Figure it out yourself

In this blog, Guy Kawasaki writes about 10 (real world) things college students ought to learn. He has raised some very good points that are not taught in school but are extremely important at work.

In point #4 he says:

How to figure out anything on your own. Armed with Google, PDFs of manuals, and self-reliance, force yourself to learn how to figure out just about anything on your own. There are no office hours, no teaching assistants, and study groups in the real world. Actually, the real world is one long, often lonely independent study, so get with it. Here’s a question to test your research prowess. How do you update the calendar in a Motorola Q phone with appointments stored in Now-Up-To-Date? (I’ll send a copy of The Art of the Start to the first person with a good answer.)

This brings to mind ideas that I have been trying to talk about for a while: self learning, informal learning, and continuous learning. I would again like to take this opportunity to remind you of the importance of learning continuously. Sometimes there are things that have to be learned because the need just came up, but most often it helps to have a plan. In my next blog I will write about how to make such a plan... so stay tuned :-)

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Parag Shah