A tool a day keeps obsolescence away
Building the capacity to learn helps us cope with constant change
Today’s world is driven by digital disruption, and that isn’t something new. The world has increasingly been driven by disruption since the late 1980s. The media industry and journalism have not been strangers to the breakthrough innovations that turned the world inside out. We live in times in which the only constant is change, and where new tools arrive daily.
The only way to survive and thrive in this environment is to refresh and renew our skills continuously, and there is no more important skill than building the capacity to learn to embrace and adapt to the endless cycle of change. More than learning to do specific tasks, we need to learn to have the ability to find the information or tool we need to complete a project or reach a goal. One of the best ways to gain the capacity to learn in real-time all the time is to create or play with new tools regularly.
We need to build our digital intelligence, which means we have to develop and strengthen our cognitive and emotional abilities to face and adapt to the demands of the digital world. We need three elements to achieve this goal:
1. Cultivate creativity and play, as defined by MIT Media Lab Professor Mitchel Resnick in his book “Lifelong Kindergarten.” To succeed in today’s society, we need to nurture creativity, tinkering and the spirit of innovation. We need to think and play more instead of following instructions or doing tasks. In our constantly evolving field of journalism, robots and AI will soon take over all of our routine tasks. We need to learn to adapt to the continuous flow of new technologies and strengthen our ability to deal creatively with uncertainty and change. Playing with toys, in our case with new digital tools, as often as possible helps us to be flexible and always ready to embrace the next disruptive technology. The focus on creativity and play also allows us to practice what Professor Resnick calls the “creative learning spiral,” which means that when we are in constant interaction with new tools, it encourages us to play, share, reflect, imagine and ultimately create. The creative process spiral can have a wide-ranging positive impact on our field.
2. Cultivate a growth mindset as outlined by Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, PhD, in her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” We develop our talent and skills through effort. Success is not about knowing everything and always getting things right; success is about the process of learning, about constantly trying new things without fear of failing, because growth comes from using and experiencing new things. In this case, I propose we use the growth mindset to learn to use new digital tools as often as possible, because it’s critical to strengthen our ability to adapt quickly to our ever-changing digital landscape. Adopting this mindset, which also aligns with Resnick’s concepts of creativity and play, is key to our professional realization and to the success of our industry.
3. Foster our curiosity to learn to build tools or find them and tinker/play with them. This is the only way to be relevant in our newsrooms and in our field. The shelf life of our skills becomes shorter as technology advances at an exponential speed. The most important skill is to be able to adapt, to be comfortable with change and responsive to it. A good exercise to achieve this goal is to be curious, play, tinker, learn and adapt to new technologies. Not with a focus on learning to use a specific tool, but with a focus on being able to learn any new tool that comes into existence. And then we need to be able to reflect on the learning process and share our insights. With this in mind, I will continue to share new tools for all of us to play with, using the #toolofday hashtag, #herramientadeldía in Spanish, during the JSK Fellowship program and beyond. Try the tools and contribute the ones you use the most as a journalist and as a team in your newsroom. And use the hashtag for conversation, questions, ideas and observations about new tools or processes.
Our tools have come a long way and change continuously, from pencils and notebooks, to typewriters, laptops and mobile phones. From print to screens and from columns to tweets… so don’t forget, a tool a day keeps obsolescence away.
