Recently I set my policy students the task of picking five ways of thinking to structure an ill-defined policy. One of those ways I chose was the ‘picturing’ technique which visualises a problem and it’s relationships. In essence, nobody really picked that option out of 38 students. In a more recent event I asked one of my students to think systemically about a problem. She said she couldn’t do it because it took her out of comfort zone. I had never been confronted with a problem like this before so I was unsure how to handle it. I showed her a basic mapping technique (concept mapping) and she was ok after that. It did get me thinking though… why do people have a hard time visualising concepts?

My argument: people have abandoned pictures in western education

I have watched my eldest daughter draw inventive pictures and create masterpieces only to have that ‘educated’ out of her by the end of grade three. When asked to visualise anything she really struggles now compared with several years ago. Further, the inability of people to apply their imagination to problems, offering new and innovative solutions is somehow linked to the ability to picture things.  During school I felt myself drifting out the window imagining something else while the teacher was talking. I often remember being interrupted by the teacher who would say something like, “Luke stop daydreaming and focus on your work.” Ahh but what great adventures I had staring out that window. I fought crime, solved problems and created new and better realities. Alas, it’s take then best part of 25 years to realise that those methods instilled in me at such an early age have limited my capacity to imagine.

Restoring the capacity to imagine

Reading dulls the mind. Already by now most of you have stopped at this point in the article. Which makes that last sentence somewhat redundant. Let me give you a little test. Imagine you are sitting as a passenger in your car. Can you see the glove box? What about the windscreen? What’s happening as you imagine yourself in this setting? If you can’t do this then you were like me you had lost your capacity to imagine. Here’s a snippet from something I wrote (from this site which I never get time to update) a while ago:

Eunice looked into the small room where her sleeping daughter lay tightly strapped to a bed. Given that she had lost her husband to schizophrenia, she wondered why she hadn’t seen this coming.

Now you are doing it. You are seeing a girl strapped to a bed. You are picturing a mental ward… whatever YOUR perception of that is likely to be. You have seen clothing, pictures on the wall, the room and so on. Why can’t we apply this same thinking to our problems, businesses or other stuff?

My challenge to you

I want you to do something.  I am going to do this too so don’t worry.  Woah man… no it’s not like that.  Take a specific area of your life and begin to apply your imagination to it.  See what you come up with.  Let me finish with the story I began at the start of this post.  The student in question still looked a little puzzled after I used the concept mapping technique so I asked her to use her imagination.  I asked her to think what would it be like IF she could think this way?  How would it feel? What connections would you see?  What steps would you take?  This got her passed the “can’t do it bit” and she actually did a very good job in the end.

The imagination is probably the most underrated part of our brains.  It can take us places our logic can only follow… it can picture for us new realities and if you believe in positive (intentional) spirituality it can even effect reality!  So why not give it a go and let me know how it works out?

Yesterday I spoke about the four stages of learning.  Today, I want to point out the missing element of learning that often is overlooked by many people.  This is the part of learning that refers to your natural talent.

Your natural talent

People who excel in their area, such as Elvis, were not just hardworkers. They had a special something that made them different from everyone else around them. They had a natural inclination or gifting that guided them to the target. If you look into the history of successful people you will find somewhere in their story a natural desire to follow a certain path. You have this too and so do I.

How can I know my natural talent?

I can’t answer this with a one line answer except to add this: what you don’t have to work hard to achieve and find very easy to learn could be your natural talent. For me, it’s writing. I don’t have to think beyond writing the next word to know what I am going to say. As a matter of fact as I am writing this… it’s just flowing out of me. No planning, no forward thinking, no nothing. Just a natural flow of creativity inside me. That’s God given. Finding it, is not as easy as simply letting it flow however and that’s where yesterdays post comes in handy. You have to develop your natural talent. You may find like I did as you were developing your natural talent in one area you discovered it was actually in another area! But that’s what makes life so interesting… we all have so much potential (that’s tomorrow’s topic…).

An example of natural talent

Say you like organising people. You love to file things away, be organised and structure things. That’s a natural talent. You may be creative and ideas are always flowing out of you… that’s a natural talent. You may be drawn to cooking, sailing, fishing, running or whatever. It’s that drawing you need to develop and master on the road of life.

There are many reasons why people never realise their natural talent… none of which are important right now. What is important is that you make a committment to begin looking for that talent and start developing it. In the next post in this bunch I am talking about what potential is and how to use it. You must come back and read that if you are stuggling with your own personal development.

When you start learning anything you begin from the standpoint of what I like to call the ‘jackass’.  This means you know nothing about what you are doing and where you are going.  I was like this the first time I can to Excel. Now I can teach it without thinking about it.  So what are the four stages of learning?

Phase 1: Jackass

When you start to learn anything knew… you don’t have a clue. You are confused, angry, annoyed, tired and alone. That’s the first stage and it’s sad to say most people will give up in this early phase. You are a complete dumbass at this level and you make mistake after mistake after mistake and just don’t seem to be learning.

Phase 2: Partial Success - or from Jackass to partial incompetence

This is when you begin to get a handle on things but you are still making big time mistakes. You fumble four times instead of five instead of five. You sort of get the hang of it, or at least think you have but ultimately you still fail. There can be no worse feeling that I have ever known then to be at this stage. One minute you are high as a kite the next you are wondering where it all went wrong.

Phase 3: The emerging champion

This is when your skills begin to shine through. Now you are failing two times out of four tries and having more success than failure. If you have ever learned the guitar you know what this feels like. It’s that magic moent when you pick up the guitar and play that song you have been practicing for years. The stars align more often than not and you are there. You just do it. Tomorrow it may not come off but today you are the emerging champion.

Phase 4: The Champion - unconscious competence

This is where most mavens wind up. They are the champions of their area and almost always produce brilliance. They are the Stephen Kings, Speilbergs and so on who even on their worst day are still better than the next person. People at this level find it very hard to tell people how they got there. They use strange sayings like: “it just clicked” or “there comes a time when you just get it.” These are amongst the few people who have become so good at something that they have in tucked away in their unconscious. I am sure if you had the chance to ask Clapton or Hendrix: why are you so good… they might answer with, “I just know what works and what doesn’t.” This is where you want to be… this level of unconscious genius!

You have to accept that learning is a process. There is a way you learn and a path that you have to follow to get to phase 4. It requires committment, determination, faith and courage. Now, there is another element… your natural ability. That is the subject of the follow up post which you will read if you come back tomorrow.

I work in a university teaching people about computers (mainly) and policy.  The stuff dreams are made of.  Every semester there is always one student that irks me more than most and the kind that just wants the answers.  Their version of life is to simply have the “facts” and that is that.  Well I can tell you that if you really want to learn about life there is a world outside the facts you need to consider.

Having the answer… isn’t the same as the answer itself.

My way of learning is not to just get the answers… it’s to work out how I can get to the answer. Say, for instance, you are into affiliate marketing. The information you need is not how do I get sales BUT how do I actually become a competent affiliate marketer. What’s the difference? The process of selling and learning how to market things will teach you how to get sales. If I tell you this is how I get sales there will be important information missing. Stuff like, what is your budget, demographic, what is the marketing environment and so on. If I just told you what to do without giving you the chance to learn… you would not remember a bloody thing.

You must learn the way and then innovate it as you go along… not collect facts

Nothing gets under my skins faster than students who couldn’t be bothered to learn the skills I teach. I mean it’s really easy to show you the answer but the way there is lost on someone like that. That’s not teaching it’s programming robots. I am not into AI so I am dealing with humans. To rephrase a popular saying, “I can give you the fish or I can teach you how to catch them yourself.” If you are smart you will go through some pain to get there and build something with it. If not, you will be amongst the growing ant population that populate the cubes of the EVIL corporate beast. But I digress…

If this is you… don’t be an ass. Decide to begin learning the way by trying. I know your parents probably bailed you out up to this point or you are as lazy as I used to be. Don’t be like that! Once you know something you have power and you can use this power to dominate the world destroy the UN go back in time better yourself. If you don’t then you will be a GRADE A moron in my books.

* Note: the previous blog post may not resemble coherent thought.

I was playing Wii Baseball the other day and all of a sudden I realised that I could hit the ball. I had what I call a ‘breakthrough’ moment. Prior to that I was swinging and missing… trying and failing. All of sudden the pitcher hurled a fastball at me and BLAM over the fence. I had a breakthrough moment.

You can have your own breakthrough moment

Whenever you are learning anything or just starting out… you are really are crap at it. You know that feeling. It’s like the first time I attempted the guitar. I am no Eric Clapton or Steve Vai but I am getting there. However, I couldn’t hammer on or pull off (or rock for that matter) when I first began. I was struggling more and more each and every day then one … I had a breakthrough moment. I could play that song I couldn’t play without thinking about it. When you are learning something stick with it. Don’t just quit when it gets hard. Push against that until you ‘breakthrough it’ to the other side.

What stops the breakthrough moment

The breakthrough moment is stalled by thinking that you will never get there. Anything is possible to them that believe it is. What’s the difference between a winner and a loser. A winner loses and gets back up again… a loser quits and stays down. One of the best sayings I have heard is this: Never give up, never surrender. If you want to be good at something you have to practice but I can assure you that there comes a moment when you breakthrough.

As for me I am the baseball champion. I smashed a 9-1 game right after a 9-0 game the other day.  Am I unbeatable?  No.  But I am a lot harder to beat now, that I can smack you out of the game before the end of the first innings.  How did I get there?  By playing it until I could time my swing right and pitch at 152km/h.  That’s fast.  The same principle applies to anything you wish to achieve and it’s not that hard to get there.  You can become good at anything by having a winning attitude.  I can assure you that you will ‘breakthrough’ to a place when you become a champion… just like me.

A goad is a long sharp stick used to poke things. My whole life I have felt like one of these. A goad is a tool used mainly to make some unfortunate animal do something it doesn’t want to do. A poke here and a poke there… the animal unwillingly obeys. At times I have met people I played the goad with. These are the people that need a poke in the right direction… a sharp stab to the left and right.

Iron sharpens iron

Some times you have to be the person who stands up and says something to guide people in the right direction. I can tell you from personal experience… it isn’t always that easy. Often, very often in my line of work, you can make a suggestion but because of your status in the eyes of others you may not get through. The important thing in this case is not to push against the pressure but navigate around it. You really need to think through your position and take it from there.

When to goad when not to goad

Use your head and your gut to learn when to goad. People may not be ready to be pushed or shoved in the right direction. But, there is a time and a place to guide people to get them where they need to be. Excusitis can be paralysing … so what better way to help others overcoming by being a goad?

I am moving house at the moment so I am strapped for time so I thought I would write a brief post on how I learn. I have spoken about this before here and also more specifically about learning here. How do we really learn things? Instead of writing a post about it I would like you to do this test.

I turned out to be a tactile/kinesthetic [tag]learner[/tag] which according to this test means and I quote, “You learn best when physically engaged in a “hands on” activity. In the classroom, you benefit from a lab setting where you can manipulate materials to learn new information. You learn best when you can be physically active in the learning environment. You benefit from instructors who encourage in-class demonstrations, “hands on” student learning experiences, and field work outside the classroom.”

For me, this wasn’t too suprised because I hate giving tutorials without a physical component. I often find ways to demonstrate ways of saying something by doing it. My earliest memory is of me pulling apart my bike just to see how it fit together. I think I was five. That memory makes me realise that I was always a ‘doing’ and then a ‘learning’ person which in some circumstances may be harmful. However, that’s the way I am wired up. What about you?

This test showed me some of my cognitive biases as well. As an academic I think my theories should work and be useful (I am into ‘action’ [tag]research[/tag]). If they aren’t then what’s the point? All of my research is geared up to ‘pragmatic’ philosophy which means I am constantly applying my ideas as a basis of their validity. I have plenty of opinions which I can’t validate yet most of what I believe I have experienced to be the case. Go ahead and take this test you might be surprised at the results.