Unlearning 101

Don't Play Russian Roulette With Your Future: Unlearn!

The first chapter of my new book, Higher Unlearning: 39 Post-Requisite Lessons for Achieving a Successful Future, is entitled “Unlearn or Die.” To better appreciate why unlearning will be such a critical skill in the future, I’d like to share this paragraph from Josh Linkner’s outstanding article, Vu Deja: Tricking Yourself Into Looking At Problems With a Fresh Perspective:

The way you solved a customer issue or launched a product in the past may have worked great, but the world isn’t standing still. Quite the opposite–every night when we go to bed and wake up the next day, things have changed. Those who get stuck in the past and lean on the golden ways of a time gone by are playing Russian roulette with their future.

In other words, unlearn or die!

If you’d like some concrete examples of how to look at a problem from a fresh perspective, my new book (also available as an e-book) has plenty of examples along the lines of this old post: 5 Ways to Make the Familiar Strange.

 

Unlearning Learning

I once read a wonderful quote that went something to the affect of this: "The great scandal of education is that every time you teach a child something you deprive them of the opportunity to discover it for themselves."

According to this new fascinating study, school children can learn complex subjects on their own. More interesting still, three months after the students had taught themselves they had better recall of the information which they had taught themselves.

I'm not suggesting that teachers are irrelevant but I do believe a great many need to unlearn what they think they know about learning--and teaching.

For further proof that children can learn on their own, watch this insightful TED talk by Sugata Mitra on Child-driven education.

Related Posts by Jack Uldrich on unlearning and education:

Teach Unlearning in Kindergarten

10 Things Worthy of Teaching in Kindergarten

Please, Let's Stop Unlearning Creativity

 

To Grow: Unlearn

If you can unlearn your ideas about what is possible, you can grow almost anywhere.

Related Posts

The Tree of Unlearning

A Plant Whose Virtue Has Yet to Be Discovered

Own the White Space

As humans we like to believe we're good at seeing the whole picture. But, as I suggested in this piece, most of us are not.

This is particularly true in business. Most managers focus relentlessly on serving the customer, making incremental improvements to core product or services, or finding yet another margin-saving efficiency.

There is nothing wrong with any of these things (in fact they are important) but who in your company is responsible for seeing "new market spaces"? Who owns the "white space" -- the space where your company isn't yet operating but, with a little foresight or imagination, could be?

As Gary Hamel recounts in his excellent book, The Future of Management, in the late 1990s, IBM did exactly this and by unlearning many of its core management principles, it has been able "to identify disruptive technologies, industry trends, and embryonic markets, and transform them into billion-dollar opportunities." (Over $25 billion and counting to be precise.)

More is Not Always Best

If you are a manager and want to position your company or organization to succeed in the future, I'd suggest changing the normal managerial question of "How do I get more out of my employees?" to "How do I get the best out of my employees?"

Why? because passion, energy, creativity and innovation aren't easily reflected in quarterly earnings statements but they do show up in the long-run.

Don't Assume You More Than You Do

"... he has persuaded me that we can solve many of our problems as long as we don't assume that we know more than we do."

So concludes John Horgan in his insightful review of David Deutsch's new book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Will Transform the World.

I not only agree with the thinking behind quote, more importantly, I like that Mr. Horgan is willing to admit the author's book (and ideas) had changed his mind. (Apparently, Deutsch even criticized some of Horgan's own ideas in the book.)

As I've said before, I wish more people would expose themselves to unlearning and admit when they have been persuaded to see the world differently. Ironically, it would make the world a better place. 

Related Posts

Ignorance Isn't Bliss But It May Hold the Key to Wisdom

A Notebook of Things I Don't Know

Expose Yourself to Unlearning

An Antidisciplinary Approach to Learning -- and Unlearning

“One of the most important disciplines in the twenty-first will be no discipline at all,” writes Frank Moss in his new book, The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices—a new book about MIT’s Media Lab.

So does this mean the hard disciplines of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and engineering can be abandoned?

Absolutely not.

Instead, the school—whose stated mission is “to invent the future”—takes an “anti-disciplinary” approach to problem-solving by putting its ideas into the public domain for anyone to take and run with.

What I like about this approach is that it recognizes that every discipline has approaches, methods or boundaries which constrain its thinking. The only way to overcome these artificial barriers is to push your ideas out to other disciplines (and peoples) who view the world from a perspective different than your own.

Interested in other "anti"-approaches to unlearning? Check out these older posts:

Unlearning Requires an Anti-Library

What's on Your Anti-Resume?

 

 

The Tale of the Junky Carrot

What do you do if you want to sell more carrots?

One thing, apparently, is to begin viewing the world from a different perspective.

Recently, Fast Company, published this insightful article describing how the creative team at Crispin (an advertising firm) helped BoltHouse Farms increase sales of its pre-cut baby carrots.

How did they do this? I'll let you read the whole article but they began by questioning assumptions. To wit, one executive said he wanted carrots "to be junk food."

This might sound ridiculous but his reasoning was sound: Baby carrots share many of the same characteristics as junk food -- they're "neon orange, crunchy, dippable, and kind of addictive." (The team at Crispin also argued that it was only slightly silly to spend money telling people that carrots were healthy.)

I would submit that Crispin's work is not only an excellent example of seeing the world differently and questioning assumptions, it is also a wonderful example of turning a problem into an opportunity.

Interested in other health-related unlearning madness?

How About Trying This Corny Idea

The Benefits of Keeping a Child-Like Mind

What are the benefits of keeping a child-like mind? For one thing, you can come up with innovative solutions to old problems.

Related Posts

Creativity Isn't All in Your Head

Draw Outside the Lines

God Dome It! Unlearn!

The Saint Ignatius church in Rome was originally designed to include a cupola. For financial reasons, the feature was never built.

In moment, sparked by Divine intervention perhaps, Church officials hired Andrea Pozzo to paint a fake dome on the ceiling over the altar. Today, more than 300 years later, many visitors are shocked to find out the spectacular cupola above them is not real but an illusion.

Sometimes all it takes to unlearn a problem is the willingness to embrace a new perspective.

Interested in some other examples of turning problems into opportunities? Check out these older posts by self-described "Chief Unlearning Officer" Jack Uldrich:

Put One Foot in Back of the Other

The Opposite May Also Be True