Another reminder that you can learn something almost anyplace, as long as you’re paying attention.
Tonight while at the grocery store I witnessed a great example of this. A gentleman was at one of those new-fangled self checkout booths, and apparently pressed the button to view things in Spanish. The lady attending to the booths noticed this and made a comment on his selection (he didn’t look like Spanish would be his first language).
He said that he liked to keep in practice, and selected the spanish language option when he had a chance to brush up.
The lady at the checkout was impressed, and so was I.
What a great example of doing something that might slightly stretch your comfort zone for whatever reason. Most of us would press the English button, even if we knew some Spanish at one time. This might make things go a little smoother, but it wouldn’t help us to grow or progress in any way.
There are many things that we tend to do because they’re a habit, and easy…
- Checking email frequently.
- Surfing the web endlessly (uh.. “research”).
- Watching TV.
- Going to the same restaurants, stores and supermarkets.
- Reading the same newspapers, blogs, author’s books.
- Learning too much, doing too little.
It’s been said that you should work on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses (farm those out), but this is different. This is about working on habits that are keeping your thinking locked into patterns that are counterproductive. This is about pushing your boundaries so that you can do new things, and succeed in new ways.
So… Do something different. Do something a little challenging. Take the above list, and expand upon it, then reverse the habit and do the opposite.
This is especially important when you have a project you are “working on”, but it’s not something you’ve done before. You know you need to do it. You know that if you don’t, it’ll be just another in a long line of half-done projects. It’s just out of your comfort zone.
All learning requires you to break out of this comfort zone. It doesn’t have to be difficult, and the easier the better. But it will require stretching your mind, and doing some new things.
Keep thinking!
-Tim
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I live in Reno, NV with my wife Careen, and the ever so talented kitty named Milo. Programmer by trade, web surfer and learner for fun, I have a ton of interests, and you'll hear about each of them in time!