Learning at Work
While everyone has to engage with learning to grow in their career, it is essential to some people’s motivation, confidence, and mental health. If you are driven by learning as a need, then you already know that falling off track can be a significant source of pain and put you into what feels like survival-mode. At least this is how it felt for me when I hit a big slump about six months ago. It was a particularly hectic period trying to manage various initiatives and deadlines at work, while still figuring out the most effective way to perform in my role. As someone who thrives on challenge and opportunities for learning, there couldn’t be a better environment for me to grow— yet something felt wrong. Each day began to bleed into the next, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath, and I was starting to lose motivation. Fortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’ve experienced this in my professional career, so I knew how to get myself out of it. In this post, I share my approach to getting back on track in hopes that it will help others who may be feeling stuck.
Reflect
In order to begin my journey to get “back on track”, I needed to realize that I was off track in the first place. Instead of suppressing the notion that something felt wrong, I chose to explore it. Noting that every day felt like it was bleeding into the next, with no end in sight made me think of Einstein’s famous saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. Something clearly wasn’t working and needed to change– it was time for reflection. While most of us understand that reflection is a fundamental part of being a good learner, it is all too easy to get caught up in the weeds and allow ourselves to fall into an odd cycle of “insanity”. Here are a few things I did to start my journey towards improvement:
I hit the brakes to create awareness. This came in the form of realizing that something felt wrong, and deciding to explore it rather than toughing it out.
I accepted that something is wrong. I am a motivated and positive person, but I wasn’t feeling that way at the point of acceptance… Why should I settle for less? Acceptance is the first step towards action, because it becomes point zero of your new journey. Otherwise, it’s like being lost and continuing to tell yourself that you know where you’re going. Until you accept that you’re lost, you won’t take the right action to get back on track.
I created space for reflection. I needed to give myself time to sit back and ask the necessary questions to understand the core problem and my options to solve it. You can read more about the power of questions here. In my case, I was well in control of my own schedule and discovered that I was my own biggest obstacle. I invested time to understand things that were taking up bandwidth without moving me towards my goals, and identified that my calendar was a free-for-all that prevented me from moving towards meaningful change on a weekly basis. I also realized that I needed help and support to get through this slump.
I took action. I started reserving more space in my schedule to focus on meaningful work, and created more dedicated time to focus on learning. These seemingly minor changes played a big role in helping me take control of my time and my first step away from survival-mode. I will talk about how I went about getting help next.
Ask for help
I knew that I couldn’t completely get out of the learning slump alone– I needed support. Building a learning support network has always been the most valuable way for me to achieve sustainable growth in any given skill, and it was something I was not on top of at the time that I hit my slump. I took a look at my network: who was I already in touch with? Who should I get in touch with? Are there others in my company who could benefit from a learning support network to grow together? Once I identified my options, it was time to get to work:
I decided to bring up my slump to my leader during one of our regular check-ins with the intention of generating options to get through it with his support. This conversation led to meaningful change that I will elaborate on in the next section of this post.
I began asking skilled colleagues for 15-minute chats over coffee (you know who you all are, and I thank you). I came prepared to share some of my challenges, trying to learn how they might be handling similar issues in their world. It didn’t take long before I began realizing that many of my challenges were par for the course in my role, and only a small handful were unique to me. This realization helped me develop a better attitude towards normal problems, and come up with Ideas to handle those that were unique to me.
I explored my company’s development resources. There is nothing fancy about this idea, but most companies offer some sort of career development and mentorship programs and I would always recommend checking them out. It felt validating to find out that I was already in touch with most mentors on a regular basis.
Make learning as important as the rest of your goals
The discussion I had with my leader when I reached out for help led to a spectacular takeaway– goals that we set at work play a big role in how we end up spending our time, so why don’t we set some learning goals together and review them on a weekly basis? While it seems simple in hindsight, this was one of the most valuable steps I took to completely escape the clutches of my learning slump. With my leader’s support, I began allocating time each week to do reading, courses, or anything else that was in line with advancing in areas that required development. As I started moving away from survival-mode, my performance improved, my motivation recovered, and I felt like I was back on track as a learner who could give his best to his team.
It is common for companies to encourage their employees to engage with learning, and some companies go as far as allowing a portion of their employee’s week to be dedicated to learning-based activities. While this sounds good in theory, it is difficult to make use of that time in reality without a leader’s support. Thank you for being a good leader and helping me get out of the slump, C.V.!
Here are a few ideas on how you can set learning goals to support growth in your role:
Define how a goal will support your ability to hit other goals or make you more effective in your role
Show how a goal aligns with your desired career progression
Create a clear deliverable or learning target that you can measure:
Example 1: Present [x] by [y] date
Example 2: Complete course [x] by [y] date
Example 3: Implement [x] concept in [y] part of our production process
Run towards the fire
Run towards that fire – this point is worth an honourable mention as it has helped me countless times, and I often recommend it to others. A simple and effective way to rip off the bandaid of learning is volunteering to present about a topic you’d like to build more knowledge in, within the confines of a healthy deadline (within a month or so). The research, exploration, and the need to explain your findings in a way that others can digest will force you to learn something new.
However you decide to get back on track, take comfort in the fact that everyone goes through this– it’s just a speed bump. There isn’t a single successful person around you who wasn’t in that exact situation, but the difference is that they didn’t give up on figuring out what they need to, and neither will you.
Happy learning!