Attention and Passion are the Keys to Learning

If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them. -Csikszentmihalyi

I have been thinking about how some people have a mastery of a topic while others are only able to just scratch the surface of a topic. What separates masters from the novices is the passion the master brings to her craft. For me passion is a deep appreciation and enjoyment of the nuances of one’s chosen discipline.

You can’t delve deep into the inner workings of a topic unless you enjoy how the parts fit together to create a functioning whole. You can’t retain every little detail without acknowledging the value that every detail brings.

Passion leads to an intense awareness and a savoring of the details of life. Going through the motions or just acquiring knowledge to quickly deploy and forget does not lead to mastery. It is not the path of passion.

In the book finding flow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about the power of mindfulness. A mindful mind becomes so when engaged in an enjoyable task. The potency of fun is that we can effortlessly engage in our work devoting our entire mental capacity to the execution of the task.

Csikszentmihalyi talks about the timeless state where we act without any feeling or notion of effort and time. It is as if we and the activity are one.

Poetic as it may sound if we want to help people tap into their work we have to find ways to make it fun. Contests, challenges and other gamification techniques are tools that help people tap into the rich reservoir of mental processing power. The challenge I find is that making things fun often gives way to the pressures of getting things done. There is the perception that the two things are at odds.

At the beginning of any learning initiative I think it is important to figure out how creating fun is a core component of getting things done. Creating fun helps people to be active participants in the learning activity. Ultimately it is fun that helps people tap into the passion centers necessary to adopt new behaviors.