Your personal development coach

Mine for Deeper Gold

As a human being, you have the ability to see deeper patterns and messages – themes, trends and insights – in learning resources and experiences. Keep developing this ability! Use it when you learn. As a SMART learner, don’t only settle for what is on the surface.

Here are some important things you can do to have a deeper learning experience:

Discover the structure embedded in the resource or experience. Imagine a tree. What are the main information limbs that will hold the details (smaller branches, twigs and leaves)?

  • Look for an idea structure to hang your learning on – find the main points first. Then you can chunk your learning into these categories.
  • Using the structure that is in your resource will help neutralize your own biases because it will work against your tendency to confirm what you already believe (you must pay attention to what the expert, speaker, author, teacher is saying). Remember the confirmation bias – it is easier for you to trust what you already know and agree with. Some of the main ideas that your learning resource presents will probably be new for you and may not confirm what you already know.
    • In fact, much of learning today will be something new – that’s what makes it “learning.”

Decide where the “gold” you need may be buried.

  • Ask yourself: “What seems to be important to the person who organized this book, talk, course, game, experience?”
  • Lift up to 10,000 feet. Ask yourself where this idea or method fits historically and where – broadly -- it applies today.
  • Watch for your own ideas and methods that what you are learning may replace or enhance.
  • Wonder about what history and past discoveries and ways of thinking teach about this topic.
  • Wonder -- if you put what you learn into practice, what are the long term implications for you and others?

Be a devil’s advocate.

  • Look for other perspectives – or at least be aware that what you are learning represents one viewpoint or approach to a skill or habit.
  • If you have done your due diligence, you know how reliable and credible your resource is – and how open you can be to new thinking. Trusted resources have already done some of this work of finding the best information and they also are continually learning and evolving their views based on new information.

Convert the information into implications for your learning.

  • Take SMART Notes to translate others’ ideas and information it into what YOU want to remember, skills you will focus on, attitudes or beliefs to change, and creative ideas that occur to you because you are in a learning space.
  • As you turn what you read, hear, experience into implications for you, you will personalize your learning and make it more memorable. This prepares your brain to store the information in your long-term memory for later use.
  • As a SMART Learner, be a deep learner. Use the magnificent information processing power of your 90 billion neurons and 1,000 trillion brain connections to find the gold – wherever it is buried.

Looking for buried gold – the knowledge ,skill, attitude and creative implications -- is also terrific for concentration. It can launch you into that wonderful and highly efficient learning state of flow.