It’s Important to Learn How to Learn
This one is especially applicable to folks who have jobs that require the same set of skills on a daily basis. When was the last time that you had to learn something new, from scratch? For a lot of people, that amount of time can be measured in terms of years or decades. In a world like ours, which is constantly changing, learning how to learn is a highly valuable skill that I think we should all embrace.
There are easily several thousand human lifetimes of knowledge out there in the world, and I seriously doubt that most of us can make a dent in learning all of it even if we spent all day, every day, for the rest of our lives, reading and memorizing everything we can. Instead, we have to learn how to make the most out of the limited knowledge, skills, and experiences that we have while adding new ones to our repertoire. For a lot of folks, this is a deeply uncomfortable experience, and, as with anything new or unknown, is likely to be that way. But, if you get used to learning new things, that discomfort can seriously lessen over time, and you’ll have the opportunity to expand and adapt your set of knowledge more flexibly over time.
Being an Amateur Keeps you Humble
For most mid-career professionals, the basics of their day-to-day jobs feel easy. After all, you can do it while pretty much on autopilot. That feeling is a learned one, but we forget that over the years. If you ever begin to feel like you’re truly the master of everything you need to know, I recommend trying something new.
For example, you might watch a musical performance and think to yourself “I could do that, easy.” If that’s the case, and you have no musical training, I would challenge you, within a week, to pick up a guitar and learn Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. After a week of consistent practice and some sore fingers, I would imagine that you would have a new appreciation for artists that you had previously written off as playing music that is easy.
Getting periodic reminders about the learning curve for sets of skills will not only make you humble, but it will also probably make you a lot more patient with people in your chosen fields who are amateurs now like you once were.