70-20-10 and Me

I am a Learning Professional. Not a lot of people know this. Ten years ago it would have been Training instead of learning but we don't train people any more. We enable them to learn. It sounds ghastly but it is actually quite sensible. Research shows that 70% of what you learn comes from what you pick up on the job and from problem solving. A further 20% is from feedback from others and seeing good and bad examples of a topic an the last 10% comes from conventional courses and reading.

Now having said that people still have different ways they prefer to learn. Personally I favour the Kolb model which suggests people have one or a combination of two preferred styles from:

• Trial and Error (Active Experimentation)
• Getting stuck in (Concrete Experimentation)
• Watching others and copying (Reflective Observation)
• Thinking about it (Active Conceptualisation)

There is a free questionnaire here to help you work out your preference but usually it leaps to the eye. Think about what kind of knitter you are. For instance, if you never swatch and cast on straight away you're getting stuck in. I tend to be a combination of that and thinking about it - doodling charts and pondering decreases before just throwing those over my shoulder and casting on. For example:

My reasons for thinking about this are two-fold. Firstly work orientated: I have been to two events this week - Learning Technology at Olympia and Learning at Work at Excel - and attended several free seminars. I also read this article on Harvard Business Review called "Is It Time To Quit Your Job?". Secondly knitting orientated: I got an email suggesting I sign up for an online course on Norwegian Purling.

The work stuff made me realise it's time to move on. The knitting stuff made me realise I've been wanting to learn to knit continental style for years and that SkipNorth is coming up. I learnt Magic Loop in about 5 minutes when Nickerjac showed me how. Never looked back. I'm not assuming it'll be that quick to start continental knitting but hopefully there will be a chance for me to get started.