Learn By Doing

We’re surrounded by endless information, recommendations, advice pages and thought pieces. The blogosphere is now the home of people sharing how they do, learn and master the various skills that give them professional and personal success.

My recommendation, so as to add to the mix, is to read away but don’t ever think you’ve got a handle on what grabs you until you do it yourself.

I was rubbish at school. I didn’t understand how I could possibly learn anything by sitting behind a desk, whether it was geometry at 11, business studies at 16 or Uganda’s political stability at 22. I was behind a desk being expected to trust the opinions and findings of others. I didn’t. I wanted to get out there.

I’ve only ever learned by doing. I know how to paddle a river because I went and paddled a river, splashing around in a lake beforehand didn’t teach me what I needed to know. Neither did reading Don Starkell’s Paddle to the Amazon or watching eskimo rolls on YouTube.

I’ve learned how to lead expeditions and campouts because I’ve set up expeditions and campouts and invited people to join me.

I’ve become a public speaker because I’ve spent hundreds of hours on stage.

Theorise about wind capture as much as you like but it’s just a notion until you’re getting pulled across the surface of the planet by a kite.

Love poems? They’re lovely, but you only know when you truly know.

Best way to learn how to swim? Forget the deep end, jump in a river and swim for two months. After four full days in the water my skin started to secrete extra oils, it thought I was becoming a fish. No more prune fingers, isn’t that incredible?!

I’ve only realised when I’m not capable of something from trying to do it. But at least now I can explain why.

I’ve learned to question everything I’ve ever read from someone else (I expect you to be questioning this, right now).

I’ve read hundreds of books and seen just as many films and while they’ve given me ideas and inspiration, they haven’t taught me a thing.

I can’t recall one lesson a teacher told me at school that actively contributes to the way I live my life now.

So for all the vulnerability that Brene Brown can push your way, for all the business savvy shared by Seth Godin, for the brilliant awareness-raising of the importance of creative education by Ken Robinson, and for the gut-wrenching public speaking [ah hem, leadership] examples offered by Donald Trump, they are just things that other people know (or think they do).

Their ideas are not yours. And neither are their skills.

Yet.

Give yourself a platform to gain primary information about how something works, feels and plays out in your own life.

Simply getting somebody else’s opinions doesn’t mean you truly understand them, that only comes with living them yourself.

Enlightenment comes in the field, not in a comfy chair with the stories of others.

Go and practice. Do. Act. It’s the only way to transform clichè into comprehension. And until you have your own examples of life to base your understandings on, don’t pretend you’re the embodiment of everything you aspire to be and represent. You don’t need to, you’re on a path and that’s ok.

Be patient but act at the same time — patience is not stagnation.

Just as watching lots of films doesn’t make you a brilliant filmmaker, spending hours on TED doesn’t give you 17 minutes on the biggest stage of your life.

You can’t read yourself into a better person, but you can move yourself into one. You won’t be happy reaching your death bed talking about the books you read, go live as though you want to write one yourself.