For everyone, especially learning professionals, lifelong learning is a foundational value by which we live. So it makes sense that before we embark on this new online learning and discovery journey we should take a few minutes to review a few habits that can assist in creating lifelong learners.
These habits, which have been called the Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners, will provide you with a refresher on what it means to be a lifelong learner.
You might also like Joel Gardner’s great post about “How to Become a Successful Life-long Learner”. Thanks Joel!
Discovery Exercise:
- View the 7 & 1/2 Habits online presentation
- Leave a reply on this post to share your thoughts about which lifelong learning habit is easiest for you, which is hardest and any thoughts you have about lifelong learning.
Learn Camp 
I think habit 7 1/2 (Play!) is probably easiest for me – but maybe that’s an obvious answer. 🙂 If you’re motivated to learn something because it’s fun, most often you don’t even look at it as learning. One of my dreams for many, many years was to travel to Turkey and I spent a year intensely teaching myself Turkish before finally going a couple of years ago. (Worked great! You’ve never seen so many gobsmacked Turks – highly recommend Rosetta Stone.) But as disciplined and intense as I was about it, I always saw it as fun rather than work.
I think habit 7 (Teach/Mentor Others) feels less effortless than other habits – probably because you need to be very conscious of, and sensitive to, the other person’s motivations (stated and unstated), vulnerabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. It’s got to be the most rewarding habit of all, but it also takes the most presence and consciousness.
Good lead-off Learn Camp question!
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Jackie, I feel like you do a great job teaching/mentoring others all the time just by being open and willing to share and work out loud.
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I would have to say that Accepting Responsibility for My Own Learning is probably easiest. I love to learn and try new things. Although, somtimes by brain is on learning overload. 🙂 I think I could get better at Begin with the End in Mind. I love to just dive into my work and let the creative juices flow that sometimes I forget to think about the main outcome!! I want to create and offer programs that are beneficial to our leaders and associates that are behavior changing!
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The easiest one for me is starting from the end. As an instructional designer it always makes sense to develop from the end and work backwards. The hardest for me is 7 1/2 – I very seldom play with new tools for variety of reasons include time and learning curves. I want to bring more creativity to my courses and I’m looking forward to this course and learning about available tools and having fun!
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I agree with Jackie – Habit 7 1/2 – play is the easiest for me and the most fun, but I would say that that Habit 5 – create your own toolbox, is not so much the “hardest”, but the one I would like to spend more time than I have available on.
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Habit 6, “Use technology to your advantage,” is probably the easiest for me. Any area that I can incorporate some type of technology tool makes it much more interesting and engaging. On the other hand, habit 7 1/2, “Play,” is probably the most difficult. I’m very much focused on tasks and goals and have a difficult time incorporating the “play” factor into my learning. Interestingly, I completely understand the importance of play and always try to incorporate it into training courses that I design (as long as others are doing the “play,” I love it). 🙂
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PLAY! I participated in FISH! Philosophy training long ago and it stuck with me. You can’t innovate, motivate, inspire if you aren’t having fun! 🙂
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I’ve just looked up the Fish Philosophy – I love it!! I’d never heard of this before, so I’ve already learnt something from LearnCamp. Thanks!
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I just looked it up as well – what a neat philosophy!
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I love it! Here’s to having fun.
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For me, the easiest would be Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind. I always try to start with a goal and mind and then work backwards to determine the steps to get there. The hardest for me would be Habit #6: Use technology to your advantage. I have a strong educational background, but learning about technology that supports learning is an area of needed growth for me. I think that I am in the right place to help support my improvement in this area!
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I completely agree, Emily. Although sometimes it’s easy for me to lose sight of the end goal in a long learning process. As complications in scheduling arise (which it ALWAYS does), it’s important to keep the end goal visible at all possible turns.
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The easiest habit for me out of the 7 and 1/2 would be:
“Accept responsibility for your own learning”
I love to do research online and connect with people who are experts in a field. As I have researched what I need to do to take my current teaching/curriculum development skills and make myself marketable as an curriculum developer — I have been so pleased at the amount of information available and the generosity of those in the business to share what they know!
What I find hardest to do is “play”.
I think I have been task-oriented, and love to check things off as “done”…. for so long. This comes with being a new teacher and being in grad school — never enough time to do everything or so I thought :)….When I spend time learning — I like to be “accomplishing” something (even though play is necessary to learning). It doesn’t feel good to me to not have something to like a finished product to show for the time I have spent. Need to ch
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oops didn’t finish my sentence in that last post…I am working on changing that mentality of “never enough time”.
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I think using technology to my advantage would be the easiest for me. My first instinct is to run to technology to help me out with any problem.
The hardest is probably begin with the end in mind… or at least keeping the end in mind! I tend to get lost in the rabbit hole and end up somewhere very different from my intended destination if I am not mindful through the whole process.
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The easiest one of these for me is taking responsibility for my own learning. I’ve loved learning new things for as long as I can remember. I am the guy who stops to read all the historical markers, etc I see. I think the toughest is seeing problems as challenges. Although I’ve noticed that these challenges can sometimes result in some of the most valuable learning.
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Taking responsibility for my own learning is also the easiest for me. I love the fact that I work in a profession that requires me to keep learning! On the flip side, the toughest for me is creating and managing my learning toolbox. I struggle with the amount of information and voices in the learning industry, and as a relative newbie, I find it hard to figure out where to start. But I’m getting there! My challenge is to finish learncamp and I’m sure I’ll have a renewed sense of direction for my learning toolbox/plan.
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I have to agree, taking responsibility for my own learning is the easiest, and I think the most enjoyable. I love uncovering new information and trying to figure out where it fits into what I am currently working on. To me the hardest part, even though it’s not listed here, is making the time to “Sharpen the Saw”. I think we get head down and forget to do the basics, like play around a little with new technologies or make new connections. My favorite on the list is “Create Your Own Toolbox”, so key today where there are so many different delivery options and options to customize learning.
I have to agree with the group regarding FISH. I implemented the FISH program into an organization I was working with a number of years ago to large success; and while people may say that the concept is simplistic and overly “light”, I have always chalked it up to those people not having enough play in their toolboxes. I still use the concepts. 🙂
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