We are taught many things over the course of our life. But never are we taught how to learn.
Learning is a skill of its own accord.
Structuring your learning process gives you a massive edge over others in the sense that you know exactly what you are doing and why. It's the difference between using a shotgun and an assault rifle — in the short-range both work, but in the longer-range one is definitely better.
Kolb's Cycle
The kolbs cycle is formed of 4 steps -
Concrete Experience (Act)
Participate and experience an action first hand
Abstract Conceptualization (Ideate)
Assimilate the knowledge you have gained from experience and form an idea about it
Active Experimentation (Plan)
Make a plan based on your idea and then put your modified knowledge into practice.
Reflective Observation (Reflect)
Step out of the experience — analyze the process, ask questions, contemplate and take stock.
Reflective observation is the most important and often ignored part of this whole cycle.
Example of how to use this?
Think that you are working on a particular software application.
You learn about a few refactoring techniques in order to improve the quality of the codebase.(Ideate)
You look at a certain section that seems like a good place to apply the refactoring technique and plan out how to apply it (Plan)
You take a step back and think through if that is really required — the team has been working fine with that, will adding a new refactoring technique add complexity? (Reflect)
You perform the refactoring technique (Act)
What did you learn? checkout a few other refactorings now and see if an alternative would have been better (Ideate)
Look at other sections you had considered refactoring. How would you go about refactoring them now? (Plan)
Step back again and see if the whole thing makes sense now. Did the earlier refactor give any benefit? How is it working with the rest of the team? (Reflect)
Apply the refactoring to other sections.(Act)
As you can see, the reflection stage is one of the most important steps because you learn whether you are going about it the right way.
Otherwise, you run the risk of learning something that might be counterproductive or even just ineffective.
So, how can we structure our reflection stage in more details?
For this, we can use Gibbs Reflective Cycle
Gibbs Reflective Cycle
The Gibbs reflective cycle breaks down the reflection stage into 6 separate things to track — Track these down in the form of notes when you are doing this step
Description
What happened, when it happened, where it happened, how it happened, what was your role in it
Feelings
What was going on your mind at that time
Emotions
Was it good or bad?
Analysis
Making sense of the situation
Conclusion
What was done? What could have been done differently
Action Plan
Changes you intend to make next time
Write all of these down in a document every time you pass through the reflection stage. Read through them at the end of a few cycles to understand what your progress was like.
Feedback
Another interesting approach to learning is by getting feedback. Feedback is tricky to get unless you have a mentor/manager/coworkers — so this step has a pre-requisite.
Ideally, anyone can give you feedback.
When taking feedback from someone, follow the following set of rules to make the most of it -
Listen
listen to the speaker without interrupting. Don't cut in even if you don't agree with what is being said.
Acknowledge
the person giving the feedback is taking out extra time to give it to you. You might not agree with it but still, you must respect the person point of view.
Probe
Try to go deeper to understand what was said if you are unsure. Clear your doubts, instead of misunderstanding a message
Appreciate
Thank the feedback giver for thanking them for their time and effort they have put in. It will encourage them to be forthcoming with their inputs in the future.
Summarize
Summarize what you have understood in your own words. This will help both you and the feedback giver to be on the same page about the message.
Getting good regular feedback is incredible for your skill development and I highly recommend it.
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Thanks for this article.