How to study - Meeting Notes Newsletter

Hi,

I hope you are safe and well. It’s getting chilly here in the UK. It's zero degrees and super sunny in Winchester, a lovely day.

The Zero to Keynote book is now on general sale and I’ve had to print some more editions! Been busy shipping copies around the world (well, Europe, as I’m still trying to overcome some gaps in my knowledge about global customs!).

Thank you to all who bought it - and I hope it helps you develop astonishing public speaking skills and enjoy the journey of conference speaking - it’s certainly been the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my career.

In this newsletter:

1. How to learn
2. Editorial Desk
3. A link

I’m also pleased to be speaking at a Toastmasters event next week to share my story and insights from the book.

I often get asked how to become a better presenter, so I thought I’d share a few ideas in this newsletter about learning and studying in general. It’s a vast topic so I will write a full post at some point in the future. 

For those new to the Meeting Notes newsletter, welcome, I’m Rob, Chief Knowledge Management Officer at Cultivated Management. This newsletter is about learning, communication, leadership and the art of being effective at work. Welcome.

How to study

Before we jump into the ideas, it's worth mentioning that a good, solid, personal knowledge management system will help greatly. Here is mine using Capture, Curate, Crunch and Contribute.

Be active in the process

Studying anything requires active engagement and intelligence. Studying is not a passive process. Merely sitting back and observing, learning rote information and reciting other people’s work can be helpful but it’s not studying. 

Studying is about applying yourself to the process of information acquisition - and then the act of putting that information into action, or testing it against other ideas, to create knowledge - and that is an active process.

It’s important to point out that many workplace training programs don’t do the second part of this - putting information into action in the context it’s needed (i.e. during your work day). 

Choose a subject that is interest

As adults we often get to choose what we wish to study. As such, studying anything is easier (and more enjoyable) if you’re interested in it, or you have a major compelling motivation to learn it. 

If you have no interest in the subject it’s going to be hard to muster the energy to engage and be active in the studying

Study requires a critical mind

At the beginning of my Zero to Keynote book I dedicate a chapter to thinking critically about all advice regarding public speaking, including my own words.

This critical thinking approach should be one we apply to all learning sources. 

Nothing is simply true because it is written in a book (or other medium - especially the web!). It only becomes true when you put it into action and it passes your own test of understanding. 

There are hundreds of books (and other sources) that are helpful, instructive even, but critically thinking about the information contained, and applying tests to it, and seeing how you can apply the information, is where the real learning comes from. 

The goal with studying is not to learn how to recite information and sound clever, it’s to assimilate it and accommodate it into the very fabric of your behaviours and understanding. 

In other words, it’s not about what has been read or can be remembered, it is about what has been understood and passed through your own application. 

The best education is self education

The best education is always self education - education that happens inside your brain and within your own behaviours - and actively entered into by yourself. 

A teacher can instruct, guide, nudge and cajole. A book can plant seeds, ideas and insights. A mentor can recommend, suggest and advise. But after all of this, education must be an active pursuit that an individual does. 

A good teacher (in person, in books, online etc) helps to highlight what you, as an individual, may be capable of and what you could do for yourself to grow further. 

In the ZTK book I keep on about this - you have to take information and try it - and see what resonates and grows - and unleash what you are capable of. 

Find a few good sources

Francis Bacon once said:

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,"

It baffles me that people gloat about reading 200 books a year, or they read digests created by computers or other people. The goal is not to read hundreds of books, it’s to study and learn from the words inside them.

The goal with a non-fiction book is not to race to the end to find the dramatic conclusion - it’s to digest what is being generously shared by the author. 

I read Growing a Business every year and each time I read it I take something new from it. There are plenty of other good business books, but most of those are a rehash from a few key books.

For example, I have read many sales books and almost all of them are rehashes of “How I raised myself from failure to success in selling" - so I digest that one book and chew it over, as Bacon would say. 

I always aim to make my own books something people can chew over and over again - rich with insights that I've learned, developed and tested, but still need picking apart, testing and trying by the learner.

My goal with Zero to Keynote was just that - to provide a book that conference speakers could take with them to conferences for guidance, insights and inspiration. A book to be chewed over.

Teach other people

Nothing highlights how well you know a subject than to have to teach it to someone else.

To know something means to deeply understand the topic at hand - not just a few theories, or to recite facts, or point at other people’s work, but by deeply testing and applying your knowledge to make it richer and more complete. 

When we come to build training or teaching material to teach other people, we need to able to ladder information (start easy and build up), deal with tough questions, call on living examples or metaphors to bring it to life, understand how we built our own knowledge in the subject in the first place - and weave in stories that help to give examples of this information in action. 

We also need to understand the myriad of learning approaches that will help the student learn. (I’ll do a post on some I tend to use at some point).

To fully explain something so that others understand it, requires you to understand the thing yourself entirely. 

If you cannot explain it, you don’t understand it.

I fall for this - and deceive myself on occasions - when I say I understand it, but I cannot explain it to others. I’m lying to myself.

If I understood it, I’d be able to explain it to others with clarity and no ambiguity.

Discover the fundamental ideas and principles

Long time readers will know I focus almost entirely on principles and fundamental ideas. There is a reason for this. Many people often get stuck in the details, the plausible sounding ideas, the grand theories or the reciting of other people’s words. 

But it’s important to get down to the root of the topic, to the fundamental idea, to the really important point, to the principle that can be tested with all of the other work on that subject. 

After the fundamental idea or principle has been identified, seen, understood and comprehended (and mastered), it’s then possible to arrange the other details, competing ideas and theories onto the fundamentals and see how they relate, or don’t. 

For example, a fundamental theory of communication that I teach is that all communication has a purpose, an audience and happens in a context. It’s then possible to test other ideas, or look at details, or observe communication happening - and see how all of this extra details relates to the fundamentals or principles. 

For example, in the ZTK book I share the principles and the fundamental ideas of good presentations - and explain how much of the tactical advice should be ignored until you’ve understood these core principles. After all, there is no point in being a wonderful presenter with awesome stage presence if the presentation content you deliver is tosh and doesn't resonate with the audience. 

In other words - are there any general principles that could be laid down, teased out or understood - and if not, why is that and what might be missing?

They often say that “knowledge is power” but it is not what is read or what is remembered, or what can be recited verbatim that gives us power, only what is understood.

Understand the steps that build to it

In the book, I walk through the steps that build up to a great Keynote. A great Keynote experience for the audience is not something that happens by magic. 

The speaker doesn’t just turn up and deliver a WOW talk. The speaker has laddered up their experience and skill - and they’ve followed a logical process before the talk, such as coming up with ideas, building the core points, writing the talk and working out how to get to the talk too!

There are logical progressions up to the day. There are logical progressions up to being a good speaker just like in any other field of expertise.

Think about amazing managers - they weren’t born that way, they have laddered up fundamentals. Artists develop and ladder their skills. Musicians practice, play and play some more, getting better at all times. But underneath all of these are basic fundamentals that lead to that greatness. 

The painter learns perspectives, or colour theory, or how to observe, or how to apply paint in the right way. The musician may learn chords, or how to harmonise with other musicians, or how to hold their instrument correctly. 

The same is true with learning anything - even doing a good Keynote - there are fundamentals that are built upon and steps taken. 

We often fall for ideas, theories and concepts that sound plausible, that are repeated often by others, that are repeated in a variety of different words, without seeing the steps and logical demonstration of how the idea, theory or concept actually works. 

When we learn anything it pays to understand the basics extremely well - and then build the logical steps on top. 

Rest

We often learn the most when we take a break and give our mind something else to do - something different than study. When we give the information time to settle into the mind, it will percolate through what can often be a cluttered mind. 

In the book I talk about getting space to solve problems with our presentations and about decompressing after the talk. This is time away from the activity - a chance to reflect and let the mind rest by doing something else. 

Learning how to do anything (like a good conference talk) takes time, persistence, practice and reflection but our mind also needs a break.

Appreciate other ways

There are always other ways that work. Try not to be dogmatic about a single way. When we understand the fundamental principles we become more tolerant of other people’s ideas - we can see how they would work, how they may fail and what we can learn from them. 

When we know the fundamental ideas or principles, we can ladder, dissect, build and grow our understanding from others, even if they hold opposing conclusions from the facts and evidence to our own. 

But underneath all of this is the need to understand the fundamentals and the facts and the science and the principles - because it’s very easy to pass off opinions as facts, it’s also very possible to be confident we are right, and be terribly wrong at the same time. And many influential people are very good at this.

Studying and learning are about being open to new things - but grounding them in principles that you know to be true, or have passed your own tests on inquiry.

And I’ll leave you with a wonderful thought I heard my communication lecturer say once:

“A half knowledge is not useless, but it’s likely that the other half is needed too”

From the editorial desk

New video this week where I share my essential stationery items and how I use them for clarity, action and productivity. Plus some articles published to the site.

1. 10 Rules for getting the most out of my workplace - and why rules help in work too
2. Competition fosters silences
3. How to paint a picture of the future - podcast - part of the Releasing Agility audio series.
4. How to design potential futures
5. The plan is not the business
6. Vending machines and active listening
7. Your people need a plan too - podcast - part of the Releasing Agility audio series
8. The warm and fluffy test - the need to adapt communication styles
9. Dealing with low performance
10. Building Routines and Habits - podcast - part of the Releasing Agility audio series

A link worthy of energy and attention

This doesn't have much to do with work or management, but it is interesting to see how distraction can convince people to see something that doesn't happen. How David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear.

As a side note - I used to work with someone who was the master of distraction and misdirection, to avoid ever having to explain how his team and department results were falling apart. He was very good at this - and not something to be admired in my opinion 😄

If you enjoyed this newsletter then please consider:

1. Sharing this content with others you feel would get value from it.
2. Downloading the free ebook 10 Behaviours of effective employees.
3. Buying the “Take A Day Off” or "Zero To Keynote" books.
4. Sitting the online Communication Super Power Workshop to develop your super power in workIt means a lot.

Thank you.

Until next time.

Rob..