Sometimes people get stuck not learning. Some stuck places include:
1. Knows Everything Already – These people never allow themselves to be surprised or effected by any new insight. Sometimes arrogant and often criticize without offering solution.
2. Busyness – People who are so busy that they are too busy to “notice” learning. Busyness allows us to only see the immediate survival steps and never imagine the next steps.
3. Boredom – This is normally a side project of ‘knows everything’ people; nothing is ever new, surprising, or engaging – every bit and piece of knowledge is old and frustrating. Bored people generally are boring people who look more for entertainment then learning.
4. Repetition – No one can become better by doing the same thing the same way forever. What worked yesterday and today likely will not work tomorrow. Feel free to tweak and change it up or risk living in a mediocre and non-innovative life.
5. Completed Living – These are stuck places that misinterpret goal completion as finished learning. Incompleteness must be acknowledged in order to move on.
6. Crises Free – You might find that your capacity for learning is stuck if you have not had to work through conflict or find solutions to problems. Learners generate troublems.
7. Unnecessary Failure - This is not a stuck place but rather a metric of being stuck. You might be stuck if you have failed because you have not learned from the knowledge available to you.
8. Isolation – Though not always the case, isolated people generally like to dig holes for themselves; community involvement, collaboration, juxtaposition of ideas, and shared spaces are key learning environments. Learners ruthlessly seek out other learners.
Any thoughts on getting unstuck? Post here in the comments, write a column and we can post it here in a few days, or respond on your own blog.
-Jer
tags: learning
5 comments:
This is both interasting and true. It takes wisdom to notice things like this.
Personally I think that, for most people, a single one of these does not define a person's reason for being "stuck." A combination of these seem to be the normal. Therefore, I don't think there is just one way to get unstuck. However, one thing is sure, "what worked yesterday and today likely will not work tommorow." Whatever the problem is, it will take an effort to step out of norm. That effort I think can come from a challenging situation but it's not a good thing to rely on. All in all, once you get unstuck, becoming stuck again will be a certainty without putting in some sort of effort on a personal level. We just get lazy sometimes.
Learners learn because they are humble enough to realize that they don't know everything.
Even though God never changes this world changes by the minute (second?) and we need to learn the changes.
This is why I love blogs and blogging. Since becoming an active blogger a year and a half ago, I've learned so much from my blogging friends (not to mention people I don't know at all or don't know very well) and learned so much about myself through writng my thoughts and struggles.
This is not to say you need a blog to be a learner but It's sure helped for me.
Great assesment of the topic in your post Jer. I might steal and footnote for a sermon I'm preparing for in the New Year.
Interesting post...
I think that some of these items listed actaully drive me to further learning and are actaully spring boards to a deeper learnign process.
For example... boredom for me drives me to try new things and expand my thoughts and experiences.
Completed living - Does this happen in community? Do we sometimes think that in our community of friends we are complete and need nothing else. IS that really community?
Thanks for tuning in everyone and I appreciate your thoughts. Glad you can use some of this in your sermon Paul! Sweet.
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Agreed Mark - I often say that Boredom is my greatest curse and my greatest blessing:
A curse because, well, I'm bored, and
A blessing because it drives me to create, innovate, and look at ideas and options from different perspectives.
People like you an I, however, are pretty driven and self-motivated. Often times people who become bored are often hit with, as D'Mack pointed out, laziness. This is a leathal combo that can suck the life of learning right out of you! Yeah?
In fact, now that I think about this more...each one of these would be characterized by laziness.
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A closed community maybe?
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