Learn, Unlearn and Relearn

1 Comment

1. 

   enzzzoo (Post author)

   09/12/2012 at 12:23 am

   Yes, great statement!!

   People that say that they “know” because they learned “it” 10, 20, 30 years ago are living in the dark and risk waking up one morning realizing that, in reality, they know nothing.

   Learning is the first step but you must be prepared to accept that the world evolves and the only way to keep up with change is to unlearn. Unlearning makes relearning easier because it makes room for new experiences. Trying to shoehorn new knowledge with outdated notions is counterproductive. When you buy new shoes you don’t put them on over old shoes, do you?

   Small, constant updates are a good way to avoid complete unlearning, especially with technology and language. If you wait too long though, trying to update your knowledge base will only cause confusion. For the geeks amongst you let’s put it in a tech context. If a program you have been using for years has continuous upgrades then you easily keep up with the changes and will probably use the new features. If, on the other hand, you never upgrade and hope to jump from version 1 to version 10 then you will be totally lost. You have to completely forget (let go of ) version 1 and approach version 10 as if you never used the program in your life.

   Unlearning is hard because you don’t always want to let go of what makes you feel comfortable. Just approach it like any purging process, starting with a clean slate will make new knowledge a replenishment that can only be positive for you and your career.

   Now let’s go and do some early Spring cleaning. 🙂