Impact on Performance
It seems a truism that competences impact performance. Something we don’t even need to question.
As we look forward and backward on our exploration of PKM, Personal Knowledge Management, why not applying critical thinking to this evidence ?
In fact proactively learning takes time and effort. It could affect our performance today for an expected gain far away.
Two steps of the reasoning seems questionable to me:
- Does harvesting information ultimately lead to more competency?
- How much time spent on seeking stuff, sharing or narrating what we do, is really worth the effort.
Two other questions I have in my mind:
- When is it too long in advance to start exploring stuff? Is it beneficial to be informed on everything just because we may need it? The opposite approach being to be very conservative and learn only at the time of need. Being aware is nice but caused fatigue and a lot is forgotten before we could use it. However awareness increases chances for serendipity.
Opposite way: Between learning and applying it takes time. Without this time to mature and elaborate on what we learn we stay at a hacking level, constantly learning as we go, with no distance. I think that learning in depth to attain mastery brings a superior level of performance. The new fact is that practices are quickly obsolete. What good is there in being a master in something nobody needs anymore?
- New technology like Google search and the vast knowledge shared across the globe reduce our need to learn about anything before we need it. How often do we go for Google before even trying to recollect from experience. Could it be a limitating behavior to rely on our personal knowledge (possibly dated) instead of seeking the latest fresh knowledge available ?
The goal of this discussion could be to surface some points. Those points could serve later to establish your PKM strategy to be more effective and ultimately more performant.
PKMChat being about Personal Knowledge Management encompass Knowledge lifecycle in general. Our first chat was about learning, acquiring Knowledge. Our second is about sharing it. Week after weeks we will switch from one end of the lifecycle to another while exploring all the channels that could be used: social, formal, writing, videos. Feel free to suggest topics by tweeting to @pkmchat.