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Taking Responsibility for your Learning
Wade Anderson
August 21, 2024
Taking Responsibility for your Learning
I read a blog article today that defined a “self-directed learner.”
A self-directed learner is a person who takes responsibility for their education, for their attainment of knowledge, and their development of mastery. They are capable of determining not only what they want to learn; they can determine what they need to learn.
They can recognize gaps in their knowledge and then develop plans to narrow the gaps. Finally, they execute on those plans and acquire the missing knowledge.
This idea that you need to take responsibility for your education really resonates with me.
I try and approach this in my career. I’m 10 years into a 35+ year career so learning and development is a great investment. I work to figure out areas I need to develop more as an entrepreneur then I try and design a learning program to address those areas.
One difficulty for me is staying motivated through a learning program. Formal school or paid online courses are strong in this area. Students pay money to learn, which can pull them through the ups and downs of motivation to stick with it.
A second difficulty is making my learning stick. I read books and listen to podcasts but to what end? I pick up a nugget here or a nugget there, but is this actually helping me get better at my job?
This is why I’ve got enamored by learning science. There’s well researched ways to make learning stick (retrieval practice and spaced repetition).
I’m starting to incorporate these ideas in my personal study. I quiz myself daily on something I learned the previous day using ChatGPT. I use a simple prompt like:
“I’ve been reading [X]. Give me a quiz question on this and then grade me on the answer.”
It works but it’s clunky. There’s room for improvement with software automating more of the process for me.
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