PhotoCredit: PinUp
If any one of the myriad camera’s in my house could talk (or more if google could analyze the data fast enough) the world would have seen me in full curiosity mode last week. I was hunched over my laptop, squinting at the shared zoom-screen, focussing so hard I literally induced a migraine. A girlfriend and I were attempting to figure out astrological charts. Both of us as clueless as each other but both equally motivated to learn.
Forgive the example, it could have just as easily been quantum mechanics (for reals - and who's to say they are not just all just the same thing?) Think on that!
Once the migraine passed, screen fatigue is a real thing people, I reflected on how much more I knew I didn’t know about astrology. What we know we don't know - as odd as it sounds - is a forward step on the learning path. Astrology is a bit of a passing fancy to me but I find it fascinating and had always felt rather a passive observer. So I wanted to learn.
There are so many things in our life like this. Things we lump into the “other people are experts” bucket or the “I’m interested but the path to knowledge seems too steep" bucket. Topics may include finance, marketing, getting good at social media, data analytics, blockchain, mastering excel, mastering anything!
We often blame time as the enemy of learning but the real barrier is our protective ego. It’s really f-ing frustrating to have no clue what you are doing. Once you get to a certain point in your career-slash-life you get kinda used to knowing the answers. It’s hard and frustrating (and mostly non-satisfying) being in the clueless realm. Unless you are Cher in my favorite movie of all time, but even she got frustrated in the end.
A really smart friend once explained to me that the cycle we go through when we learn something new is unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to unconscious competence, conscious competence and then PLAY. Play is when you get to just start inventing recipes once you have learned the basics. NOT what I did last night making a not-so-delicious fish-pie. I attempted play before I trialled a couple of recipes which is my usual process.
Our ego likes to think we are in conscious competence all the time. So it either suggests that we avoid things entirely OR that we should riff creatively well before we are ready. The result is sadly a resistance to learning. Which means a resistance to growing. Not good for fish pie making and truly not good for organizations (or people).
Doing something new is always a good idea. It's an even better idea if you grab a friend. Just maybe not the best idea when you are throwing a dinner party (don't worry I wasn't!). When we understand that the goal is to be clueless, we can succeed at being beginners. That might just be enough to satisfy our ego. Successfully clueless, who knew that was a worthy ambition?