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3 learning actions you can start today

The best way to learn is to make learning a habit –  something you do as part of your everyday life. There’s lots of ways to do this so we thought we’d share 3 learning actions we’ve taken this week – listening to a new podcast, experimenting with reflecting in a new way and reading about better ways for us to give and receive feedback. Each of these small actions took less than 30 mins, and most of them less than 10 mins.

Another useful way to make embed learning into your routine is find a learning buddy. You and your buddy could commit to sharing 1 thing you’ve learnt every day for a month via something like what’s app. You can keep each other motivated and the daily routine will kick start integrating learning into everything you do. This exercise often also demonstrates how much you learn without really thinking about it, so the process of taking 5 mins to reflect with help that learning to stick.

 

1- The unmistakeable creative podcast

We’ve become a fan of the unmistakable creative podcast not to be confused with the also good accidental creative podcast. My favourite quote from Liz Wiseman a guest on a recent episode ‘what you know isn’t as important as how quickly you can learn.’ Wiseman also shared her perspective that the best leaders ask brilliant questions and these questions are characterised by ones you don’t know the answer to, that make you uncomfortable and which you can’t let go. On the topic of podcasts in case you missed it Stylist have also published a great list of 50 podcasts for expanding your mind.

 

2- How’s your day? app

How’s your day app. I’ve been trying out this daily rating app this week. It’s very intuitive, fun to play with and has some good tips. I don’t think I will use it every week but it’s a useful prompt to reflect in a ‘real-time’ way rather than every 6 months as part of your review process at work.

 

3- The end of annual reviews

On the subject of reviews this is an excellent article from McKinsey on why and how organisations are phasing out the annual review process, thank goodness, and the future of performance management. There’s also an interesting section in the article on improving coaching by changing the nature of feedback into something that all employees continually give and receive in small doses. Organisations are focusing more on what can be improved in the future versus dissecting what happened in the past. At Amazing If we evaluate the effectiveness of our courses in a very similar way asking participants to tell us what went well (so we can keep doing it and do it more) and asking for one even better if (so we know what we can change in the future).

 

Happy learning.

Sarah & Helen #happycareer

Our Skills Sprint is designed to create lots more momentum for your learning, making it easier to learn a little every day.

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