On lifelong learning
Lifelong learning is a hard sell to young adults that have just left school, now more than ever.
The promise of schooling is that the better we perform, the greater chance we have at success in adulthood. Our whole pre-adult life is building up to that graduation date. For years we put all of our energy and mental strength toward it, and performing our best.
Graduation day comes, and we are now met by a world in which AI tools can, in seconds, produce a flawless response to the final exam paper we've just spent years preparing for. Why should we learn anything anymore, when we have all the information we could ever want in our pocket? We could be forgiven for thinking that all that learning was wasted time, and deflated by the prospect of competing for jobs with something a billion times more efficient at doing what school has wired you for - remembering and regurgitating information.
Despite this, in our 20s and 30s we seem to be parting with their money faster than ever for self-help books, online courses, micro-learning apps, and wearable technology to help us learn more about what is going on inside ourselves.
As humans, we tend to make decisions based on how we are feeling. It seems no coincidence that this this demand for voluntary learning appears to coincide with a time in which we are more in debt than ever, young people struggle to afford their own homes, mental health issues are rising, the world is burning, and every corner of the planet is littered with plastic. Most of us want to do something to fix these challenges, ourselves, and the world in which we live.
Also as humans, we have a track record of responding too late. We tend to buy the books, courses, apps, and technology after we have the problems, and feel an internal crisis. It only makes it harder to fix; learning something new or implementing change whilst already having the problem.
In life we never know what opportunities or challenges are coming down the road. All we can do is try to put ourselves in the best position to make good decisions when they come around. This might mean learning some strategies to deal with problems that never come to us. Learning is never time wasted, especially when we are strengthening our mental models. We are building the foundations to make better decisions, and help others.
This requires a commitment to continuous lifelong learning. It is the best investment you could ever make.