Light Speed Ideas 38 – 40

38  Practice, Practice, Practice

There really is no substitute for practice.  The more your practice the easier things get and the faster you learn.  Practicing with a purpose and practicing with good feedback from a coach will also speed up learning.  You always want to be sure that you’re not practicing bad habits and good structured practice with a coach really helps.

39    Think of Learning as a Process, Not an Event

Learning takes time.  It’s a process that includes formal and informal education, practice and experience.  When you think of learning as a process, you can then apply all of the quality tools and processes to reduce time and variability.  If you think of learning as an event such as a class or even a curriculum, you can easily be missing 90% of the learning process.  As a result, speeding up learning is less about gaining knowledge faster and more about become proficient and beyond.

40.     Take a Quick Trip to the Magic Shop

A quick magic trick is actually an interesting way to make a key point or overcome preconceived ideas that stand in the way of learning.  There are lots of magic tricks that take little or no practice but look fairly spectacular.  I did this once during sales training.  I wanted to make the point that all the tricks and techniques of sales only work if the other person doesn’t know the trick.  And with today’s buyers most already know all the tricks.

So I went to the magic store and the guy behind the counter was very helpful.  He showed me several tricks that might work.  What I picked was a trick where you passed a 19″ needle through a balloon without breaking it.  I liked the trick because you could see it from distance.  I then showed the class how the trick worked and asked, “Would you like to see it again?”  I did it second time and then asked, “Who would like to see it again?”  Fewer hands went up. After the third time, no one wanted to see it again.  I then drew the connection between how they now felt about the trick with sales tricks and then ask them how they would feel the next time someone wanted to show them the trick.  Most major cities have at least one magic shop.