Lockdown Learning or Lifelong Learning?
Tanmay Vora
Social media is abuzz with stories of people learning new things to make the most of their time in isolation and distancing, which is great.
But I feel that learning cannot be an event confined to a few weeks of lockdown, especially when we are stressed about so many other things. Pandemic impacts everyone differently – many are working in front lines, lot of people are directly impacted, some are grieving silently and majority of us are just anxious about an uncertain future facing us all. We cannot expect everyone to be able to “make the most” of the lockdowns.
However, if you are resourceful, distancing and physical isolation just provides more space for our learning endeavors enabling us to connect with the self, pay attention to everything we care about, ask questions that feed our exploration, experiment and learn.
Therefore, I feel this may be a good time for us to:
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Cultivate deeper self-awareness
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Step down the treadmill of busyness and reflect upon our context
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Pick up areas we wish to explore in that context
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Learn specific targeted skills using online resources available
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Use the new-found specific skills to tinker, do and experiment
And when you pick new specific skills, do know that mastering them (specific and contextual meta skills) will take time and deliberate/consistent practice over longer period even after you get busy again with the ‘routine work’. It is important to carve out time for learning if you are intentional about it.
Learning is not an event, but a journey where we elevate our craft with each passing milestone.
20 Questions to Enable Learning
If you are not sure where to start, here are a few questions that will enable you to think about your learning and reignite your curiosity:
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What do I want to truly learn and why?
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How does it really work?
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Why does it work the way it does?
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What are the internal mechanics/details of this?
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What are the smaller parts of this skill? (sub-skills)
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What resources do I have at hand to explore?
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How I can practice deliberately and daily to learn more?
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How can my past experiences add to what I am learning today?
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How can I make this learning interesting and playful?
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How can I learn/do in small increments and make progress visible to others?
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What community or individuals online/offline will help me learn this better/faster?
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What assumptions am I making?
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What are my fixed beliefs that may be keeping me from learning the new thing?
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What are the other related topics that I may be overlooking?
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What did I experience/read recently? What did I learn from it?
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What truly inspires me?
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How can this help me bring about the change that I wish to see around me?
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How can I share my journey/lessons in a way that it helps others meaningfully?
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How can I combine all that I know now to create something of value to my organization/team/society/community?
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What should I do to elevate my craft?
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