There was a caveman who lived in a forest all by himself. He was leading a decent life and was content with whatever he had and whatever he could find to eat. Until one day, an explorer came by his cave and showed him a mobile phone. The caveman was initially scared then astonished and then started using it and eventually he started loving it. He watched videos on how he could cut tress efficiently, videos on how he could hunt better and he even learnt the concept of preserving food for the rainy days and finally returned the phone to the explorer as they said their goodbyes.
The caveman started doing the things the way he had learnt from the videos. The days passed and turned into week, the weeks became months and eventually months became years. After around thirty years, the same explorer was going through the same exact forest. Suddenly he heard a yell from the distance, when the explorer looked around he was surprised to see the same caveman running towards him and when they finally met, the caveman started thanking the explorer for saving his life. The explorer confused, asked the caveman how he could have saved the caveman’s life when they did not even meet for thirty years.
The caveman explained, before he met the explorer all he could do was live on a daily basis. He would hunt everyday, eat what he could hunt and sleep with an empty stomach on the days he could not. But after watching the videos thirty years earlier, he started to hunt better, he started to use wood and fire to his advantage, he started to store food better which he could use in rainy days and because of all this, he started to live a healthy life and his lifespan increased. His forefathers had not learnt the skills he learnt and due to harsh weather, hunger and illness their average lifespan was only only around thirty years, whereas he is now forty seven and still strong to live another twenty odd years easily. Had he not watched the videos he could have still learnt them from his experience or experiments however it would have taken years or even generations to learn them.
The story is my imaginary creation but the relevance and the moral of it is real and timeless. This is how we all are, this is how the human kind has progressed. One thing that sets us apart from all the other creatures is our ability to learn and implement those learnings quickly.
In today’s fast paced and ever changing world all of us are busy, busy with our jobs, busy with our scholastic work, busy with our daily chores and somewhere between all these, we have let go our ability to keep learning consciously, some think they have learnt everything there is to learn or worse yet, some think only they know all the right things and everyone else is in some way inferior or less experienced than them.
The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, the willingness to learn is a choice. Brian Herbert
Learning can happen in different forms like reading, reflecting, observing, experiencing, listening, watching and the list can go on but the point is, we have to continuously keep learning no matter who we are, what we do or what stage of our lives we are in and we have to use the best effective means to do it.
If I am someone who spends a lot of time watching videos which don’t serve me in any way, I can start spending at least 10% of that time watching some quality videos on the new skill I always wanted to acquire. If I am someone who is thinking of taking up something which can help me get in good shape and I don’t like the idea of going to the gym everyday, I can enrol in a sport training which I like and still achieve my objective while also acquiring a new skill.
Some things can be learnt only through experiences and this statement while true, has been used by many of us to avoid learning anything at all. We resist learning through books or people. You tell them to pick up a book or a biography or watch a documentary and they say they rather deal with life themselves and learn that way. The truth is, while the statement itself is true and life teaches us a lot of lessons in its on way, the idea to pick up a book or watch a documentary is to learn from the other individual and his mistakes to do the things that must be done and avoid the things to be avoided. Let’s say, I read Steve Jobs’s biography I would not only do a crash course on how to become great in whatever I am trying to build but also I will learn what one must not do to be a good leader. If I listen to a podcast where the guest is Naval Ravikant or Ryan Holiday, I will not only learn the philosophical view of life but also will learn the effective ways to manage time, energy and get better at relationships.
Information is everywhere but its meaning is created by the observer that interprets it. Meaning is relative and there is no objective, over-arching meaning.” Naval Ravikant
A lot of times, it also takes courage to challenge what we have already learnt. In his best selling book “Think Again” Adam Grant writes “We all have blind spots in our knowledge and opinions. The bad news is that they can leave us blind to our blindness, which gives us false confidence in our judgment and prevents us from rethinking. The good news is that with the right kind of confidence, we can learn to see ourselves more clearly and update our views. In driver’s training we were taught to identify our visual blind spots and eliminate them with the help of mirrors and sensors. In life, since our minds don’t come equipped with those tools, we need to learn to recognize our cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly.”
Finally, let us get back to our caveman (who was patiently waiting until now)
He could have remained scared and could have chosen not to learn new skills but to his credit, he did.
He could have chosen to do the things the way he and his ancestors always did, but he changed and changed for better.
He could have chosen to stick to his outdated learnings, but fortunately he challenged them and got new perspective on the things he had been doing for long.
He could have chosen to die young like all his ancestors, but he chose to live healthier and longer than all of them.
Be Great!
Praveen.
Praveen's Blog 