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Always hunting
In which we set on a quest to explore new fields of knowledge and find the solutions that we need
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I am Avy Leghziel, an organizational consultant and trainer with a knack for unorthodox ideas.
Every two weeks I share here on Masters of Babel insights on how we work, learn and manage. If you we are not connected on X or on LinkedIn yet, it means that we are both missing out.
For centuries, education followed a linear path: first you go to school, maybe also to a university, then you start the real life. Work, family, society. In other words: a defined period of learning, followed by a much longer career phase.
Learning was preparation for life, as it would prepare you to enter the workforce and to participate in society without being a total weirdo. Learning wouldn’t necessarily be the place where you would find meaning or purpose; those came from religion, ideology, or any other collective movement that could explain what’s important and what groups are different from you and worth hating.
The birth of lifelong learning
The past fifty years necessitated a paradigm shift.
Technological advancements and societal changes occur at an unprecedented pace, requiring individuals to constantly update their skills and knowledge;
The modern workplace demands adaptability and the ability to solve brand new problems, making continuous learning crucial for career progression and job security;
As traditional religious and nationalistic ideologies are not satisfying our needs for meaning-making, personal development, and overall well-being anymore, we engage in new kinds of learning experiences to better understand ourselves and the world around us. This is probably the most essential shift: we used to inherit shared reasons to feel purpose, now we need to search for new sources for purpose around us and in ourselves.
Learning is therefore no longer confined to classrooms or to a specific life stage. It has become a continuous, self-initiated process which integrates personal and professional development. That is the essence of lifelong learning: we embrace the learning process as an intentional, continuous component of our lives, and not as something we sometimes do.
The two core lifelong skills
The benefits of adopting a lifelong learning approach are numerous. It enhances employability, opens up new career opportunities, and fosters renewed motivation. Additionally, it strengthens soft skills, improves cognitive function, and increases adaptability in both personal and professional spheres.
For most of us, it’s an approach that we did not acquire during our schooling, and that needs to be developed autonomously. It relies on two main muscles:
The ability to distill insights, models, and practices from disciplines in which we are not experts, and make them actionable.
The ability to experiment with bodies of knowledge we are not familiar with, in order to find those insights, models, and practices that are relevant to us.
An example: Large Language Models, the kind of artificial intelligence on which ChatGPT and similar technologies are based, were notoriously inspired by the way the brain works, and in particular by the functioning of neurons. Someone was smart enough to look at nature and at the brain to find inspiration and then infused their computational models with it. In order to make progress, the models needed were not to be found in computer engineering or in mathematics, but in biology and the neurosciences.
At the core of lifelong learning is the ability to process and apply high-level content across various disciplines. A truly interdisciplinary approach enables innovative problem-solving and adaptability in diverse situations.
It’s a frustrating insight, because it means that we will never feel completely ready for life: there will always be a new problem that requires us to upgrade in order to be able to find a solution.
It’s also a liberating insight: we can use our curiosity to explore seemingly unrelated disciplines, and we’ll likely find some new, surprising idea that will propel our growth.
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