Serial Learner: Anti-Siloing - How to Compound Learning

this episode of the serial learner podcast i'll be discussing anti-siloing no this is not a word that i made up it's not a very frequently used word but it is exactly what it sounds like it is the opposite of siloing and it is a reason that we are not gaining the most value from our learning most of us don't forget everything we learn we simply trap it and put it in a box we'll learn something in one context and assume it only applies to that context that is an act of siloing siloing we generally think of in a business context silos can be in the financial department and the marketing department operations department and when these these different sectors of the company silo themselves the company as a whole is going to lose out on tons of value because there's a lack of interaction communication across the varying facets of the company but we silo when we think to ourselves that a certain learning doesn't apply in other aspects of our life again we are putting learning into a box that it doesn't need to be in what happens when we silo we may take a college class on ancient civilizations and think it's pointless think this will think this is never going to be useful in my life when we silo we may gain we may fail to gain insights from people who have a different role in a company who are different ages who come from different backgrounds we may think we're being efficient but really we're being unwise siloing turns education into simple information rather than transformation so what happens when we don't silo this is where we compound our learning we compound our learning think of compound interest right i'm now taking a finance principle and applying it to personal growth right this process of anti-siloing we compound things we're going to let something grow and build and it becomes so much more than what it was a few examples where people were able to anti-silo first a southwest executive he had a habit of reading every single day a very avid reader you could call this guy a serial learner i'm not sure he calls himself that but i'm gonna refer to him as a serial learner and what especially stands out to me is that he would purposely read books and read material that didn't directly apply to his life or his professional work he wasn't just simply reading everything he could find about airlines he would read about so many different subjects and topics he happened to read a book about pandemics a little less than a year before covid impacted the entire global economy think about the value that provided as an executive for an airline company another example is the founder of lyft the tech conglomerate ride sharing app the founder while being in zimbabwe observed they have a very different transportation system than we have in the u.s i can relate a little bit i spent quite a bit of time in mozambique africa and what he observed was that people would ride in loads of people in a van or a truck or whatever type of vehicle people just piled in and there was never traffic people just piled into these vehicles and really were able to consolidate he took that observation continue to think about it when he returned to the u.s in the u.s he observed the traffic problems we had the shortcomings of the taxi system and was able to build what is now one of the most successful companies in the world the success didn't come from novelty but from synthesizing one idea in one context and connecting it in another context there are also many frameworks that are truly universal when we don't silo them or put them in a box i think of fitness analogies i'm very passionate about fitness and health fitness we can use we can compare so many things to the process of building muscle where we have to have resistance and we have to be uncomfortable it's going to break down and then we actually put in the work to recover to build muscle back up and recuperate that applies in business it applies in our own personal lives and i've i've seen so much content where that is being synthesized and applied in other contexts i think about economics a a field of study i recently took an intro economics course that's required for all business majors and one of the big focuses is on trade-offs this is not just an economics principle trade-offs apply everywhere when you are making a decision be it about your future career be it about relationships you are evaluating trade-offs whether you recognize that or not you're making decisions and there's trade-offs involved that is a powerful framework to have in your mind synthesize the learning from economics a field of study that you may or may not be exposed to and apply that to other areas of life an analytics course i took at byu we had this framework to use the excel tool solver a very specific tool within a very specific application but there's a framework involved with this tool that i believe is so powerful the framework is that you have to define your objective what are we trying to accomplish you have to define the levers or the variables what do i have impact over or what can i control and the last part of the framework is constraints what is preventing me from achieving my objective since finishing that course i don't believe i've touched solver but i have used that framework and that mindset to approach many problems in my internships in my own learning and personal growth so many areas this framework of what am i trying to accomplish what are the levers and the variables that i personally have control over and what's stopping me from getting there frameworks are a great anti-siloing device because they by nature are going to apply something in multiple different contexts there is a cost to siloing if the founder of lyft had siloed the information and left his discovery in zimbabwe there would be no lift if i had siloed information that i learned during my time at uyu or other learnings i would miss out on most of their value now i'm going to use a fitness analogy right we're synthesizing here we're pulling the muscle that we're training is the muscle of synthesizing anti-siloing is the practice of synthesizing connecting ideas across contexts synthesizing is connecting ideas across contexts to do this we need to continually ask the question where else could this apply think about in your life what is something you've recently learned that you've meant to be put in a box what is something that you've siloed and thought only applied in one certain context then practice ask yourself the question where else in my life could this apply anti-siloing will let your learning compound