The Art of Self-Directed Learning: 23 Tips for Giving Yourself an Unconventional Education by Boles Blake

Author:Boles, Blake [Boles, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tells Peak Press
Published: 2014-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Walking the mean streets of Portland, Oregon. (Photo: Trevor Parker)

When the program ended, everyone went home happy—and I spent a long time asking myself why I ran it.

My leadership retreat combined some of the most fun and interesting activities I’d picked up over my years of hanging around innovative summer camps, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, world travelers, and outdoor educators. I hadn’t thought about how they fit together before I ran the program, but there had to be a common thread. What was it?

An excerpt from a blog post by the author Seth Godin finally nailed the answer for me:

An organization filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical and driven people will always defeat the one that merely has talent. Every time .

The world is full of places that try to teach “talent,” school and college being the preeminent two. But the world has far fewer places that attempt to teach honesty, motivation, ethics, and the other traits Godin described.

Yet for many businesses and other enterprises, these traits ultimately matter more than talent. People get hired for professional skills and fired for personal skills.

That’s when I realized that what I was teaching at the leadership retreat was what educators call meta-learning : the personal skills that help you learn effectively in complex and unpredictable environments.

The leadership retreat wasn’t really about sleeping under a tarp or finding rideshares or learning biology or Kendo: it was about building resourcefulness, creativity, self-regulation, self-motivation, conscientiousness, and focus. It was about greeting a stranger, learning from a defeat, arguing one’s case, and telling a good story. Meta-learning was the thread that connected all of my own formative educational experiences, and I was trying to pass that thread along.

The best teachers, mentors, and organizations don’t just pour information into your head; they teach the meta-learning skills that help you learn how to learn. To find them, look for anyone who will teach you how to:

give and take feedback

speak in front of people

tell a powerful story

write something that people actually want to read

lead a group

follow in a group

make a decent movie, website, or photograph

live on a budget

spot logical fallacies in an argument

meet and converse with anyone

set a goal and follow through on it

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