Thursday, November 15, 2007

Lifelong Learning Habits

The lifelong learning video really reaffirmed my natural inclination towards lifelong learning. Whether I am consciously pursuing knowledge for its own sake, or simply being curious, I am most at home when learning new things. Sometimes this takes the form of concentrated study, sometimes it is a much more casual process. In either case, the easiest and hardest of the 7 and 1/2 habits seem to remain more or less the same for me:

Easiest to overcome- View problems as challenges... this is never an issue for me, since the problem is often the thing that spurs my desire to learn something. If I have trouble with a concept or tool, leaving quantum physics aside, I go out of my way to find out more about what causes the problem and how I can overcome it.

Hardest to overcome- Begin with the end in mind... In some cases this is not so much of an issue, but in others it can bog me down in my learning process. If I am clear about my end goal, I usually have no problem following through with the steps that will carry me there. However, many times I seek knowledge with little idea of what it goal it will ultimately help me achieve. I don't believe that learning for its own sake is necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead to a head full of arcane knowledge with no useful outlet.

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