A technological change demands stronger and continuous connection between education and employment. And that is the reason people should strive to learn more to improve the meaning of their existence, says Pankaj Kumar Singh
It is said that life is all about learning and expanding your horizons. Business writer Tom Peters once said, “A career is a portfolio of projects that teaches you new skills, gains you new expertise, develops new capabilities, grows your colleague set and constantly reinvents yourself as a brand.” While all these words of wisdom define the depth of learning, simultaneously there is the debate whether education ever stops or it continues throughout life.
Our entire life is a learning experience that never ends. From classroom lectures to real-life experiences, it is a combination of everything that defines your existence. In the current scenario, it is an on-going process where an individual acquires skills and competence in the formal and non-formal learning set-up throughout his life. Today, education is a highly time-dependent and cumulative process that requires you to move slowly and go deeper to make the best of it.
According to scholars, education or learning is a part of life, which takes place at all times in all places. The lifelong process begins at home with family and friends and gradually moves to society, communities, schools, religious institutions and workplaces. The best part of this ongoing process is that you evolve as a better individual, who understands the deeper meaning of life and existence. Also, through continuous learning one can become a ‘provider’ rather than just being a ‘receiver’. It has been proven that learning helps in developing the business-oriented mindset that can result in making you a ‘job provider’. It enhances the understanding of the world around us, provide us with better opportunities and improves the quality of life.
Master It Faster by Colin Rose has described the six stages of learning that are believed to be the key to become an effective learner. These stages can be applied to any type of learning, either formal or informal. The first stage in this process is ‘motivation’. It is believed that it is essential for an individual to have this so that the learning reflects in his personality. Forceful learning is always in vain. The next stage is called ‘acquire’. During effective learning, you are required to read, listen, observe, practice, experiment and experience. The trick is to acquire relevant and meaningful information and develop this into knowledge and skills. The next stage is described as ‘search’. At this stage, one needs to search for personal meaning in the information s/he is acquiring. It often happens that we find it hard to remember facts without understanding them or being able to put them into context. Next comes, the stage of ‘trigger’. It is the time when you need to make notes of everything you learn as it is difficult to remember everything. You need to examine your knowledge to help reinforce what you have learned. And finally, one needs to reflect on the learning. It is necessary to think about how and why you learned, including how you felt about a particular topic or situation. That is how you develop and evolve your skills.
If you are wondering why it is important, you need to understand that it’s also about passion and satisfaction that it offers. When you are passionate about learning, it gives you a kick and an incomparable sense of satisfaction. Also, it skills up your functionality as an individual. From learning a new process at work to using a new app, it is a new world of knowledge every day that makes you an efficient individual. It has been proven that learning is becoming an economic imperative. A technological change demands stronger and continuous connection between education and employment. And that’s the reason people in the corporate sector are always striving to learn more in order to improve their existence.
Apart from all this, learning also adds value to your daily life. It makes it more practical, helps you handle everything — right from home to office and from society to nature. In simple words, it makes you an asset to the world. So are you ready to be a part of the process that has no end?
(The author is the managing director of a company engaged in bridging the education gap.)