Unlearn

My head is stuffed with stuff. Some of it has been in there since I was a young fellow, some of it made its way inside in the last few days. Every day more stuff tries to squeeze into my head, but unfortunately, space is limited, so for everything I add, something has to go.

Most of you reading this probably suffer the same affliction. Information Overload.

While I try to be selective in what I add, deletion has been more random. I find I still can easily recall details of absolutely no use anymore – my street address when I was about 15 – while specifics of experiences that could serve me well don’t come to mind as easily – where was it in Africa that I met Chief Steve?

We’re inundated by people trying to stuff us with information, telling us we need to learn more and more. Business leaders, politicians, Mom and Dad, and consultants and advisors like me are all convinced that knowing more is a good thing. What no one is saying is that unlearning is just as important or perhaps even more important as learning

The amount of information competing for our brain space continues to grow exponentially while the things we need to know to survive, much less do our job well, are continuously changing. It’s hard for most of us to stay on top of all this new information, particularly when it conflicts with what we already think to be true.

A big downside of having a stuffed head is that you can come to believe that everything in there is not only necessary, but the absolute truth. You become so sure of the value and rightness of it that you don’t make any room for new ideas. You actually put up a shield so they bounce off your cranium without any contemplation.

We become stuck, frozen in our thinking, unable to move forward as the world advances around us. There aren’t a lot of jobs left where you do the same thing over the course of your entire career. Knowledge and skills become obsolete rapidly. And so can you.

This is why learning to unlearn is so important, and so difficult. Indeed, being willing to unlearn that which you’ve taken as gospel for years might be the hardest thing to learn to do. But learning to unlearn is a requirement if you want to keep up with new practices and ideas for your business and other activities so you don’t get left behind.

But unlearning is not randomly discarding stuff in your brain. Many things are still as valid and important as they were when you first learned them or even better as practice has improved them. Determining what to keep and what to discard is an ongoing process requiring the flexibility and strength to change some deeply held beliefs and reframe others.

What you know as the best way to do something might not be. What you’ve taken as the height of skill may now actually be barely acceptable. You need the strength to continually evaluate what you think you know, and be ready to discard it to make room for what you need to know.