Here's an idea worth playing with

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Here's an Idea Worth Playing With with me, Rob Lambert. And in today's episode, I'm gonna be talking about 10 different principles for studying, essentially how to study anything and sort of make it stick. I don't know about you, but my experience at school in the eighties was good. I enjoyed it. I can't really complain too much.

Didn't do brilliantly. Didn't do too bad. I was sort of in the middle. But one thing that stood out and reflecting on this as I've gone through my career is nobody ever really taught me how to study. And actually, I think that's the same in work.

I think we bombard people with learning management systems and training and all sorts of opportunities. But do we actually teach people how to study? Well, in this episode, I am gonna share those 10 principles that I think will help you study anything more effectively. You know, whether you're learning a new skill for work or you're trying to master a hobby or you're just deeply curious about a subject. So I think these are ideas worth playing with.

As with everything with this podcast, this is short, sharp riffs from the edges of creativity, learning and communication. There is a much richer article that goes into a lot more depth about each of these principles. You'll find that over at cultivatormanagement.com if you just search for how to study or check out the show notes. So principle number one is be active. You know, studying is not a passive process.

It's not about sitting back, underlining a few words in a book, getting that highlighter pen out, rereading notes. It might feel productive. Real studying means engaging with the material. You know, testing it, using it, applying it. What I often say is there's two different ways to potentially look at learning, and they sort of override these 10 principles in some respects.

One is information acquisition, where we read a whole lot of stuff, we take in information. A lot of training courses really are nothing more than somebody parting a bit of their knowledge and people listening and taking it in. Now, the second way to learn is actually the most powerful, and this is called task acquisition. And this is why you learn from doing the activity itself. You take the information, you put it into action and you create knowledge from it.

Real knowledge in your mind, the nuances, the ways it works, the ways it doesn't work. That's what we need to do when we study any subject at all. You know, when we read a book, we need to put it into action, test it, try it, bounce it and mash it against all the other stuff that we know works, and then see whether or not what we're reading is actually good. Is it gonna is it gonna land? Is it gonna help us be more effective or change our behaviors or gain knowledge?

So in other words, we've got to be active in it. Now, obviously in my, latest book, Workshop Mastery, I sort of turned these 10 principles around and sort of put them as ways to teach people. How can we get people active in a workshop rather than just stood there, droning on and sharing what is in our mind? How can we get people active? Because being active is that first principle.

We have to engage with it. We have to be active with it. Now principle number two sounds pretty obvious and reasonable, but you know, as an adult, we often get to choose what we study, particularly in our own lives. So you've got to choose something that you actually care about. This sounds ridiculous, but many people are going on training courses, they're learning, they're reading books about things they're not particularly interested in.

Maybe it's that social pressure, maybe it's because their manager made them do it, maybe it's because they think this is gonna elevate their career, but interest is fuel. If we're not interested in something, if we're not curious about the subject itself, it's going to be much harder to muster that energy to stay engaged and to really jump into the details and bring it to life. If you can't find the interest, then find some sort of strong reason. Is there a compelling why? Do you need this because your job's on the line if you don't do this?

Is it really something that's gonna elevate your career? Otherwise, you're gonna get bored. You're gonna lose interest because interest is fuel. We should be choosing something that we care about. So principle number three is to study with a critical mind.

Not everything we read or hear or watch is true. And even if it is true, it might not actually be that useful for you. We're living in a world where we have so much information now, there's so much content, there's so much that we can consume, that many people just take that stuff on face value. I mean, crikey, get yourself onto TikTok or Instagram, and you get influencers sharing how to run successful businesses or how to manage people, to live life when they haven't really seen much of life already. It's a really interesting dilemma that we have and I'm trying to teach this to my kids to be critical, to think about it, to not take everything on face value, to test it, to put it into action and see what holds up to rational, critical reasoning.

That's how information becomes knowledge. Not by just spewing out what someone else has said. We've got to think critically about it. Principle number four is that the best education is self education. In fact, some argue that the only education is self education.

You know, you got teachers, mentors, books, people like myself doing these podcasts, sharing what it is that I know. But all we are are guides. Ultimately, education is something you do for yourself. Nobody can learn for you. The responsibility, the reward, it all comes from owning that process.

And remember, the best education is self education. All anyone else can do is guide you, can share what it is that they know, but it's on you to take that to the level that you need it to go to. Principle number five is to go deep, not wide. There's memes all over social media about how I read 200 books a year. You can even get book summaries delivered to your inbox or audio summaries of books.

But Francis Bacon once said, some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Now I think that's a really important point because it's about reading just a small select few books, but really deeply, and letting it shape how you think and act, and revisiting them. There's a book that I revisit all the time called Growing a Business by Paul Hawken. And every time I read it, there's something new pops out. I'm in a different season of life, I've got different challenges, so when I read it, different things pop out.

This is a book that I absolutely chew and digest. There's a few others like that. But I think what some people doing is skimming hundreds and hundreds of books and never really digesting those important lessons, those historical lessons in some cases. That knowledge, that deep wisdom from people who have put in the effort and the energy to share that with the world. And I think it's a real shame when we spread ourselves too thin, I wonder whether or not we're really gonna master any subject at all.

Principle number six is to teach other people. That's the whole basis. There's a whole chapter dedicated to why teaching other people is one of the ways to learn a subject in in the book Workshop Mastery. You can find that over at cultivatedmanagement.com. If we wanna know something really well, to really deeply understand it, try explaining it to someone else.

Try teaching somebody else because when you teach it, it forces you to clarify your own thoughts, to simplify complex ideas, and essentially to fill in the gaps in your own knowledge. When we try and teach somebody something, it isn't gonna be long till we find that we don't quite know the nuances or the detail. Now, of course, in the workshop mastery book, I say we shouldn't be teaching at the edges of our knowledge. We should be selecting a subset of what we know. But teaching people, phenomenal way to learn a subject much more deeply.

Principle number seven is to focus on principles. Details can change, tactics fade, even actually some of the research and science shifts and moves and counters each other. But actually underneath a lot of things are guiding principles and rules or laws. If you read the Culture Theatre Management website and the blogs, you'll find that a lot of my work is focused on principles. For example, the communication principle that underpins all of the other stuff that I teach and know is that all communication has a purpose, an audience, and it happens in a context.

And if we can understand that principle, then we can actually layer on and ladder on all of the other information and test it against that principle. And the principle allows you to build from the ground up because once you understand the principles and laws, all of the details, they're secondary to it, they're laddering on that information. So when you're reading, try and get to the heart of it. What is the principle? What is the rule?

What is the law? What is the thing that when tested in many different ways still holds true? Now principle number eight is to understand the steps. So mastery is built step by step. You know, musicians start with practicing scales, painters potentially learn perspective, you know, great public speakers, they ladder up from small, you know, small talks up to those keynotes.

Very rare to find somebody who straight out of the back gets a keynote, and if they do, is it any good? So you've got to build up from the ground up, from that principle outwards, from that practice, from that sort of taking the basic elements and growing outwards. And also be super careful of anybody who just presents theories, because theories, not all of them, have utility. They're not all useful. And actually, a lot of people that espouse theories, which is basically just a collection of ideas, they're often not tested.

There's often no validity to them. So again, this is about getting to the basics and understanding that your knowledge, your information is laddered step by step. It's a journey. It's a journey that if you're interested in the subject, can continue for your whole life. Principle number nine is to take some rest.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your learning is to step away. And actually there's growing research to suggest that when we do rest, when we sleep, when we rest properly, when we engage in other activities outside of our learning, that actually that's when the brain starts to connect all of the dots together. Breaks, they're not wasted time. Don't feel like you have to study constantly. They're actually essential for that deep learning to happen.

So we're closing in on the end here, and this is principle number 10, and this is to appreciate that other ways also work. There's usually more than one way to learn. There's more than one way to do something. There's more than one way to be successful. So try not to be dogmatic.

Try and read broadly about that particular subject. Stay open. You know, even if you disagree with someone, you know, you listen to a podcast, you read a book that completely goes against what you believe or what you think, there's often something there. There's something that you can learn from. So ground yourself in the sort of core principles of your subject and test those ideas and stay flexible because sometimes something comes along, a curveball of information that really throws your paradigm out the window, And that is wonderful.

We should embrace that, not resist it. So appreciate that other ways work. So there you have it. They're the 10 principles for studying anything. Be active.

Choose subjects you care about. Be critical in the thinking and the reading. Take ownership of your own learning. Go deep, not wide. Teach other people.

Phenomenal way to learn a subject. Focus on the principles, the rules, and the laws of the subject that you're learning. In fact, learn those first. Build it step by step. Don't expect to be an expert overnight.

Take some time out, rest, and then appreciate that there are lots of other ways of doing things in the world. And appreciate this point that information on its own is not knowledge. That information needs put it into action to turn it into knowledge. Thank you so much for listening. You can find a much richer article on cultivatormanagement.com, where you'll also find the books that I've mentioned and all sorts of other good free resources, some paid resources, plus some workshops, and all sorts of ways that you can develop your skills in communication, creativity, and to embrace the learning journey.

And with that, keep learning, keep growing, take some time out, and I shall speak to you in the next episode.