Learning how I learn, and finding the right job
This is the second-half of a two-part blog on goals, learning, and jobs.
If you've read part I, you know that I've set my personal goals, and that I want my professional goals to be in service of those personal goals. Additionally, I want to find a job where I can do what I love. This second post is about finding those jobs, and I intend to do that by investigating my learning styles and preferences.
Skills
In order to understand how I learn, I list all the things I think I know how to do reasonably well; I'll call these things skills. This list is not limited to professional skills. I want the broadest list possible, with the intention of going through each skill, dissecting how I think I achieved some level of proficiency.
Made with wordclouds.com
Methods of learning
Let's take a look at boxing. I took my first boxing class in 2005, and have been going to boxing gyms on an off since then. Currently, I don't find much time to go to a boxing gym anymore (this, even before the COVID-19 pandemic). I'm happy if I get to go a few times per year. At some point during my training, I reached a level of self-declared proficiency that I could teach myself from readily available resources. Now, it's up to me how hard I want to work at boxing in order to improve. I'm very aware that if I want to reach any sort of competition-level-readiness, I would need to join a proper gym.
Let's go through another example: U.S. biofuels, listed as RFS in the word cloud above. This was an entirely new topic for me when I worked at an energy and policy consultancy. I started learning about biofuels by searching the world wide web for any seemingly relevant information. I downloaded, cleaned, and analyzed biofuels and biofuels-related data. I wrote research reports about biofuels. Eventually, I built a considerable network of relevant sources who would inform my analysis and understanding of biofuels.
After doing this for most of the skills listed above, I discern a couple of dimensions. The way that I learn some skills is often by doing the thing I'm trying to learn. Growth, at least for these skills, is related to the level of effort I'm willing to put into a craft.
I also realize that some things I cannot learn on my own; I need feedback. Concretely, I could learn about biofuels by doing the analysis that I needed to do for my job. To level up, however, I needed feedback from clients and my sources. Similarly with boxing, in order to level up, I'll need feedback from coaches, and more realistically, from opponents in the form of sparring or matches.
I simplify learning down to these two dimensions: effort and feedback. As you can see in the matrix above, these are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Benefits of learning
The next step is to ask myself why I wanted to learn these things in the first place. Did these skills provide a path towards external value, or did they provide intrinsic value?
Similar to the first matrix, I don't think these dimensions are necessarily mutually exclusive. A skill that can provide both intrinsic and external value, I label as pursue. Anything that provides mostly intrinsic value I call a personal benefit, whereas something high only on the external value I call a material benefit.
If you haven't noticed, I like matrices. Time for one more: method of learning vs. benefit.
At this point, I plot each of my skills on the matrix, and as I do this, I notice some groupings. All the way on the left are what I consider to be fitness-related skills, which implies there is very little direct impact on material gain from these skills. All the way to the right are what I call leadership skills. Having these specific leadership skills only serve to bolster my career.
Energizing vs. Draining: optimizing what I’ve learned
I really enjoy physical activity, like running or boxing. Despite the initial energy expenditure, I find these activities, and most exercising in general, highly energizing. On the other hand, there are some skills that can at times be draining, like networking, or some technical work. To simplify this step, I flag each broad grouping of skills as energizing or draining, and it's possible that one could be both.
I eventually gave up on my dreams of playing in the NBA and becoming any sort of professional athlete, despite my love of fitness and activity. At some point after formal education ended, I decided that I would play to my perceived strengths, and try to carve out a space for me based on my unique combination of relevant skills. Based on this exercise, I'm led to believe that the most satisfying jobs I could find would allow me to use my skills related to relationships, cognition, analytical, technical, and domain knowledge. According to my theory, finding such a job would mostly energize me, and provide both material and personal benefits.
Generalizing for you
I believe there is a general form of this framework that anyone could apply. Four broad questions to ask:
What do I know
How did I learn
Why did I learn
What did/does it cost me
It’s likely that you’ll have entirely different methods, benefits, categories, and costs.
I invite you all to try it out! And if you need help, please hit me up!