jarche offers suggestions for effective personal knowledge management, to help people make a smooth transition between “That’s an interesting idea” to “This is what I know”.
Personally, when my learning curve gets too steep, I take a break and walk away from the computer for awhile. I find that exercise not only helps to build the brain – it helps to reboot it when it’s fried. What strategies do you use?