What are you unlearning this week?
We are used to the idea of learning and the importance of being open to new ideas and new ways of growing in knowledge. Whole industries have been built around growth mindset, where learning and growth are encouraged through effort, challenge, and being open to making mistakes.
Learning is important.
But so is UN-learning.
Our minds are full of patterns and paradigms, maps and models for the How-To of life. This covers so many aspects of our behaviour, and often unconsciously. How we fulfill the various roles we have each day. The way we work, manage our time, organise ourselves and our lives. Skills we use and habits that we deploy, again often without having to think about them very much.
Furthermore, our minds have learned certain ways to think about ourselves. This includes how we label ourselves and can extend to how we measure our worth and assess our identity. This relates to my recent musings on what is and is not within our control.
I have learned that I use productivity as a measure of how successful my day is. And I have also learned to equate productive with words like ‘busy’, ‘doing’, ‘achieve’, ‘accomplish’. I have learned a pattern of measuring myself against how much I achieve in a day, but those achievements need to be visible and measurable.
You may have seen the quote on a greetings card that says:
Nothing beats the satisfaction of ticking something off a list.”
I am one of those people who lists things in small increments so there are more items to tick off, and yes, I add things to my list that I have already accomplished so that I can immediately tick them off. (If you love a list, check out this post on the Bullet journal, which was a huge thing back in the day).
I know that I am not alone in this. And I know that this is not wrong.
But I am also aware in recent days of patterns of unlearning that I can see the value in adopting.
Because in this season, this mental model that I am living by is outdated and is no longer serving me well.
Unlearning is a choice.
Unlearning is the practice of discarding from one’s memory something one has learned, and especially relates to bad habits, or false or outdated information.
I love this quote from the Harvard Business Review:
Unlearning is not about forgetting. It’s about the ability to choose an alternative mental model or paradigm. When we learn, we add new skills or knowledge to what we already know. When we unlearn, we step outside the mental model in order to choose a different one.”
(Emphasis mine).
I was talking with a friend recently about some of my unlearnings to do with productivity.
This is a curious season for me as I have recently stepped down from a voluntary role that took up a fair chunk of my time. And life will soon change dramatically as we come to the end of any associations with school.
This has caused me to stop and reassess the time I currently have available and how I use it. A whole section of life that would normally be on an extensive To-Do list to achieve and accomplish has come to an end.
And another section of life associated with school is coming adrift from its moorings, soon to be cast off completely as we venture into a new and different season.
An outdated mental model.
The mental model under which I have been operating for a number of years includes a constant mental To-Do list. This takes the form of a whole section of my thinking that is devoted to the What-is-Next-That-I-Need-to-Do. I am finding that switching this off is quite a significant unlearning.
There are many things still on my list, and this is a temporary season. But I see that I now have new spaces opening up.
My unlearning is about reminding myself about what is now no longer my responsibility. And my new learning – which I feel will be a lifetime’s work – is about measuring my productivity differently.
I am learning to be at peace with who I am in this moment without the need to be constantly busy Achieving Things.
There is more to be mused on this.
But for now, notice what patterns of learning are no longer serving you well. What models of thinking and self-belief are outdated? What does it mean for you to unlearn them, and what can you choose to replace them with?
Food for thought as always.