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Funlearn

About why fun and unlearning bring more learning (especially at work).

By Roxana RadulescuPublished 7 years ago 2 min read
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I was reading about the importance of people having fun recently — hence the title.

Well, yes, it may be obvious, people work better, learn better, live better when they have fun. So when and why have we then lost the habit of including fun in our work life (or academic life, for that matter) without feeling guilty about it, as if having fun correlated with work or learning is equal to actually not working and not learning?

Because fun means communication; it encourages sharing; it means we feel safe with one another, safe enough to laugh together. Because laughter means vulnerability, the kind that makes you feel good, as it feels like you're sharing a bit of yourself with people who understand where you come from. We can't really have fun by ourselves, can we? I mean we can, but it's still best when it's shared.

Fun brings people together. Just like pain. And yes, they go together hand in hand. We couldn't appreciate the fun part if we didn't know what the sad part was. Yet I think the fun will always have the upper-hand to pain. Why? Pain brings people together, yes, but at the end of the day, at any kind of end, what do we remember? What will we think of when we're 80? The good or the bad parts of our lives? I tend to think the good. The fun. The joy. All of the good times we shared with others.

So I want to "funlearn." What does that even mean?

"Funlearn" to me is:

  • Enjoying the unlearning and re-learning, every step of the way.
  • Opening up and getting to know others on a different level.
  • Sharing emotions that can connect a group better than any power point.
  • Letting go of fears of "not good enough" or "what would others say" or "that's a stupid question, I won't ask it."
  • Enjoying the process of inventing myself over and over again—even when it's painful.
  • Being happy to realize how many things I still have to learn—even when that's painful, too.
  • Creating a good memory for later...

Unlearn. Unlearn while having fun. Which will bring re-learning with it; taking things as they come; appreciating what I have; dreaming for what I want; acting for what matters to me; finding meaning.

Because the future of learning is not training. Because learning is not just a process we go through in a class environment, on a training we're sent to or clicking our way to finalize it online. A great philosopher (Jiddu Krishnamurti) said that "learning is movement from moment to moment." And I couldn't agree more. Learning is not the mere formality of "attending" it. We are living "the learning" in our lives every day. Doesn't matter if at work, at school, at home, on our way to somewhere or someone.

...and it sometimes means I have the inspiration not to take myself too seriously—but to rather "funlearn" everything all over again. Anytime.

My point is, learning and having fun at the same time should rather be the rule, rather than the exception. People rarely learn when they are bored and uninterested, we learn best when we participate, when we feel engaged. The corporate world got somehow stuck in the kind of learning that is power point based or 'click here and there' based, focused on teaching (training) rather than on facilitating learning. The facilitation of learning means making it easy to grasp, to digest and to remember. It means including the social elements of learning in the learning experience.

And laughter is one ancestral social activity when we feel we're all in, feel that we belong to a group and share the same level of enthusiasm. What happens then is that our brain connects the information with the emotion. So just because we laughed together while learning something will make us remember that information better, longer, and we'll feel so good recalling it, too.

PS: for fun, watch this Ted Talk on why we laugh, it's a good example of laughing and learning at the same time.

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About the Creator

Roxana Radulescu

Learning & Development professional, personal skills coach, speaker, writer, runner.

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