Making Learning Meaningful

Using the learning is what makes it stick for me. I need to see it in action. It needs to be relevant to my life and real. I am teaching my daughter. The lessons I learn teaching her are some of the most powerful lessons. Lessons I learn by way of personal problems stick more quickly than lessons learned from a teacher or from others. If I need to learn something to be able to do what I want to do then the learning will stick.

For example - I learned to properly build a fire on a camping trip when my partner forced the issue. I had previously coasted through trainings, through demos, and teaching girls with basic skills and shadowy knowledge. Out in the field I would let me program aides build the fire because they were "faster". On this trip there was no one else willing to do it. It was me or freeze. I am now competent if not fast.