The other day while writing an update for my Learnativity blog (where I write about my experiences out sailing the planet), I wanted to reference a favorite quote I recalled from baseball giant Yogi Berra about watching, observing, and learning. Since, as is often the case, I don’t always have an Internet connection when I’m at sea (currently about 220 nautical miles SW of Tonga at 23 17.506S 178 28.424W), I had to rely on what masquerades as my memory.
But today I got around to reinstalling one of my best reference resources on the laptop I recently rebuilt—my offline version of Wikipedia, called WikiTaxi—and which promptly gave me the proper quote I was looking for the other day.
I got the source right—it was from Yogi Berra—but my wording was off a bit. Yogi’s great quote (one of thousands) is:
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
Great food for thought, and I’m doing as much watching, observing, and learning as I can. It never seems to be enough, but I love being in that position.
The Value of Being the Dumb Guy
I’ve also come to better understand why I keep putting myself into a situation where I’m the “dumbest guy” in every group— I learn so much more!
Learning for me is a way of living and just “being”* and I prefer to always be at the extreme end of any spectrum I’m on. Or as my dear friend Eileen says, I’m an “extremophile” which Wikipedia defines as:
“An extremophile (from Latin extremus meaning ‘extreme’ and Greek philia meaning ‘love’) is an organism that thrives in and may even require physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to the majority of life on Earth.”
I therefore try to surround myself with others who are the experts in an area I am interested in or involved with, since I can be the proverbial sponge and soak up the knowledge, wisdom, observations, tips, and tricks which their experience has produced.
Fortunately, I’ve even been able to take this way of being in the world, and turn this “bug” of mine into a “feature”, using it to earn my living. Most often, I give keynote speeches and other talks to groups of people and at conferences around the world. These are typically conferences or meetings organized by and for a community of practice or professional group, and therefore the attendees constitute some or most of the world’s experts in a particular domain, one which I usually know little to nothing about.
Somehow I’ve found a way of offering value by being the dumbest guy in the group. Not knowing their context, I am able to ask those often insightful “dumb questions” that you don’t ask when you are too close to a subject. I work at finding great ideas and peak performances. When I find them, they are usually very context-laden. I try removing all of the context and then check to see if there is a gold nugget there at the core or if it depends solely on the context. Therefore all my models, concepts and ideas are extremely generalized and context-free, and my role is to help other groups take such models and customize them to their applications by adding in their specific and unique context. But I digress a bit (as usual), so it’s time to get back to what I’ve learned about my learning.
I’ve been doing my best to put my theories into personal practice of late, including this one, the “dumb guy in the group" theory. How? By jumping into the deep end of the ignorance pool and setting sail across the Pacific. Two years ago, sailing was an area that I knew little to nothing about, and yet here I am halfway around the planet by sail and I haven’t drowned, sunk, or hit much more than docks…yet. You may now also understand why my kids encouraged me to name my sailboat “Learnativity”. It sure fits and has lived up to that name many times!
We are All Becoming “Tearners”
But I also I equally relish the opportunity to be a teacher on those occasions when I have some experience and learning to share. Whenever possible, I try to deposit some credits back into the world bank of knowledge and wisdom, one which I often withdraw from heavily and regularly. Which brings to mind yet another of my observations and ideas. We are evolving into a society of what I have referred to as “tearners”. This term is an amalgamation of the words “teachers” and “learners” and it describes the condition where we are all both of these at the same time.
Whitewater Skills in Living and Learning
This blending of teaching and learning makes sense to me and it brings to mind something else that I learned from Peter Vaill’s book Learning as a Way of Being*—that life is a permanent whitewater now. Yet many people continue to ask "When is the calm part in the river coming up?” or “When is it (life) going to get back to normal?” They tell others, or even themselves, that the current turbulence (whitewater) is just due to a bad day or week or month or quarter or year!
However, it never seems to get back to “normal”, does it?! When this doesn't happen, people set themselves up for a big fall. They feel that they have failed, or that things are out of control. Instead, if they come to understand that now we all live in a state of permanent whitewater, a.k.a exponential change, and that this is the "new version of normal", we can let go of the old “normal” and get on with developing good whitewater skills!
This realization has led me to read about, and hang out with people who are experts at whitewater rafting, canoeing, and kayaking. Following my quest to always be the dumbest guy in every group as well as loving experiential learning, I signed up for some whitewater rafting and kayaking years ago. One of the great pearls of wisdom I picked up was that you always want to be going much slower or much faster than the water around you. By doing so, YOU are in control. So you develop whitewater skills that enable you to always have this differential between you and the water and by doing so, you are able to navigate what would otherwise be potentially fatal or impassable waters, and you even have fun doing it, arriving at the end of a run tired, but with a full body grin.
OK, that will do for today. I’m just anxious to pass on some of these thoughts and observations in the hope that some of what I’ve learned by being the dumb guy can help you be much smarter! I’d love to hear from you if this matches with your experiences or if you just think I’m plain dumb!
Wayne
* Learning as a Way of Being by Peter Vaill is one of my favorite books and a highly recommended read!
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