Always Be Re-Learning

I’ve just had a humbling realization. I re-read some of my old posts on personal productivity, and I was struck by two things. First, without false modesty I have to say there is a lot of wisdom in the ideas I’ve written about (mostly because I’ve learned them from others). Second, imagine how much better off I would be today if I had actually stuck to those ideas after I wrote about them!

For example, one article was entitled, Five Powerful Principles for Reducing Waste in Personal Work, and it described several excellent tactics to organize work, increase focus, and reduce wasted effort. It was part of a series I wrote a few years ago about applying lean principles to personal work, and it did make a significant difference in my productivity at the time. But for some reason I drifted away from those disciplines over time.

It’s a great example of the entropy that goes on in our minds. Any structure that you build is going to deteriorate over time, unless you occasionally maintain, repair or refresh it. This goes for mental structures just as much as for physical ones. It’s not simply forgetting; as I read some of these articles, I easily recalled the facts and concepts; the raw materials are still there, but like ancient stone columns lying half-buried in the dirt, they no longer function as originally intended.

Fortunately, there’s good news. Unlike a physical structure, a mental structure can easily be re-built and even improved if you so desire. You just need to go back and relearn what you learned and then discarded.

How much useful information have you learned that you have buried deep in your mind? What have you learned and forgotten that you would like to re-learn? How much more productive or successful would you be today, if you had sustained your original enthusiasm for something long enough to turn it into a solid habit?

I believe in lifelong learning just as much as anyone else, but there’s always the risk that, in chasing after new lessons, you may forget some of the old.

So, I challenge you to the same challenge I’ve given myself: choose a book you read once that made a big impression on you, and go back and re-learn its lessons. You may be surprised to learn what you once knew.