Teaching

Teaching is one of the noble careers I appreciate. Natural teachers are some of my favorite people to be around. They are so adept at bringing learning into their whole life and sharing new knowledge with me and everyone around them.

However, I so forget how much it takes to be a teacher. I was trying to document my processes and systems for how I do what I do and I realized how much it really takes to teach. The visuals so people can see things the way I see them. The endless words strewn across pages and pages to describe my actions.

Then, at the end of the day, the people I am trying to teach still have completely different mental filters and life experiences between the two of us getting in the way of our filters and conversations. We have no way to cross these hurtles without standing in the same room together and talking it all through.

I had forgotten how much it really takes to teach people what I was doing. I had also forgotten how much it had taken for me to get to be doing what I do. How many layers of the onion had grown on top of one another to develop into the job I was doing.
It was very humbling to not be able to document the layers of the onion. I did not need to document how or why things had gotten to be they way they are. I only needed to document how to do the what needs to be done. And though, it was important to have a process through which these processes could improve, it was not necessary in least to document the evolution of how things came to be how they are.

I realized the necessity of having things be the way they are is good, but I had too often been trying to protect things and keep them the way they were because of the process to get them to be the way they were and I was not fighting for everything to get better because it needed to be better.

I was trying to protect the inner layers of the onion meanwhile the outermost layer of the onion was rotting away and couldn’t grow or improve.

What are you needlessly fighting to protect? If you were to document how you do what you do, how much time would you have to spend defending the process to get to where you are? Is the process to get to where you are as important as the destination? Where is your pride getting in the way?

Humbly,

–JT

We Are All Homeschooled

Every once in a while I stumble across someone else saying something I could not say better in a million years and I could not ever scratch the surface of it. This time, Seth Godin nails it for me. I love his thoughts in this post, “We Are All Homeschooled”

As both I am both a person struggling with trying to figure out how to better interact with other people. And I am standing on the precipice of fatherhood, this one is too good and too perfect.

Schooled,
–JT
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Reading Is Fun & Mental

I have much to learn in life. Even more so, there is more to learn in life than I could ever learn. I enjoy learning. I do have a maximum learning capacity at any one given period. However, I enjoy filling my learning cap and I enjoy learning even when I do not need to. I have noticed a trend in my life where people consider some learning to be more significant than others. Specifically, reading seems to be the highest form of learning. 

When you ask someone what they are reading, you are almost asking them what they are learning. I have been asked on many occasions, “What are you reading?” Most often, I have very little I am actively reading. Generally, I am in the middle of a book at all times but not very far into it or very interested in finishing it. I usually try to be learning something. However, reading does not do it for me. I am seeing a trend though, reading is portrayed as the, ‘learners method.’ You cannot be learning if you are not reading. For me, I think this discounts the essence of learning. Learning is what we do when we bring in new information. 

Learning is what we do when we absorb something we have never thought of or experienced. 

Learning is an essential part of life.

For me, I always want to be learning; but, in testing, experience, and with the advice of wise teachers and leaders in my life. Reading is quite possibly the most awful way I can learn. 

I am slow. 

I have have a low absorption rate. 

I do not do the best job of converting abstract concepts I read about concrete ideas I can implement.

How do I succeed in a world where who considers reading to be the most affluent way of learning?

How do you learn? What do you think of someone who is not currently reading something for learning?

Learning,

–JT