Unlearning in the era of Disruption and Revolution

The world is experiencing disruptions and evolutions at an alarming rate and It become inevitable that change will happen and that too at a rapid pace. Gig economy, skill economy and all other economies that make up the modern day work world demand a different kind of learning. We are forced to learn continuously at this time to stay afloat and it is critically important to unlearn as well.

The simplest definition of unlearning is to do away with the old to give way to the new. Unlearning is not forgetting what we know/learned but stepping back from it to be able to see things differently. While learning is important for building ourselves professionally (and personally), it is the ability to unlearn that helps us to adapt.

Often, we are bombarded with so much knowledge throughout our life that we tend to develop fatigue, and we may have a hard time being receptive to more learning. Unlearning can pave the way for relearning over a period of time. Unlearning is also important because the circumstances in which we learned something the first time might be different from where we are now.

The first step toward unlearning is accepting that our current knowledge may be insufficient in fully tapping our potential in the context of today’s technology-infused, VUCA world.

Be Creative and challenging the status quo

Take risks and embrace failure

Make Unlearning embedded in your DNA/Culture

Use Fear as a motivator to remove the limitations and to achieve potential

Techniques for Unlearning

Self-Monitoring involves learning to pay careful and systematic attention to your problem behaviors and habits, and to the stimuli that trigger them into action. There are two types of self-monitoring we can distinguish: qualitative monitoring, and quantitative monitoring. Qualitative monitoring involves paying attention to the quality of things that are happening (how they make you feel, what they look like, etc.). Quantitative monitoring, on the other hand, involves counting things.

Just as practicing helps to establish and strengthen associations, a failure to practice helps associations to dis-associate, or lose strength. Think of associations like you would hiking trails through a forest. The more those trails are used, the clearer they are, and the easier they are to navigate from begining to end without getting lost. As trails are less used, they become overgrown. It becomes increasingly likely that you will get lost trying to follow them.You can begin to extinguish a problem behavior by not engaging in it, and by avoiding all stimuli that would prompt you to engage in that behavior. Extinction of behavior in this manner takes a long time, and can be quite complicated, but it is possible.