Tag / learning

by Nathan Coumbe

Be bad in public

Yesterday’s post talked about perfection getting in the way of your art. Today, I wanted to give a special thanks to John Cochran, Joey Panella, and Rebecca Smith for letting me get out of my own way.

When I was in my early twenties, I majored in Jazz Studies at the University of Southern Mississippi. My weapon of choice was the drum set, and I was pretty average.

I was learning from books, playing in jazz band rehearsals 3 days per week, and shedding in the practice room. Still, I was not great.

I wasn’t great because I had almost no experience.

For whatever reason, John, a guitarist, came to me and asked if I would be willing to play drums with him and the others in a weekly gig at a pub in Hattiesburg. I accepted.

It was not until I started playing 3 hours a day – not very well – every single Tuesday from 10pm-1am, in front of a live audience, that my skills as a musician truly started to develop. That was the experience I needed to truly begin developing as a musician. It was at that point that I began learning on what I needed to focus and develop, so that I would improve. And improve I did.

I say all of that to encourage you to do a few things:

  1. Be brave enough to practice, and suck, in public.
  2. Find a mentor or sponsor that will allow you to suck in public.
  3. Show up day after day whether you suck or not.

I’m not encouraging you to be bad at something for which you’ll never put in the effort to become excellent. I’m saying that you’ll have to be bad at something you want to do before you become good; it helps if you do it in public, and it really helps if someone supports you while you do it in public.

It’s the only way you will start learning what you need to learn.

Thanks John, Joey, and Rebecca.

Don’t miss a thing! Subscribe below to get insights and ideas sent directly to your inbox each day.

Join 848 other subscribers

by Nathan Coumbe

Getting the grade

Students are so driven to get the grade that they will cheat on tests and assignments. 

Why?

Because we’ve taught them that the grade, not the learning, is important. 

If all our emphasis is on the grade, then of course they are going to cheat. Or cram. Or do just enough to get by.

“Will this be on the test?”

What is the end goal of education? Is it getting good grades, or imparting knowledge, skills, and wisdom to students?

If it is the former, then don’t be surprised when students cheat, cram, and stumble their way through class. 

If it is the latter, if the “why” behind education is learning rather than grades; encouraging curiosity and leadership rather than compliance; expect to gain willing enrollment from those in your charge. 

What is school for?

Don’t miss a thing! Subscribe below to receive updates as soon as they post.

Join 848 other subscribers
by Nathan Coumbe

Teach someone else

Do you want to know how to retain anything you, yourself, are trying to learn?

Teach someone else.

A teacher, after all, is nothing more than a professional learner. Any teacher worth her salt will tell you that the greatest learning comes when one knows one will have to teach the material being learned to someone else.

The next time you find yourself reading a book, taking a course, or watching a video lecture, imagine that the reason you are learning the material is so that you can teach it to a small group of people in 48 hours.

Better yet – actually teach it to a small group in 48 hours. If you can’t get a group together, then teach a few people individually. If that is impossible, then write a blog post, or record a quick video lesson, and publish it.

“To know, but not to do, is really not to know.”

–Stephen R. Covey

To know and to do, but not to teach? Well, that’s just not right.

Join 848 other subscribers
by Nathan Coumbe

What is failure to you?

If you try something new, you might fail.

Why is that such a debilitating statement? Unless you are attempting to leap between two buildings or run past a speeding car on the interstate, our failures are rarely fatal.

Yet we are paralyzed by the thought of failing at a new side hustle, of being rejected when asking for a date, or of failing at the new hobby we have never before tried.

If being proactive means choosing how one respond’s to a situation, then we can fail proactively. You can look at failure as a reason to never again attempt something, or you can look at it as simply one way the new thing won’t work.

Thomas Edison tried 10,000 ways to make a lightbulb before he found the way that worked. He saw each failure, not as a discouragement to trying again, but as a stepping stone to success.

Choose to see failure as a learning experience and you will only ever improve the next time.

by Nathan Coumbe

What if we have tutoring wrong?

Why did tutoring become something other than exploring one’s curiosity? According to Wikipedia, “Tutoring began as an informal and unstructured method of educational assistance, dating back to periods in Ancient Greece…[where] the main goal of the tutor was to impart knowledge to the learner in order to help the latter gain proficiency in the subject area.” They did not exist to help students who were struggling, but instead served as teachers who passed on knowledge and wisdom to pupils to make them better citizens of Greece. 

At some point, tutors became a tool for anxious parents concerned about their student’s falling grades, rather than a source of information and inspiration to satisfy a student’s curiosity. Now, the thought process is, “I’m struggling and need to get my grades up, so I should hire a tutor” rather than, “this subject is so fascinating to me that I cannot get enough information at school and must learn more. Who can help me?” 

About the only time this actually seems to happen is when a student seeks out a private teacher in a creative field, such as music or art. You don’t go to a private music teacher because you’re doing poorly in band; you go because you are so invested in your craft that you want to master every aspect you can.

(You could argue that SAT/ACT tutors also don’t help you when you are doing poorly, but I have yet to meet anyone who is passionately interested in standardized tests).

What is tutoring for? What could it be for?

by Nathan Coumbe

What are you afraid of?

Why haven’t you started yet? Why have you not launched your side-hustle? Or started tackling that new skill you need to get a new career?

Is it really the fear of failure? If you start a side-hustle and it fails, who cares? You didn’t lose your job. You aren’t out on the streets.

If you try to learn a new skill and find that you are completely uninterested or you don’t have a knack for it, why does that matter? What has it cost you? Absolutely nothing.

So is it failure that scares us, or something else?

Maybe the reality is we don’t feel like we are good enough. We feel like phonies, that if we put something out there, people will see us as such – that we are not experts. We are simply amateurs, and they might scoff at us.

Or maybe it’s the actual shipping of your idea or work that scares you. Because in order to make it work, in order to get it started, you have to tell someone about it. You have to try and get someone to bite.

And they might say no.

Why does this terrify us? It’s just one person, or two, or ten. But you only need one person to say yes in order to get the ball rolling.

And if no one says yes, then make better work, make different work, until someone says yes.

Ask yourself today what you are really afraid of, then see it for what it is and act.

by Nathan Coumbe

Reaping excellence

I came across a little maxim yesterday that got my mind going, so I wanted to share.

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

There is also a quote that pairs nicely with this maxim:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

– Aristotle

What is it that you repeatedly want to do? If you did it often enough, do you believe you would truly develop excellence in that habit?

Perhaps you should ask a related question: if what you are doing now isn’t something in which you want to develop excellence, what do you repeatedly think about? Once you have an idea in mind, you can then apply it to the maxim.

For example, let’s say that a person is constantly thinking about art, but only thinking, never creating any herself. We’ll start there.

“Sow a thought…” she is constantly thinking about and admiring the artistic work of others.

“Reap an action…” the aspiring artist decides to take drawing lessons and vows to draw a little bit every day, no matter how small it might be.

“Sow an action…” drawing each and everyday becomes second nature.

“Reap a habit…” she no longer even thinks about if she will draw today; the only thought on her mind is what to draw. A habit is developed.

“Sow a habit…” drawing has become second-nature to her now. It’s as habitual as brushing her teeth or eating.

“Reap a character…” she has become, intentionally or not, an artist. It is now who she is, a fundamental feature of her character. She is now one of the people she once admired.

“Sow a character…” you can see the rest. Her destiny is whatever she decides to make it at this point. She has already developed the skills and habits needed to carry her far down the path of artistic success, whatever she decides that looks like for her. Perhaps it is a career in art, or perhaps it is just a wonderfully enjoyable hobby. But it is now who she is.

So, what is it about which you constantly think? How can you turn those thoughts into action, and then practice those actions often enough until habits form and a certain character you want develops?

“We are what we repeatedly do…”

Decide and act on that in which you strive to be excellent.

by Nathan Coumbe

Luck happens

Sometimes, it comes down to sheer luck.

You’re sitting in the right booth, reading the right book, and someone notices.

She comes over and asks what it is that you do; you proceed to tell her how you help people. Eyes light up, connections are made, recommendations are given to you about who else you can help with your craft.

What a lucky meeting!

And yet…if I hadn’t been working so diligently for months on my new endeavors, this lucky encounter never would have occurred. Had I been sitting in the booth watching Netflix, she would have walked right past me.

So yeah, luck happens, but it still pays to prepare and practice your craft so that you are ready when the lucky moments occur.

I’ll take slow, persistent effort sheer luck any day.

by Nathan Coumbe

Read

Read a book.

A real book.

Made of paper.

Don’t skim it; sit down with a book and wrestle with the material. Have a notebook, pencil, and two pens at hand while you do it.

The basis of every education, and the most important skill you will ever learn in your life, is reading. If you can read, comprehend what is written, analyze it, and then talk about it, you have the potential to learn anything you want.

The skill of reading will train you to hold multiple ideas or arguments in your head at one time; you can determine what is valid; if it is biased; lacking in evidence. Reading will protect you from being overly influenced by marketing, advertising, political rhetoric, fear-mongering, and anything else designed to persuade you before you’ve had a chance to analyze and think about the information being given.

Educate yourself by reading. If you struggle with reading, find a tutor who can help you read easier, and then start the process! Write in your books: circle, underline, turn down pages, write notes. Keep a notebook full of ideas and questions that come to you as you read. This will not only keep you engaged, it will allow you to start combining your own thoughts with the ideas presented to you and make the knowledge you are gaining truly yours.

Now quit reading this and go read.

by Nathan Coumbe

College isn’t the only option

A common theme today is the thought of going back to college in order to change careers or move up the ladder.

“Man, I really hate my job. I think if I went and got a degree in [insert field], I would be able to get a better job.”

“I want to change careers, but I will have to go get a master’s degree to make that happen.”

“The only way that I’ll move up in this company is if I go get my MBA.”

I’m sure you’ve heard dozens of similar comments. While this may be the prevailing idea on how to get ahead, it is wrong.

If you hate your job and want to change fields, or if you want to move up the corporate ladder, you may actually need to increase your knowledge, skills, and abilities to do so. However, a college degree does not necessarily equal increased knowledge, more skills, or higher-level abilities.

One reason is that our culture is changing so quickly; businesses are rising and falling at unparalleled rates; technology is moving so fast that the information you learn over 18 months in getting an MBA is often obsolete by the time you finish the degree. Another reason is that sitting through lectures on subjects day after day doesn’t prepare you to do the work required in the job you hope to take.

A Modern Education

So what to do instead? Well, lucky for you, there are a number of new tools at your disposal:

  1. You have books.
  2. You have the internet.
  3. You have a mouse, keyboard, and screen.

We live in a time of unlimited information – if you want to learn how to do something, a quick Google search will return more information than you could possibly consume in a lifetime.

So, if you want to level up your skills and abilities, or learn about a new field of knowledge, read five quality books on the subject. Take notes; talk with others about what you are learning, face-to-face, over Skype or FaceTime, or even through email. Doing this, you will quickly become an expert on the subject. At the same time, you can go on Udemy, CreativeLive, LinkedIn Learning, or any other online learning site and take free or low-cost courses at any time, on any subject, at your own pace! Many of these courses rival those on a university campus. Now that I think of it, you can also take a lot of free courses from reputable universities online if you really want to go that route.

What is education for?

I am by no means discounting the value of a college education. I just want it to be known that it is not the end-all, be-all for finding a better job or leveling up your career. There are so many ways to get the education that you need; it would be shameful not to look at all your options.

The purpose of furthering your education is not to get another degree; it is to develop the skills, abilities, and knowledge to do the work. If getting another degree gets you there, then go that route (and don’t borrow money to do it). But I must emphasize this: you do not need to spend 18 months without working, sitting through a lecture on soon-to-be outdated information, all to get a piece of paper that tells people you are qualified in something. Employers don’t care – they want to see projects, portfolios, and results that you have created.

So, if you want to step into graphic design, start reading books on the subject, learning web design at Codecademy, taking art lessons, and buy some online courses on the subject. If you want to get into marketing, start marketing for someone or something you believe in on a volunteer basis while you read books by Seth Godin and Donald Miller. Then, sign up for an Akimbo workshop and learn as much as you can with other people. You will spend less time, substantially less money, and learn as much, or more, than you would sitting through years of lectures.

Learning how to do the work is what’s important; how you do it is not. Let’s stop thinking that another college degree is the only way to get where you want to be. If you can show someone that you can do the job, you are qualified.

Go learn something.