Month: August 2013

Well, I’ve realized that my last blog post was unrealistic. My idea I put forth about writing daily about what you have done and what you have learned from it in specific categories isn’t doable. I wrote daily going through this document every day for about a week. But I didn’t maintain it after that. I found it’s just so hard to find time to do it every day and it’s not sustainable.

Now I still believe that it’s important to learn from both failure AND success, but I think there needs to be a better way to do it, not my document idea I created. I mean, if the document works for you, then great! But for me, I need to find a better way to learn from my daily failures and successes.

What I Learned:

• Wait to put out an idea until I’ve tested it for longer and can do it myself.
• It’s important to create habits that are sustainable. My intentions were good with this idea, but it isn’t sustainable long term and that is key if you want them to last and actually make a difference.
• I can count this one as a failure, but I can learn from it! (Funny how I’m learning from a post about learning.)

So I’m not perfect, and I may post some things on here that don’t work. But I’m admitting this, because I’d like help! I’m interested in finding a better way to learn from everyday life than my document. Do you have any way to try to capture some of your learning? Comment below with any ideas!

Everyone always talks about how you’ll learn more from your failures than you will from your successes.

I don’t think this has to be the case. I think that we usually learn more from failures, because we’re forced to. Either we learn from it or we fail again. There’s often not as much of a choice. But I think we can learn just as much from success, but we never take the time to do this.

Think about it. Last time you failed or did something wrong, you probably thought about it after and you’re going to try to act differently in the future. But when was the last time you reflected on what went well and asked why it went well? It’s probably been a long time since you’ve done this.

Daily Learnings Document

My solution: Think about and learn from failures AND successes.

But how? Well I’ve just recently started something to try to capture more of this learning. I want to take time every day and think about what I’ve done and how I can learn from it.

I created an attached document that I am filling out every day. And at the end of the week, I’m going to do a summary of it in each of the categories. See the attached document for my sheet.

 

My fill-in-the-blanks:

What I Did Today: All activities or things I’ve done in the day. It helps in filling in the rest.

Observed: What did I observe around me. How others interacted, things I noticed, etc.

Learned Generally: This is for anything I learned that wasn’t a failure or success. Could just be an insight or something.

Learned from Failures: What I learned from messing up and failing

Learned from Successes: What I learned from the things that went well and I succeeded in

Action Steps: Pressing things that now need action. Keep this part small or you’ll create a huge to-do list you’ll never get to.

How God’s Character was Revealed: This line was a suggestion by my dad, and I really like it. It’s so important to see who God is and how He’s revealed in all aspects of life. This helps me reflect on how God was with me and gives me new insights into how He cares for me.

 

Now I should mention that I’m just starting to do this myself, so I may change it in the future. I’ve really enjoyed doing it so far, and I’ve learned a lot. The biggest barrier to me daily doing this is running out of time. My solution: do it throughout the day. Then it’s not too much at once.

 

I’d really encourage you to try this for ONE WEEK. Give it a shot. Print out 8 copies of it (one for every day and one for summarizing the week).

 

Do you have any thoughts on this? Comment below!