Category: Learning

Schopenhauer and the knowledge illusion – why we never think alone

Have you ever found yourself feeling like you really understood something, only to realize later that your understanding was limited or incomplete? If so, you’re not alone. This tendency to overestimate our own understanding is known as the “knowledge illusion,” and it’s a topic that’s explored in depth in the book The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach.

“We think we know much more than we do and that we do much more of the thinking ourselves than we actually do. We are highly dependent on other people and external resources, and we are often unaware of this dependence,” explains the authors.

But what might have caused this illusion of understanding? One possibility is the concept of the “will to knowledge” discussed by 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. According to Schopenhauer, the “will to knowledge” is a driving force behind the human desire to understand the world and ourselves. However, Schopenhauer also believed that true knowledge is ultimately unattainable, as it requires us to understand the world as it really is, independent of our own subjective experiences and perspectives. As Schopenhauer put it, “The subject knows only its own appearances, not the things themselves.” This means that our attempts to understand the world are ultimately limited by our own subjectivity.

This idea connects to the “knowledge illusion” in that it suggests that our understanding of the world is necessarily limited by our own subjectivity and that we may overestimate our own understanding as a result. The concept of “cognitive outsourcing” discussed in The Knowledge Illusion, in which we rely on external resources such as books, the internet, and other people to help us think and make decisions, can be seen as a way of trying to overcome this subjectivity and gain a more objective understanding of the world.

So, what can we do to combat the “knowledge illusion” and make better decisions? One solution is to be aware of our own limitations and biases and to actively seek out diverse perspectives. “When we seek out diverse perspectives, we are more likely to discover what we don’t know and to correct for the biases and errors in our thinking,” explains the authors. By recognizing that our understanding is necessarily limited by our own subjectivity, we can be more open to learning from others and more likely to discover what we don’t know.

As Schopenhauer wrote, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” By being open to diverse perspectives and acknowledging the limitations of our own understanding, we can move closer to a more accurate and complete understanding of the world.

Image by Gerhard from Pixabay

A new life in Malmö begins

During the first two years of the pandemic, I was fortunate to work 100% remotely at Play’n GO and the Digital Workplace Group (DWG). Two world-leading organizations in their respective fields, with many challenges and opportunities. But with no offices (DWG) or offices hours away (Play’n GO), I started to feel isolated. So, after two years of digital team meetings, the time came to do something else. By then, a job I really felt sounded right for me appeared, and since May I am the product owner of the intranet at Malmö Stad with access to three offices although the job is done from home as well.

Since then, I have become a key player in the team, plus met a lot of skilled and awfully nice people who work at Malmö Stad since you can do a difference for a lot of people. I am also a member of the steering group for acquiring a new learning management system (LMS) and a member of a team focusing on Working Smarter. This means I not only feel less isolated. I can also take on a broader approach to intranets and digital workplaces. With 27 000 employees, Malmö City is a big employer, and the better we collaborate and innovate in our teams, the better the service we can provide to the citizens of Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city.

A very rewarding thing that also happened is that I was selected to be one of the judges in the Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards, held by the legendary Step Two people. Humbling and awfully fascinating to see so many skilled and devoted entries, which of course also gave me insights on which kinds of intranets and digital workplaces are awarded and why. I also managed to record the 27th episode of “Att vakna ur meningkrisen” (in Swedish) – my interpretation of the work of professor John Vervaeke. Plus a recording in English on how I use the application Obsidian to structure my knowledge work around the Brothers Karamazov.

I am in a good place now, which you can tell also by me posting more often on LinkedIn. The time has come to work closely with the world-leading experts to see how far we all can take our work.

Photo by Pontus Ohlsson on Unsplash

How I learned to play Fortnite

Even since my Ph.D. studies in adult learning geared towards games, both games and learning have fascinated me. Meanwhile, I work with learning in the workplace and the difference between those two worlds can have any grown-up cry. The first world can be utterly removed from the real world of work, individual, very boring, and with a constant panic around upskilling and reskilling. The second world is highly immersive, gradually harder, social, and lots of fun. This is the story of how I learned to play Fortnite – a game of ‘last man standing’ for individuals and teams with a storm that kills, lots of weapons and ammo, and berries, and purple birds and dinosaurs. And swearing and laughing as 100 people on the island get fewer and fewer in a smaller place.

I started playing Fortnite a couple of months ago, to see what the fuzz is about. My oldest (now 12) has played it a few years and I first associated it with a lot of screaming and cursing. Then the playing and the players matured and now they mostly engage vividly with just the occasional cursing. I decided to learn to play Fortnite, after soon 20 years with World of Warcraft (WoW) and these are the main ways I used to get into the game:

  1. Just get in there and play and be a big loser. You will suck hard at this, and people will laugh at you. But there you are playing among the best 80 of 100 players, and it’s ok. Soon enough you see what works better just by trying things out and using the epic spectating function in Fortnite: After someone kills you, you can spectate what they do. And if you are lucky, this was not just a fluke shot from a noob, but a skilled moved from a good player. Just sit back and relax to see how they play.

  2. Play with people who are much better than you and who can tolerate that you kind of suck. This player for me has been my son. When we play as a duo, we win in 90% of the cases. He tolerates that I am not at all as skilled as him, but he guides me towards success. One thing I never get is how he knows what I do, which gear I have, which enemies to attack, if they are one-shots or not (have low health so another shot is enough), and where the enemy is. This without sitting in the same room as me, meaning he just knows after playing so many hours (and no, it’s not a cheat).

  3. Checking YouTube for occasional tips and tricks on how to perform certain moves. I have found that the films on the funnier side, like this one noobs, pros, and hacker skills, are easier to watch since they just show the flow of the game. I watch the step-by-step tips-and-trick movies more seldom since they feel more like instruction. Could be helpful but are less fun.

  4. Taking formal 2-hour e-learning courses on the history of Fortnite with quizzes demanding that I score 80% correct and where the correct answer is always the longest. Ha, ha, ha.

After playing for some time, playing with others (step 2 above) totally dominates my learning. The 10–14-year-olds know all the tactics, weapons, ways in and out, enemy movement and skills, and build craft, so I just need to be in it and soak it up and practice it.

One of the best books on learning and games is James Paul Gees’ “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy” and at the end, he lists 36 learning principles (here with my comments). We can easily see that many of these still apply, such as:

Active, Critical Learning Principle: All aspects of the learning environment are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive learning.
–> You learn to play Fortnite by being active (see point 1 above). Just get in there. If you are passive, you will be an easy target and die. And by being active, you learn.

Semiotic Principle: Learning about and coming to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts) as a complex system is a core to the learning experience.
–> This is true for any game where, in the beginning, you don’t know what for example epic, one-shot, or double movement are. You learn as you go. Such as in WoW: Try being in a party and pick up something that is BOP and that another player needs more than you, and the social setting will teach you a thing or two.

Multiple Routes Principle: There are multiple ways to make progress or move ahead. This allows learners to make choices, rely on their own strengths and styles of learning and problem solving, while also exploring alternative styles.
–> There are many ways to be the best of 100 people in Fortnite. I thought I had come up with something great when I landed on the outskirts and slowly moved towards the center. I could collect weapons, not meet as many, and be in more control. Until I heard from the 10–14-year-olds that this is how the noobs play, of course. Experienced players land in the most crowded city since the fighting is fierce (and resembles end fights more), the weapons are plenty, and you do less running from the storm. Two very different ways that work but based on different mindsets.

Transfer Principle: Learners are given ample opportunity to practice, and support, transferring what they have learned earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and transforming that earlier learning.
–> This happens all the time between matches in Fortnite, or after respawns in WoW. In one game you learn that attacking a heavily armed guard just for the hell of it is fun for a very short time if you have a pickaxe. In the next game, you find a way around him (so-called ‘reskilling’).

Achievement principle: For learners of all levels of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to each learner’s level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner’s ongoing achievements.
–> You are always challenged at the right level in Fortnite and when you are rewarded it looks just awesome (see top image). A.k.a. ‘upskilling’.

It can be easy to say that gaming is one thing and corporate learning another. But remember that this is how our kids grow up now and how the gaming world has worked the last 20 years. Meanwhile, what has happened to corporate learning? We still talk about gamification, learning management systems, mandatory training, testing via multiple-choice, social learning as if this is something new, and pushing heavy content as if it should land in people’s brains, instead of challenging them.

Trust me, mastering Fortnite and WoW is really hard. So, let’s wait for the kids to show the way. They never took a course in Fortnite but are masters of it. And have fun doing so.

What are the steps for building a sound learning culture?

I asked this question on LinkedIn the other week since the learning culture can decide if any learning initiatives succeed or fail. Of course, there is no set recipe to follow, but this is what I and others discussed:

1. Ground everything in the company strategy and its goals, and make sure continuous learning, curiosity, trust, and empathy are central aspects of doing business. If you have, as Clark Quinn stated, a Miranda culture, you will not succeed. In such a culture, everything you say can and will be held against you and people will hold back from sharing since they might be punished for it later.

2. Leaders, all the way to the CEO, must set an example and be role models for learning. People do what these leaders do, not what they say. Top management also needs to co-create and backup all choices regarding the learning platform, intended skills in relation to the strategy, providing time for people to learn and experiment, change management, and more.

3. Ensure all employees understand what learning at work is today and how to practice it openly every day. Working out loud, Personal Knowledge Mastery, Modern Workplace Learning, 70/20/10, and more will guide them to the best possible learning based on their needs. People should be talking about learning, sharing interesting things, and encourage others to do the same. Marcia Conner’s Learning Culture Audit can create a picture of where you are now and provides a roadmap for what to aim for.

4. Use the best platforms and content services available to give life to the educational guidelines and company goals above. There are many platforms out there but select the ones that are right for you. Make the training, coaching, and stretch goals relevant, timely, and, targeted (thanks Nigel Paine). Ensure that, before you launch any courses as the solution for anything, analyze how the learning transfer over to real problems will occur using Will Thalheimer’s Learning Transfer Evaluation Model (LTEM).

5. Build for the future using a champions program with the people who are inspired by the above and want it to work for their team. They will, together with the leaders in step 2 help make learning a natural part of work. As Harold Jarche says “Learning is work, and work is learning”. Make sure to hire people that have this approach to learning.


Finally, as the learning culture is maturing and people talk more and more about learning, it can be easy for them to slip back to the old way of thinking where courses were meant to solve it all. An excellent source of knowledge to avoid this is Cathy Moore’s Will Training Help, where you clearly see that training is not always the answer. It might be the culture or something else that hinders people’s performance.

The post on LinkedIn is here, for anyone who is interested.

Gnothi seauton

Getting to know yourself can be joyful and distressing. We are complex creatures and of course have strengths and weaknesses. Facing these can be an eye-opening experience. As a part of this life-long journey, I went to Understand Myself – a personality test developed by Dr. Jordan B Peterson and his team. They have constructed the Big Five Aspects scale based on thousands of people cross-culturally. Their test contains 10 pages with statements you either agree or disagree with on a scale. This is how they describe the dimensions:

“Extraversion (associated with positive emotion), Neuroticism (negative emotion), Agreeableness (the primary dimension of care for others), Conscientiousness (associated with duty, precision and responsibility) and Openness (interest in ideas and aesthetics)”

I took the test as recommended – in a calm state of mind where I am not disturbed. These were my results:

  • Agreeableness: Compassion and Politeness: (65) Moderately High.
  • Industriousness and Orderliness: (31) Moderately Low
  • Extraversion: Enthusiasm and Assertiveness: (89) Very High
  • Neuroticism: Withdrawal and Volatility (56): Average
  • Openness to Experience: Openness and Intellect: (96) Exceptionally High

On the positive note, thanks to my Extraversion and Openness to Experience, I should engage in work that aims to revolutionize the way we work and think, preferably close to top management. I should also use my energy to talk and write about this, based in my interest in philosophy and new ways of working and learning. This is also where I am at work today, given the projects I have initiated and the talks I give at conferences. I just can’t wait to see where the next step will take us.

On another note, my conscientiousness is moderately low, and this could be my Achilles heel if I don’t pay attention. Since I so easily can drift away in my thinking or reading or music, I must use lists, routines, and plans to get things done in time without missing any details. This also works for me at work, since I follow meticulous plans where others can see my progress. Such project plans stop me from thinking about the next big thing and instead do the next thing on the plan. But during the projects, there is always something in me that longs for the detailed project phase to be over, so the philosophizing can start again. I do not grow especially well when given detailed routine work for too long.

Remember that a test that shows your strengths and weaknesses can be one of many tools for building a stable personality and knowing what kind of work is best suited for you. Remember also, that if you have a hard time accepting a weakness, read these words of Arthur Schopenhauer:

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident”

So, even if you think “that is not me!”, after some time you might see it as self-evident and see what activities and tools and people can help you balance your weaknesses. We also have different kinds of strengths and weaknesses, where a balanced team can do wonderful things. Just look at the current digital workplace project I am involved in: The external project manager helps me keep track of all the details, after I have sold the idea to top management, recommended the vendor, and have grand plans for where this will land. A weakness can be turned to something good with the help of tools and people around you.

Photo by Hans Reniers on Unsplash

L&D and the Digital Workplace are merging

Last week, I spent two days in Belgium including the beautiful town of Ghent, pictured above. The reason for my visit was to collaborate with my colleagues at Haldex when starting our e-learning efforts globally. Since they are subject matter experts and I have a background in professional education, including instructional design, we could find a mutual road forward. Frankly, I was so glad to return to the e-learning discussions again after spending years with intranets and the digital workplace. Then it dawned upon me that those two big areas in my professional life are merging, which I also wrote about in a LinkedIn post that sparked quite some interest.

The reason for this interest is probably since a lot of people also feel Learning & Development (L&D) is about to take a big leap forward in the coming years. People such as Jane Hart and Harold Jarche (see the LinkedIn post for their profiles) have long been advocating Modern Workplace Learning and Personal Knowledge Mastery as an integral part of working. Meanwhile, my focus the last years, the digital workplace, is taking big steps in this direction too. By using Delve for AI-driven profiles, Yammer for supporting communities of practice, and SharePoint to structure files so staff can re-use them, L&D and the Digital Workplace are merging. Add a modern Learning Management System (LMS) that includes modules for performance support and can be integrated into SharePoint, and you have a solid ground to stand on.

I used to work as an instructional designer, and now work as a communications manager with a focus on building a learning organization based on knowledge management and the digital workplace. I guess those professions will merge more and more and that the formal titles will mean less. No matter if you are an instructional designer, L&D manager, or communications manager, your role is to help others understand the world, work smarter and learn better. I so look forward to the coming years when much will change for the better.

My top 10 tools for learning 2018

As during previous years, Jane Hart asks what our top professional learning tools are. Here are my top choices personally and professionally without any internal order:

  • Twitter: This has been my go-to source for knowledge for many years. I hear about skilled and interesting people, add them to one of my lists, and can enjoy their posts and conversations easily.
  • YouTube: Oh, YouTube, this vast sea of strange videos but with islands of clarity as well. Mainly used for recorded talks, product tests, and sheer inspiration.
  • LinkedIn: Argh, LinkedIn is so hard to use as a learning tool, which I have stated before. Meanwhile, almost daily I see something interesting plus I reach my largest audience through my own posts here, opening up for interesting conversations.
  • Yammer: Externally I use this to keep in contact with the members of Intranätverk. Internally, we are starting to use it more and more as well. Excellent tool for asking questions and quickly learning from others.
  • Kindle: What would I do without the Kindle app? I have so many great books here which I read, re-read, write notes in, and learn from.
  • Evernote: This has been my clipper and organizer for years. Whenever I don´t have time to read something, I clip it to Evernote and return quickly to it later.
  • Feedly: The best web source reader there is. Hundreds of sites and blogs neatly stored in categories for me to consume every morning.
  • Paper.li: I let paper.li create automatic magazines based on my Twitter lists. This helps me surface articles I might have missed during a Twitter day. I never auto-post these paper.li magazines, but instead share individual picks from what I find here.
  • SharePoint: The main platform at work for working with document and news.
  • Google Suite: Currently the way I handle my mail and calendar and more. Plus all Google Alerts and Search, of course.

 

How to invest smarter thanks to the liberal arts

We all want to make smart investments, and there are many ways of doing so. One, for many probably a surprising way, is by knowing your liberal arts too. Yes, of course, traders can make money without knowing the companies and just act at Buy and Sell. But to see your money grow big time thanks to compound interest, it can take more. An interesting perspective on this is presented in “Investing: The Last Liberal Art” by Robert G Hagstrom. It is not a traditional how-to book on investing. Instead, it is more about “stock picking as a subdivision of the art of worldly wisdom.”

How the does the author suggest that we obtain this worldly wisdom? It happens in two broad steps:

To state the matter concisely, it is an ongoing process of, first, acquiring significant concepts—the models—from many areas of knowledge and then, second, learning to recognize patterns of similarity among them. The first is a matter of educating yourself; the second is a matter of learning to think and see differently.

To help us obtain this blissful state, Robert guides us through a set of major mental models created within physics, biology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, literature, and mathematics. They help us move into step one where we learn about everything from our biases and miscalculations, via evolutionary biology and information overload causing an illusion of knowledge, over to Kahneman’s two types of thinking, and William James’ pragmatism. Also, we should never ignore the classic books such as the Brothers Karamazov, The Great Gatsby, or To the lighthouse:

“The great works of literature have enormous power to touch our hearts and expand our minds.”

The second step, which is harder than the first but which also has a tremendous potential, lies in building a model where all these parts fit together. Based on the models you have chosen, you create a way of looking at the world and then investing accordingly. We aim to avoid Charlie Munger’s classic trap: “To a man with only a hammer, every problem looks pretty much like a nail.”

I must say I loved this book, for several reasons. One is that it shows how investing in companies can be enhanced by improving our worldly wisdom. Of course, such worldly wisdom is a gift in itself since you understand more about your place in the universe. Another reason I love this book is since it also got me to think about the lines between robot investors and people. The book didn’t mention this but given how the financial tools evolve I came to think of it.

Surely, someone will state that the machines can do all the investing for us. For me, that will not be true in a long time. The reason the machines will need us? Humans are also deeply illogical, lazy, and can suffer from “dysrationalia”— which is the “inability to think and behave rationally despite having high intelligence.” Many business decisions are done based on fear, revenge, or vanity and then covered in the latest business lingo. We also base many decisions on older models such as regression to the means – what goes up must go down. This can be true in several areas but the stock market is more complex:

Stocks that are thought to be high in price can still move higher; stocks that are low in price can continue to decline. It is important to remain flexible in your thinking.

So I guess that the investment robots will do a much better job when they work alongside humans. The robots can present their investment suggestions, and then we can add a human side of it. To avoid mindware gaps, we should strive for a broad education and for checking our egos and their limitations at the door also when investing. Think you have no biases, assumptions, and always act based on reason? Don’t fool yourself. We humans are much more complex than we allow ourselves to realize, but knowing we can be both rational and illogical can be an important knowledge not only when investing, but when living. As Robert says:

“What all investors need to internalize is that they are often unaware of their bad decisions. To fully understand the markets and investing, we now know we have to understand our own irrationalities.”

So let’s accept our limitations while striving to build wordly wisdom. Not only can we invest smarter. We can also be better parents, lovers, and friends. I will let Warren Buffett end this post:

“The formula we use for evaluating stocks and businesses is identical. Indeed, the formula for valuing all assets that are purchased for financial gain has been unchanged since it was first laid out by a very smart man in about 600 B.C.E. The oracle was Aesop and his enduring, though somewhat incomplete, insight was ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ To flesh out this principle, you must answer only three questions. How certain are you that there are indeed birds in the bush? When will they emerge and how many will there be? What is the risk-free interest rate? If you can answer these three questions, you will know the maximum value of the bush—and the maximum number of birds you now possess that should be offered for it. And, of course, don’t literally think birds. Think dollars.”

 

Photo by Neil Cooper on Unsplash

Kate Bush was right: Don’t give up

On my quest to understand the world and the human nature, I just read ’Peak’ by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. They describe the research behind the (in)famous 10,000-hour rule, and what experts do differently from others. It is a fascinating read that focuses on skills like memorizing long number chains, working as an expert surgeon, or becoming a chess master, violin virtuoso, or tennis pro.

People who have achieved world-class in such areas have all used the same pattern – a pattern that Anders and Robert display. It is not just that they have spent at least 10,000 hours doing the same thing over and over. If you don’t use what they call ‘deliberate practice,’ you soon hit a plateau and never become better. But if you use deliberate practice you will add the following ingredients to all those hours:

  • Someone else has already done it so you what success looks like.
  • You set stretch goals that you almost find impossible and that are outside your comfort zone.
  • A mentor can coach you and give you feedback on how you can improve.

A fascinating conclusion in their book goes against most of what I have experienced growing up: They say that except for clear cases like basketball where you need to be tall, there are no naturals. Anyone can master anything. Meanwhile, all of us have seen kids who dance, play soccer, charm others, apply spatial skills, master PlayStation games or use a vocabulary that far outreaches their peers’ already at very young ages. Is it only deliberate practice that causes these children to excel? From a layman’s perspective, I would still say there are naturals, even though I can’t prove it.

Perhaps such children have mastered not only the above skills by practicing. Perhaps they have done the same thing as master chess players have done according to Anders and Robert – analyzed what others are doing:

“The ability to recognize and remember meaningful patterns arises from the way chess players develop their abilities. Anyone who is serious about developing skills on the chessboard will do it mainly by spending countless hours studying games played by the masters. You analyze a position in depth, predicting the next move, and if you get it wrong, you go back and figure out what you missed. Research has shown that the amount of time spent in this sort of analysis—not the amount of time spent playing chess with others—is the single most important predictor of a chess player’s ability. It generally takes about ten years of this sort of practice to reach the level of grandmaster.”

Today, such analysis has become much easier since YouTube and other tools can show any expert. Add a deliberate practice routine to such a review of masters, and you are on your way to becoming if not a master, at least much better at what you do.

On the one hand, I think what Anders and Robert have done is superb. They uncover what is necessary to become great at something. On the other hand, it is quite hard to apply their ideas to what typical knowledge workers do. They mention meetings and more briefly, but I constantly wondered how their ideas could, for example, make me a better communicator or work smarter to support a corporate strategy using digital tools. The three points above and the chess players’ analyzing could apply to such areas as well, but how is less clear in ‘Peak.’

I recommend the book to anyone wanting to know more about what can make us much better at something. It doesn’t provide answers to how we can excel at just about anything, but for sure made me think. And Kate Bush was right: Don’t give up. Want to become a master at something? It will take a nearly stupid amount of uncomfortable hours before you arrive. Will it be worth it? I guess that will be up to each person applying those rules.

 

Photo by Hudson Hintze on Unsplash

How we learn – some reflections

Thanks to Clark Quinn’s article Two good books on learning, I decided to read one of his recommendations: Benedict Carey’s How We Learn. It turns out the book is quite focused on the way students learn in school, and on a brain focused cognitive science view of learning.

Benedict divides his book into four sections:

  1. The cognitive basis of learning, based on how the brain works.
  2. Techniques to help us hold on to facts better.
  3. Comprehension techniques to turn facts into useful tools in our daily lives.
  4. How to use the subconscious to support learning even better, such as by sleeping (causing the image choice in this post).

Regarding the tips the book covers, Abhijit Bhaduri made an excellent overview in The Times of India:

These are all tips and tricks we can test on school children. For example, start by launching the final test and let them fail at it. Then follow up with training on the things they failed at by using spacing in time with flash cards to regain from dips in the forgetting curve, changing the surroundings, and getting good nights sleep. Here is a rather typical quote from the book with an example of how to learn German:

The optimal schedule is the following: Three hours on Day 1. Three hours on Day 8. Three hours on Day 14, give or take a day. In each study session, we’re reviewing the same material. On Day 15, according to the spacing effect, we’ll do at least as well on the exam, compared to nine hours of cramming. The payoff is that we will retain that vocabulary for much longer, many months in this example. We’ll do far better on any subsequent tests, like at the beginning of the following semester. And we’ll do far better than cramming if the exam is delayed a few days. We’ve learned at least as much, in the same amount of time—and it sticks.

For corporate settings, I think some of these ideas are a match. For example, try to avoid cramming in full-day sessions, allow breaks to do something completely different, use mobile learning apps to remind people between course days, and teach them how to sleep well. And of course, if you are studying for a formal test at work, by all means, try these techniques.

What I would like to complement this book with, is other views of how we create new knowledge and learn things. Just to name a few examples (there are for sure many):

So, instead of seeing this as a debate between cognitive science and social learning, I think they can complement each other also in professional settings. We do have a brain, and the better we learn how to use it, the better we can store, categorize, retrieve, and use things we have learned and experienced. Meanwhile, we are no Robisonados living on isolated islands. Who we learn with and how can be central to our success and we not only learn from collaborating in teams – we learn even more by reaching outside our teams (thanks Donald Clark for the link).

Photo by Maeghan Smulders on Unsplash.