Saj­jad Hamid

A new year of­ten means new be­gin­nings and fresh per­spec­tives. You may not have thought about it, but your abil­i­ty to as­sim­i­late and nour­ish your mind can have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on your per­son­al and ven­ture de­vel­op­ment. Would a struc­tured and well-de­signed learn­ing plan sup­port your goals? The good news is that you do not have to be a cur­ricu­lum spe­cial­ist or an aca­d­e­m­ic. All you need to do is mas­ter a few key di­men­sions of au­tonomous learn­ing.

Our brains are like mus­cles: if you do not use them, you lose them. You need to de­vel­op those neur­al con­nec­tions to find pat­terns and de­ploy cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing to un­cov­er hid­den op­por­tu­ni­ties. Hen­ry Ford did not in­vent the mov­ing as­sem­bly line that sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced unit costs; he vis­it­ed a food pack­ing plant and con­nect­ed the mov­ing parts to build a mass-pro­duc­tion line.

Brain rot

Neu­ro­sci­en­tists sup­port the Tik­Tok trend of per­son­al cur­ric­u­la, as they are a self-di­rect­ed, sys­tem­at­ic way of learn­ing that helps pre­vent men­tal de­cline. “The brain thrives on cy­cles of chal­lenge, feed­back, and progress, yet adult life rarely makes space for that kind of ex­per­i­men­ta­tion,” says King’s Col­lege neu­ro­sci­en­tist and au­thor Anne-Lau­re Le Cunff, on a re­cent LinkedIn post.

There is the cur­rent de­scrip­tion of men­tal degra­da­tion as a rot­ting brain. While “brain rot” is not a term in psy­chol­o­gy, our pro­cess­ing speed and abil­i­ty to deal with men­tal health chal­lenges, such as anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion, can cre­ate ob­sta­cles to high­er per­for­mance.

An­oth­er is­sue is our in­abil­i­ty to as­sim­i­late at all. We can read, and many do not, in­stead spend­ing time watch­ing mind­less videos. It’s be­ing lit­er­ate, il­lit­er­ate! Videos are like fast food—tasty, quick to get and at­trac­tive­ly packed, but lack­ing in sub­stance. While some YouTube videos fos­ter learn­ing, short-form ones may be pro­mo­tion­al or sen­sa­tion­al (more likes, the bet­ter) and of­ten lack sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence.

Set your learn­ing goals

To avoid read­ing for the sake of read­ing and boast­ing about how many books and pod­casts you are ex­posed to, you need a fo­cused course of study. What gaps do you, as a busi­ness own­er, need to close? Maybe you need to de­vel­op stronger dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing skills to im­ple­ment your so­cial me­dia strat­e­gy. You may need to im­prove your email writ­ing and take a course on be­com­ing a word­smith.

You want to change your busi­ness mod­el, but you need to at­tend a mod­el­ling work­shop and hire a men­tor to as­sist with ex­e­cu­tion. Maybe you need to learn more about cut­ting-edge de­vel­op­ments and seek out con­fer­ences and trade shows.

In ef­fect, you need spe­cif­ic, prac­ti­cal, and im­ple­mentable knowl­edge re­sources to im­prove you and your en­ter­prise’s com­pe­tence. Just a note, while train­ing is short-term ori­ent­ed, de­vel­op­men­tal ob­jec­tives have a longer hori­zon. If you need to be­come a more strate­gic thinker and write a strate­gic plan, a short course will not cut it. Be­ware of speed learn­ing, as some top­ics may be too com­plex and in-depth for quick as­sim­i­la­tion.

Learn­ing re­sources

En­tre­pre­neurs want ac­tion­able, hands-on in­ter­ven­tions. In some busi­ness schools, man­age­ment fac­ul­ty fall short, as many have nev­er run a com­pa­ny or, worse, start­ed one. This miss­ing ex­pe­ri­ence is a se­ri­ous prob­lem with aca­d­e­mics. While aca­d­e­m­ic knowl­edge has its pur­pose, re­al-world teach­ing will be more ap­pre­ci­at­ed. The­o­ry is like draw­ing the build­ing plan and cal­cu­lat­ing the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty; how­ev­er, you need a con­trac­tor versed in project man­age­ment to be the prac­ti­tion­er. The­o­ry must meet prac­tice and vice ver­sa.

It is com­mon to en­counter suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs who had lit­tle tra­di­tion­al school­ing. How­ev­er, it is a mis­con­cep­tion that knowl­edge on­ly comes from uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges. There is the school of hard knocks, as well as books, cours­es, pod­casts, videos, we­bi­na­rs, etc.

Re­cent­ly, I want­ed to ex­pand my knowl­edge and learn more about cut­ting-edge de­vel­op­ments in fam­i­ly en­ter­prise. I at­tend­ed a con­fer­ence host­ed by the Fam­i­ly Firm In­sti­tute, read a cou­ple of books, re­searched ar­ti­cles in the Fam­i­ly Busi­ness Re­view jour­nal, and lis­tened to books on Au­di­ble when my eyes grew tired of read­ing. While I like to read, I al­so need to train my brain to lis­ten to au­dio ma­te­r­i­al, as this will help de­vel­op new brain con­nec­tions.

Learn­ing sched­ule

You can set aside an hour per day or sev­er­al hours per week. I like to lis­ten to an au­dio­book for 30 min­utes be­fore bed, and on week­ends I read on my Kin­dle. I can­not lis­ten to a pod­cast while I am ex­er­cis­ing, as my at­ten­tion span does not hold up as well. Of course, we know that mul­ti­task­ing re­quires the brain to switch back and forth, as our minds do not han­dle this very well.

You can set a goal of read­ing at least one book per month. Mag­a­zines are my ab­solute favourites, and while I en­joy read­ing Inc. mag­a­zine (about en­tre­pre­neurs), I of­ten keep abreast of sci­en­tif­ic de­vel­op­ments. My pe­ri­od­i­cals of choice are Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can (the longest con­tin­u­ous­ly pub­lished pe­ri­od­i­cal) and Har­vard Busi­ness Re­view (over 100 years old) for the lat­est in man­age­ment think­ing. Some mem­ber­ship or­gan­i­sa­tions pub­lish their own pe­ri­od­i­cals, such as the Fam­i­ly Firm In­sti­tute.

Ap­pli­ca­tion

Putting your learn­ing to work re­quires a dif­fer­ent skill. Read­ing how to ride a bi­cy­cle and ac­tu­al­ly rid­ing it are two dif­fer­ent sides of the same coin—im­prov­ing your rid­ing skills. One way to make it stick is to have a “study bud­dy” to bounce ideas off. You can share ex­pe­ri­ences with oth­ers and seek feed­back.

Since I need a lot of learn­ing ma­te­r­i­al to write, I have to search for and as­sim­i­late it, then syn­the­sise it for my tar­get au­di­ence. This way, cou­pled with do­ing a lec­ture on the top­ic, helps it stick. The knowl­edge curve is on in­creas­ing re­turns when used re­peat­ed­ly. When your brain can in­te­grate dif­fer­ent learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences and sub­lim­i­nal­ly con­nect ap­par­ent­ly dis­parate da­ta points, the re­sult is com­pound knowl­edge. You are now like a hu­man AI on steroids!

Up­date your cur­ricu­lum

Knowl­edge as­sets have a time val­ue like mon­ey—they are worth more to­day than to­mor­row. Since the shelf life of in­tel­lec­tu­al re­sources is lim­it­ed, con­stant re­new­al is im­per­a­tive. Read­ing mem­oirs, such as Be­com­ing by Michelle Oba­ma and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, of­fers a chance to see suc­cess in dif­fer­ent con­texts.

Your busi­ness has a life cy­cle like you; you need to up­date your cur­ricu­lum as cir­cum­stances change. If you want to un­lock your full po­ten­tial and ex­pand your busi­ness, de­vel­op­ing a per­son­al cur­ricu­lum is your path to be­com­ing a suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur.

Saj­jad Hamid is an SME & fam­i­ly busi­ness ad­vi­sor as well as a fel­low of the Fam­i­ly Firm In­sti­tute. He can be con­tact­ed at en­tre­pre­neurt­nt@gmail.com