Driving vs. Being Driven : The reason you fail to get good at anything!

 

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve gone somewhere. I only know the route when I’ve driven there myself. Everything makes sense when you see someone else do it. You don’t realise how distracted you are, and how much you’ve missed until you have to do it for yourself.

When we have consultants on site to help us with something new, I assume I’m going to drive and they are going to give directions. I make notes as necessary, but the main thing is *I’ve done it*, not them. If I’m told I have to “observe and make notes”, I say I’m not willing to support it, as experience tells me there will be important stuff that gets missed as the consultant rushes through it. Once again, it’s the difference between driving and being driven.

I’ve written a lot about Learning New Things, and I think it always starts with learning to learn for yourself. If you are always relying on other people to lead the way, they are driving and you are being driven. They are getting better and you are just drifting.

I suppose the obvious retort to this is,

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”

Otto von Bismark

There is some truth in that, but the import thing in the second sentence is the wise person *learns* from the mistakes of others. There is still something active going on here. You are learning, not just being passive and waiting to be told what to do.

Standing on the shoulders of giants requires you to climb up on to the shoulders in the first place!

Cheers

Tim…

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer.

2 thoughts on “Driving vs. Being Driven : The reason you fail to get good at anything!”

  1. If I’m going somewhere once and I need to be on time I’m gonna call a cab. My sense of direction is parlous and I always end up setting off late.

  2. Matt: Sure. If you are only going to do something once, do you care about a learning experience? Maybe not, especially if it means it’s going to take longer to get there. 🙂

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