Learn By Doing

January 07, 2011

I was recently lamenting to myself about some inefficiencies and associated low levels of productivity that seem to be dragging me and others around me down. In thinking about this, it seems like the people and organizations that are productive and can efficiently accomplish a task or project, are the ones that do, and do, and do. They know what they're doing, because they've done it before, and they've done it recently, and they're doing it now, and they're going to do it tomorrow. Each time, they just get better and more efficient.

The people and organizations that are not productive, and can't efficiently accomplish a task, are the ones that talk, and talk, and talk. They've always got a reason why their past performance has been sub par, and a story about how their next move is going to be a home run. They're always reorganizing and coming up with a new strategy, and it's going to be great - Just ask them! Meanwhile, their competitors just keep doing, and doing, and doing - getting incrementally smarter and more efficient with each cycle. In the end, hot air can't compete with hard work - results talk and facts matter.

I typed "Learn by Doing" into Google to see if there were any good quotes or thoughts on this. What I found was that "Learning by Doing" is a formal concept within economic theory, having to do with the increased levels of productivity achieved by regularly repeating and perfecting the same task over and over. I guess I'm not the first one to think of this.

-- Greg