Why are you successful? What is the root cause of your success? Do you know? Have you ever thought about it seriously?
I could be wrong, but I think business success springs from the ability to learn faster than everyone around you. The ability to learn faster springs from writing down a personal learning process, working it like crazy and measuring results.
Here’s an example of how a few of my habits helped me learn faster today…
- Habit 1: Follow 20-25 blogs. Each month, pick 10 of those and read every post. Each month, drop the 5 least valuable and add 5 new ones.
- Habit 2: Identify colleagues and contacts who maybe, just maybe might be learning faster than me. Watch them, follow them, learn what they know …then learn just a bit more to stay ahead.
- Habit 3: Continuously reach outside the familiar to gain perspective from as wide a variety of fields as possible. Apply what you learn to your own career and business.
What I Learned Today:
- Aggressively seek the perspectives of colleagues and contacts from all the age groups represented in the work force. The life experiences of 20-somethings are different from 30-somethings, which are different from 40-somethings, which are different from 50-somethings which are different from 60-somethings which are different from 70-somethings. Each perspective has its own unique value. Lesson Source: Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook – May 5 post
- Todd Schnick of Intrepid learned something before I did. See his May 4 post and watch the video. While you’re there, watch the video in the upper left too. See Habit 2 above. (He’s a 40-something, I think… Did I just age you, Schnick?)
- TED is an outstanding source of knowledge and insight. Actually, I already knew this, and had to re-learn it today. Brian Hermanson, then Executive Director of the Cobb Symphony Orchestra turned me on to TED about 18 months ago. He’s a 20-something who’s going places as indicated by the fact that he has a new, bigger/badder/better job with the San Luis Obispo Symphony. See Habit 3 above.
Hey, you!!! Yeah you!!! I can learn faster than you. Wanna’ race?
Related posts:
Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial – The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
