As a CEO of an EdTech company and a father of two toddlers, I’ve put a lot of thought into what makes people learn new things and develop to be the person they aspire to be. This isn’t limited to learning that typically happens in schools. Personal growth and development are fundamental requirements for a thriving organisation.
I’ve come to observe in my professional career that the amount of learning one makes out of a particular experience differs greatly by person. In sports, for example, the same amount of training can yield drastically different skill levels, depending on what people typically call ‘a knack’ or ‘a talent’. The same phenomenon can be observed in virtually anything. Great programmers acquire new concepts quickly and apply them to their work right away. Great marketers generate customer insight like no one else. Sometimes you’re left in awe of how easily mathematicians spot patterns in a seemingly unrelated set of observations. The list goes on.
It has to be noted that learning speed only goes so far. Great achievers don’t just learn fast, but they learn far. We don’t have to start naming young prodigies who didn’t quite make it, for one reason or another. It is perhaps unfair to pin their stagnation down to their talent, considering the uniqueness of the environment you can find yourselves in.
Learning far requires a long and sustained effort at what you are doing. I am constantly astonished by how amateur athletes can train for such a long period to compete for an Olympic gold medal, which is awarded to ONE person every four years. The self-belief, passion and vividness of their vision of success defy all odds — for one person. You have to be smart to win anything of this calibre, but you also have to be very blinded by the power of your dream.
The reverse question is, why do many of us seem to learn and grow less effectively, and how can we help each other grow to their full potential?
Technology certainly can assist with learning fast by identifying and removing redundancies (hello Adaptive Learning). It is also starting to help with learning far, by providing feedback and marking capabilities that are otherwise labour-intensive and thus too expensive to access in the desired quantity. The class of speech-AI powered ESL (English as a Second Language) platforms, the kind our company is working on, falls into this category.
We are yet to figure out how we help people set their dream. This needs to be a long term vision of what they like to achieve, and what person they want to be. It’s hard to envision your future when the world seems ever so volatile. Frankly, sport is probably one of the easier, if not the easiest, industries to dream big, because its rules are very stable and the way to climb to the top is well defined. For the rest of us, it’s a bit more complicated.
History tells us that it’s never too old to have a dream. One thing I’m hoping to do is that, by accelerating ESL, we’ll be able to provide something of a catalyst for people to find and pursue their dream. After all, language shapes how you dream, and what you can dream about.
If you are interested in this endeavour, we operate remotely and we are hiring!