Excess information from school, work, TV, internet, newspaper, radio, family, friends, etc. is part of today’s reality – filtering out what is irrelevant is natural and needed. Most of what you see stick for only 24 hours or less, a few might touch the “hmm…this is interesting” level and therefore retains longer but most information remain as “retrievable but non-useable”, only a few ever hit the “ah-ha” level. Refining the filtering process is needed to avoid “Throwing out the baby with the bath water”.
As we learn from math and physics in school, being able to recite a formula is different than applying it during exams. Most can remember the formula of force (F=mass X acceleration) but cannot solve problems with it. Furthermore, few ever apply any of the formulas they learn outside school. Things you know/learned but cannot be applied is not useful – this gap must to be addressed.
Chinese invented the compass but did not apply magnetism into other uses. Fireworks was invented in China but the use of explosives in guns was invented elsewhere. If we do not distill application specific instances into principles, we can miss the boat totally.
Here is how I make principles useable:
- recognize differences between a specific technique versus a principle. See patterns and trends and make them useful beyond a specific situation.
- always ask the question “so what does it mean to me?” or “how can I use this piece of information?”
- finding obscure or corny examples of a principle in action triggers emotional response and therefore increases the likelihood of being able to memorize it
- put principles in a relevant context and try to apply it in more than one way
- summarize long-winded explanations into key-points. If you cannot summarize things in 25 words or less, you probably do not fully understand it.
- make notes and write things down. How you feel about a ‘new’ idea today will probably not be the same next year. You need these triggers to cause you to re-think and re-apply.
Exercise (email me your answers and thoughts):
- Do you see relationships and patterns between blog posts and what we talk about here?
- Have you been keeping your responses filed away (or printed) so you can read it again some months down the road?
- Which one of the blog posts from previous weeks gave you an “aha” moment? Am stating the obvious or has it added something useful and what was that?