With an overwhelming amount of information accessible to us, it has become a challenge for people to learn. So much information comes in through the daily flow of news, the endless feed in a social media channel, or the information available to support learning.
Little is done to learn how to filter it.
When stepping into training, or an exchange with others it has become suitable to think about these occasions as an opportunity to learn. The idea isn’t wrong as such. However, there is a possibility that this approach contributes to feeling lost in the sea of information.
The main reason for feeling lost seems to be when the learning only adds information to the one present.
For children, this may be an adequate way to proceed, as long as their curiosity engages them with every bit of information coming up. Their curiosity works as a kaleidoscope integrating information they receive into the bigger picture of their knowledge.
With adults things are different. Most of them have become focused on dealing with information they can use to address problems they experience.
Consequently, using passive learning, they developed the habit of collecting information in the hope that it will become useful for problems they expect to be confronted with in the future.
However, information only transforms itself into knowledge when it is applied to a problem. Which is what curiosity intuitively does. Thus, it doesn’t matter if it is a problem they experience or one they are curious about. It only matters that they engage in it and have the desire to use the information received to solve the problem they chose to address.
Information rarely is sufficient to create knowledge. Insight is the result of information transforming existing knowledge. Experience is the result of applying knowledge to everyday situations or problems one seeks to solve.
When staying with passive learning, that is stacking information, there is a lot of hope that other people’s insights will transform one’s own experience. It is asking for a solution without being able to name what it is one wants to change.
So, maybe one could think about the outcome of passive learning as an opportunity to learn what it is that one wants to change.
But how does this relate to the time invested?
