I’m a huge fan of TED Talk and aim to watch at least a few every week to acquire new knowledge, challenge my preconceptions and generally be entertained. Today I wanted to share one that focuses on how you can get better at the things you care about — who wouldn’t want that?!
If you don’t know what TED Talk is, it basically consists of great individuals sharing their knowledge and research on important topics. TED brand themselves as “Ideas worth sharing”, and I certainly can attest to that, they are worth watching and worth sharing.
Today I would like to focus on one specific TedTalk that really piqued my interest quite long time ago, and which I have found myself re-watching every now and then.
Now, it’s not because it’s some kind of complex rocket science that I try to wrap my head around, nor that the speech or video is incredibly motivational. It’s just that the message resonates well with me, and how I believe more of us really ought to apply what Eduardo Briceno preaches to our lives.
My take on this TED Talk
If you can’t be bothered watching the video, or want to get my two cents on it, then read below.
Eduardo is basically saying that while most of us are busy working hard at our job (and studies etc.) it often won’t really turn into as great results if we only stay in this sole state of “performance”. By solely “doing” you won’t excel (at least not comparably). You won’t improve although you work hard, and you will be faced with stagnation. And this is really common.
The problem is that society places us in the performance zone from a very young age onward. We’re expected to perform at every level with little time for self-reflection and self-learning. As Eduardo says “the performance zone maximises our immediate performance, while the learning zone maximizes our growth and our future performance” and he then goes on to pinpoint that the problem is most of us almost spend all our time in the performance zone which hinders development and inevitably also affects performance in the long run.
The learning zone is typically referred to as deliberate practice, wherein you break down abilities into component skills, being clear about what sub-skills to improve, and ideally using frequent feedback with repetition and adjustments, and preferably being engaged with the guidance of a skilled coach.
I largely believe that my (relative humble) success in my endeavours is a result of my time spent alternating between the “performance zone” and the “learning zone”. Now, this time spent in the learning zone has surely been excessive at times; perhaps learning too much and performing too little and too slow, but yet, overall it has really helped me excel, develop and become a better me.
This notion is particularly true in the startup world as well, and I’m happy to see a growing trend of acknowledgement for it — e.g. the lean startup methodology where reiterating, learning from feedback, learning to improve the business entity, learning to improve the team members and so on are being focused on, as opposed to solely focusing on the performance of daily operations needed to be performed.
We all need to develop a so-called growth mindset; understanding and believing that we can actually improve. We also need to a have a purpose behind acquiring the learned improvement, and we must have a clear idea of how to improve — through deliberate practice. And we need to allow ourselves for situations where mistakes are allowed, as they are to be expected when learning.
The problem is that school and other environments imposes upon us a system that only accepts us to maintain in the performance zone. Even, as Eduardo points out, in schools which is supposed to be all about learning, mistakes are not to occur, they are undesirable, and we generally tend to accept narrow responses as opposed to more explorative and critical thinking.
This also brings problems to companies; they might be stay afloat in the current status quo, but with only maintaining the performance zone they will be unable to innovate and improve in the long-run and thus gradually decline.
Also, it doesn’t always have to be core learning such as through courses and actual practice, but it can also revolve around observation, reflection, and adjustment. This is something I reckon we should have been taught in school, instead of in many ways merely being taught things to memorize. How can we go about doing so more profoundly in our society though? I’ll leave that as an open question for now, that we may explore further here on this blog in the future.
Some final words
But so that’s it for this brief post. Whatever you may be up to and whatever your purpose in life is, be sure to not solely put yourself in an auto-pilot context of performance; instead, be sure to mix it up by applying a growth mindset and deliberate learning — and seek to grow and challenge yourself at every turn. You can do it. So now get out and get better at the things you care about! Life is short enough as it is.
PS! If you enjoy my take on TED Talk videos, then let me know, as I’ll be more prone to cover more in the future then 😉
Best,
Jon Pedersen