Max Ong Zong Bao
Posted on August 19, 2020
The original post was on Learn, Unlearn & Relearn - Reading Time: 4 Mins and cover image by Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash
Introduction
Have you ever you picked up a book to read after you had left school? No, I'm not referring to the programming books like Clean Code or Pragmatic Programmer. Which to be fair, it is a classic for a developer, regardless of your experience level. Which reminds me of a discussion with a developer. Who swears against people paying for developer courses to upgrade their knowledge and skills.
Which they find it ridiculous to pay for that amount, which they could get the same quality of content from other content providers that provide for free, Google or from books. Which is a cheaper alternative than paying for a course. So I feel that he might not be the right customer for it because of the neglect of having something being there. While you transform from one person to another. Which he/she is unwilling to pay as people's perception of value is different. Depending on how they weight it on namely time, money or safety.
Growth Mindset
So going back to my question of have you ever cracked open a book after you had left school. If you did, congrats I believe you are in the same ranks of having the growth mindset.
If not my question is why? What made you feel that way? Is it because you are sick and tired of learning? After cramping and studying for exams in the formative years of your life? If that's the case, it might be that you did not experience the joy & excitement for learning.
For me, I start to appreciate the joy of learning. Because the more you learn to apply in real-world situations. It allows you to gain confidence and tackle projects that might be both interesting and fills yourself with excitement. While also changing your beliefs or perception of the world due to what you had learned from it.
Talent Stacking
In layman terms, talent stacking allows you to be a jack of all trades and specialist at the same time. By integrating and blending your knowledge into something. Which usually results in different or emerging jobs that you get to own the niche and land grab it before anyone notices it. Like for the example in the developer world like Developer Advocate & DevOps Engineer are some of the examples of talent stacking.
Take being a Data Scientist, which has been labelled as a sexy job. This resulted in tons of people in a gold rush for it. But if you know history, the people who make the most money are either the people who are the first movers. Who moves into it by taking all the advantage before the crowds come in or the person who is the late movers who learn and provides the logistics, support, knowledge to help this gold rush.
This is why learning to talent stack, allows you to land grab of an untapped market. Which you start to become a goto person. Who does the strategic level of work, teaching & offering your knowledge, experience & insights to improve the community as a whole.
Learn While Doing
I love to learn by doing, which is probably comes from me. Who likes to work with my hands due to my trade school education. According to the cone of experience, you learn alot more from doing real-world work and reflection of the activities in what you had done. This can be quite scary especially you had not done it before.
By doing this, you turn it into a crystallised form. Which improve your processes, knowledge, experience or know your boundaries or get the right people to help you to fill the gaps you lack.
The other is through continuously playing games with a focus on specific objectives. To cultivate the mindset, philosophy, practices and mental models. Which can be translated into real-world situations like pair programming on Code Katas and $5 Challenge are some of those examples that cultivate it.
Conclusion
You might wonder why I would talk about these things and what does it has to do with "Learn, Unlearn & Relearn". Well, this is actually how a person transforms their own self and being nimble to take on the unknown. Instead of being stagnant and hitting a runt of not knowing what to do.
Certain employers like Netflix value these traits of the agility. Which they transform themselves as leaders. Who can lead organizational transformation that is perfectly masked as digital transformation or DevOps culture.
I'm not joking if you look at the business model of Netflix. Which they adapt & morph their organisation can break a company while reinventing themselves.
From the get-go, they had started to hire people with the trait to Learn, Unlearn & Relearn and who can adapt to the future in what they see. Due to covid19 to burn companies to be respectful of it and be prepared for a rebound of the economy.
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Reference
Posted on August 19, 2020
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