I was thinking about this last night…

In my earlier years in school (e.g., first grade), I thought of learning as facts. George Washington was the first POTUS. (And, a more handy acronym, the SCOTUS is the nation’s highest court.)

Of course, it’s not even true to say that all I was learning was facts, but it’s how I thought learning should be measured. Around that time I was also finishing up mastering the skill of reading, and learning arithmetic.

Nowadays, though, I learn very few facts. (In Forensics we learned that a person who has been poisoned usually has purple fringing (but not chromatic abberations…) on their extremities, especially fingertips.) But mostly, I’m learning concepts and strategies. Last night we talked about the Blue Ocean Strategy, for example. The “facts” might be what a “blue ocean” is, versus a “red ocean.” But I’m not here to learn colors. The real learning was the concepts and the strategy.

The problem is that I haven’t quite gotten over that mindset that learning is measured in facts, and I’m not learning a lot of them. It also makes the “So, what have you learned?” question harder. “Well, a person who’s been poisoned may have a purple tint in their extremities,” but that’s not really going to impress people with my business knowledge. (I’ll be sure to bring it up an interview. I hear some businesses these days are looking for cutthroat people.)