Your learning portfolio

Suppose you're trying to figure out how to invest some money. An investment advisor would tell you to have an investment portfolio. Portfolio theory says you want to have a variety of investments distributed across a range of risks. Usually, you want to have the bulk of your money in something safe, like a bank account with interest. You might take a little money and do something a little more risky, like buying some stocks, and you might take a really small amount of money and invest it in a friend's startup. Now, I'm not an investment advisor, so I'm not suggesting you do any of those things, but let's talk about what that could look like with your learning portfolio. A safe learning investment might be something in your existing field. If you have continuing education requirements, or your goal is to move up to the next step from your current job, that's a pretty safe learning investment. Or you could probably see a number of your small bets as safe learning as well. Something that's a little more risky might be learning something for a future job, just not in your current field. And something that might be a lot more risky might be having a learning goal for something you know absolutely nothing about today but which really fascinates you and ignites your passion for learning. Or it might be something you just don't think you're very good at. So here are several ideas for making these various learning opportunities all fit together by building out your learning portfolio. You inventoried your knowledge earlier. Now it's time to inventory your skills. So download the Know and Flex Skills Inventory handout. You'll see that there are two kinds of skills. Your know skills, specific bodies of knowledge that are anchored in an arena, and your flex skills which are usable in a broad range of situations. Examples of know skills might be car repair or web page design, and examples of flex skills might be analyzing or persuading. So this is a review of your broad range of skills. Don't stress about trying to decide if you actually know a skill or not. Just check off all the skills you think you may have developed in the past. So how can you think about new skills that you want to develop? Well, here's an exercise for you. Now that you have a deeper understanding of your existing skills, make a learning Venn diagram. Suppose on your curiosity catalog you listed physics, chemistry, and cooking as interests of yours. Ask your AI tool to suggest something you can learn at the intersection of those topics. For that example, the software might suggest doing kitchen experiments that are edible. I actually queried an AI tool with exactly that question and this is how it responded. "Here's an example of a fun and edible kitchen experiment that combines physics, chemistry, and cooking: making instant ice cream. This experiment demonstrates supercooling and the effect of salt on freezing point depression," whatever that is. The software went on to give me a list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions to make instant ice cream. Finally, you could use alternating rhythms. Studies show we learn best when our brains are presented with different contexts rather than seeing or hearing the same thing over and over. Let's say you have two or three topics on your commitments list as part of your portfolio. Mix up your learning activities in any given week or month by scheduling activities from several different learning goals. That way, you're not just learning one topic in one arena. You get the idea. Keep changing it up. Variety is the spice of learning.