Unlearning 101

Unlearning the Escalator

Unlearning is simple. Sometimes, as this hilarious video demonstrates, it is as easy as walking. Other times, however, it requires a little more creativity. For a wonderful example of how society might want to unlearn our heavy reliance on the escalator, I invite you to watch this short video:

The Importance of Unlearning: A Matter of Life or Death?

I have often said that unlearning can be a matter of life or death (here, here and here) and I mean it. To add to my growing body of evidence, I submit this article from the Wall Street Journal. The article reports that hospitals can  dramatically lower the number of infections which strike patients by following a simple five-step checklist.

The matter is not inconsequential because unnecessary infections kill an estimated 80,000 patients every year! Given this astounding number, a person might rightfully think that doctors and nurses would be doing everything in their power to follow the simple checklist.

Well, you would be wrong. Again, according to the article, three years after the publication of the checklist its use remains limited. All the while thousands of patients are unnecessarily dying!

Why? One answer is because nurses don't believe it is "their job" to "police" doctors who are not following the checklist. The other problem is that doctors don't like being "second-guessed" by nurses because "it will make [them] look like [they] don't know something."

The nurses who don't believe it is their "job" need to unlearn their job description and redefine it so that the patients well-being (and not their own well-being) becomes the centerpiece of their job definition. And the doctors who don't like being second-guessed need to understand two things: First, it is OK to admit that you don't know everything (in fact this is the first step down the path of unlearning); and, second, they need to realize that unlearning requires them to check their ego.

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Unlearning 101L Lesson #1: You Don't Know What You Don't Know

Unlearn Strategy: Become Uncomfortable in Your Own Skin

“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

– Juan Ramon Jimenez, 1956 Nobel Prize winner for literature.

 

Unlearning isn’t easy. As with many difficult journeys, it helps to begin small. One effective strategy is to develop a modest, easy-to-implement, unlearning habit. In my case, whenever I think I may be in need of unlearning I fold my hands the opposite way.

 

To demonstrate, I’ll ask you to fold your hands as if you were in prayer. There are only two ways to do this. You can either place your left thumb and forefinger over your right thumb and forefinger or vice versa. Regardless of which way you do it, most people religiously -- pardon the pun -- do it one way or the other.

 

Now take a moment and fold your hands in the opposite manner. (Go ahead. I’ll wait.) It feels quite different, doesn’t it -- almost unnatural? Of course, it isn’t.

 

Unlearning can also feel unnatural in the beginning but really it is just a different way of thinking about learning.

 

Therefore, whenever you feel you may be in need of unlearning I encourage you to fold your hands oppositely. Alternatively, you may also choose to fold your arms the opposite way. Personally, I’m fond of this method because when people are closed to an idea or a person’s line of argument they will often defiantly fold their arms against their chest. By actively unfolding your arms and refolding them in an opposite manner, it can serve as a powerful physiological reminder of the importance of being open to unlearning.

 

In keeping with this spirit of folding, I’d like to highlight another unlearning folding exercise. How many times can you fold a piece  of paper in half? Conventional wisdom holds that a strong person can do it only 7 times – at which point the paper gets too thick to fold.

 

In January 2002, Britney Gallivan, in an attempt to solve an extra credit problem for her high school math class, became the first person in the world to fold a piece of paper nine times. For good measure she then went on to fold a piece of paper a tenth, eleventh and twelfth time.

 

Gallivan did so by questioning everything. First, she began by using ultra-thin toilet paper. Next, she used a very long strip of paper (about the length of six city blocks) and, lastly, she didn’t limit herself to folding the paper precisely in half after every fold. Instead, she sometimes folded the paper in different lengths and directions. (See photo). A More detailed explanation can be found in her book, How to Fold Paper in Half Twelve Times: An “Impossible” Challenge Solved and Explained.

 

In this same way, unlearning also requires us to fold common problems in new, different and innovative ways.

 

Homework Assignment #4: Think of a problem that has been vexing you for some time. Challenge three basic or underlying assumptions about that problem and then develop new tools or approaches to tackle the problem.

 

Extra credit: To demonstrate your understanding of exponential growth, estimate how tall a piece of paper would grow if it could be folded 50 times. (Answer: Approximately 100 million kilometers – or 62 million miles).

To Be Persuasive, Unlearn

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mark Bowden has an excellent commentary entitled "The lost art of influence." At one point he writes, "Being persuasive is hard, because it demands you consider that you might be wrong. To refute opposing points of view capably (and winningly) you must first really hear opposing points of view."

Admitting that you might be wrong and really listening -- the two traits (or skills) are also integral components of unlearning. Therefore, I'd argue, that if you want to enhance your skills of persuasion it would also behoove you to enhance your unlearning skills. 

Of course, I'm open to your ideas and I promise I'll really listen if you disagree with me.

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Unlearn Your Intuition (Sometimes)

Recently, I gave two presentations on the topic of my latest book, Jump the Curve, at a State Managers Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I discussed a great many topics, but I would like to highlight just one: “Embracing counter-intuitive findings.”

Today, a great many people, including education, public health and law enforcement officials are certain as a result of years on the job that they know what works and what doesn’t work. For instance, an education official might be convinced that vouchers and charter school don’t work; a public health worker might lay claim to knowing which programs are most effective; and many law enforcement officials are positive that stronger criminal penalties lead to lower recidivism rates.

Over time, many of these personal opinions have morphed into “conventional wisdom” and, worse, because many of these state officials have risen to prominent places in the state bureaucracy this “conventional wisdom” has been adopted as de facto state policy.

As a result of exponential advances in the amount of information that is now being collected as well as the vast improvement in algorithms, however, savvy computer scientists and social scientists are now discovering some surprising things. I am a big fan of Ian Ayres excellent book, Super Crunchers, and throughout it he systematically demonstrates how new insights gleened from algorithms are forcing educators, public health and law enforcement officials (and many, many others) to revisited some of their most basic assumptions.

For instance, educators are learning how different policies effect different populations in different ways. The same is true for numerous other public policies. For too long it has been too easy to simply adopt a black-and-white, one-size-fits-all view of the world. There is now so much information available and it is being “crunched” in so many different ways that it is no longer sufficient to rely on intuition or “gut feeling.” Unless you can back up your adherence to “conventional wisdom” with hard facts, my recommendation is that you should “crunch” your assumptions against the data because there is a solid chance you might have to unlearn your intuition.

To Unlearn: Consider Tying Yourself Down Like Odysseus

You are about to make an important hiring decision and it is almost time for the all-important face-to-face interview. If you could only ask one of the following ten questions, which would you choose:

1.   Why should I hire you?

2.   What do you see yourself doing five years from now?

3.   What do you consider to be your greatest strengths and weaknesses?

4.   How would you describe yourself?

5.   What college subject did you like the best and the least?

6.   What do you know about our company?

7.   Why did you decide to seek a job with our company?

8.   Why did you leave your last job?

9.   What do you want to earn five years from now?

10.  What do you really want to do in life?

The answer according to Professor Allen Huffcutt -- who has spent years researching the topic -- is Question #6. The reason is because it is a fair reflection of the amount of time the interviewee has spent researching your company.

It is not, however, the best question.

Ironically and, somewhat counter-intuitively, the best question is no question at all. The reason is because many people believe they are better judges of character than they actually are. The solution is avoid face-to-face interviews altogether and select candidates on the basis of more objective criteria, including work samples, job-knowledge tests, peer-ratings of past job performance or even a simple intelligence test.

If you feel an interview is still absolutely necessary, it is suggested that the interview be used only after you have narrowed the field of candidates (using more objective criteria). The interview can then be used to “sell” the best candidate on taking the job.

To understand just how difficult it is to unlearn the idea of the importance of the interview, Huffcutt was asked (when being interviewed for the book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior) whether his own department had changed its hiring procedures based on his research, he responded, “No … I’ve made some suggestions on how we can do better on interviews, but so far they haven’t been taken.”

Why? Because most people believe, in spite of strong evidence to the contrary, that they are far better judges of character than they are in reality. It is something worth unlearning before your company makes its next important hiring decision. If necessary you may even want your staff to tie you down like Odysseus so you can avoid the Siren song in your own mind telling you that "you are an excellent gauge of character."

(For related information, read this article in Fast Company entitled “Hold the Interview: Why it may be wiser to hire people without meeting them.”)

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Unlearning Science

In relative terms, the field of plate tectonics is still fairly new—becoming widely accepted only in the mid-1960’s. The idea that massive continents could have drifted apart over millions of years was, however, first expounded on by an amateur American geologist, Frank Bursley, in 1908. Bursley was struck by how the shape between the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America looked as though they could fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and suggested the movement of the continents might also explain the formation of mountain ranges. Bursley provided little evidence and his idea was soon—and easily—dismissed by the scientific establishment who had little time for the “strange” theories from amateurs.

A few years later Bursley’s idea was picked up by a German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who was disturbed by the many animal and fossil anomalies which didn’t fit conveniently into the day’s existing theory of how the earth was formed. Again, it was dismissed. This time because the idea came from an outsider—a meteorologist.

And what precisely was the leading theory used by geologists to explain how the exact same fossils of animals and plants could have existed on the opposite sides of different oceans? The answer was “land bridges”—mysterious strips of land, for which no evidence existed, but miraculously allowed animals to peacefully and successfully meander thousands of miles across vast expanses of the world’s oceans.

For example, when an ancient horse named Hipparion was found to have lived in both Florida and France, geologists drew a land bridge across the Atlantic Ocean to explain away this disturbing discrepancy. Soon, a variety of other land bridges begun to spring up and populate the world of geological science in order to explain everything from how tapirs existed in both Southeast Asia and South America at the same time to how snails could turn up in both Scandinavia and New England.

Surprisingly, and in the face of a complete and utter lack of evidence, land bridges remained the geological orthodoxy for the next 50 years. In 1944, a British geologist, Arthur Holmes, wrote a book entitled Principles of Physical Geology elaborating on Wegner’s theory but it was dismissed by one reviewer who even had the temerity to warn that Holmes presented his arguments so coherently that they might actually be believed by students! In 1955, no less a figure than the esteemed Albert Einstein wrote a ringing endorsement for a book which all but ridiculed the ideas of Wegener and Holmes.

And in 1964, in the face of mounting evidence, a Canadian geologist by the name of Lawrence Morley wrote a paper explaining how magnetic studies of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean were spreading in the exact motion prescribed by the theory of “continental drift.” Morley’s paper was abruptly and rudely dismissed by the editor of the prestigious Journal of Geophysical Research with this now infamous note: “Such speculations make interesting talk at cocktail, but it is not the sort of thing that ought to be published under serious scientific aegis.”

Later that year at a conference of the Royal Society the tide finally began to turn but it wasn’t until 1968 when the same publication, which had rejected Morley’s paper only four years earlier, published the article which gave the science of plate tectonics its name.

The story serves as a wonderful reminder to those scientists who are quick to dismiss ideas from amateurs, outsiders, and unconventional thinkers. To this end, I invite you to watch this 60 Minutes segment on “Cold Fusion” and pay special attention to the outright dismissal of the idea by some of today’s leading experts. Could they be wrong? I don’t purport to know the answer but history suggests that these scientific experts should at least entertain the notion that they might be wrong.

The same is true of the theories of Aubrey de Grey, an outsider from the field of computer science, who is strongly challenging today’s conventional wisdom on the “science of aging.”

Unlearning is Simple

Sometimes all you need to do in order to unlearn is to acknowledge that there is a different way of reaching your goal. To better illustrate this obvious point, I invite you to watch this hilarious 90-second video:

Unlearning Cable TV

Fellow author and change agent, Seth Godin, has an excellent post today entitled "The problem with cable news thinking" in which he outlines 12 ways cable television amplifies the worst elements of emotional reaction. After reviewing the list, it appears to me that all are things the cable industry would do well to unlearn; but 5, in particular, are also things that manyof us should seek to unlearn in other aspects of our lives:

1. Unwillingness to reverse course and change one's mind

2. Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform

3. Confusing opinion with the truth

4. Revising facts to fit a point of view

5. Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time

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A Small Step Down the Path of Unlearning

This past Sunday I completed the Twin Cities Marathon and achieved my goal of qualifying for the 2010 Boston Marathon. As I mentioned last month, however, I am serious about this idea of "Unlearning the Running Rules." Today, I purchased my first pair of Vibram FiveFinger's -- the "barefoot alternative" -- and went for a modest two mile run. It went quite well.

I intend to gradually build up my mileage up and then, if all goes according to plan, run in the 2010 Boston Marathon using the Vibram's. 

Unlearning is not an easy process. Nor is it without risks. But, as with so many things, it must begin with a small step and today I took my first small step toward unlearning the running shoe.

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