Happy Sunday from cold and rainy Amsterdam!

I've written a lot about learning in previous newsletters and how to make knowledge you own. But what is it good for?

For me, a big part of learning new things is the journey itself. I learn because I like to learn. When something interests me, I can spend ridiculous amounts on it. But (luckily), not everybody is like me, and they need a reason to learn.

We all learn all the time, but the rate tends to slow down as we grow older. Often because we lose interest and/or life takes over. I'm here to tell you that becoming a lifelong learner will make your life easier, even if it may take time to adjust.

I believe that learning is for sharing. Whatever you learn, you can do something with it that benefits someone. That someone doesn't have to be someone else.

My biggest motivation for learning in recent years has been considering my future self. Whatever I learn now will make the life of my future self easier. But, as I cannot keep everything in my head, I externalize current lessons in a way that my future self can quickly grasp and use. The added value of writing down what I learn is that I can easily share what's for myself with others.

All of this transferred to my professional life as well. As I became better at learning, so did my performance at work. Over time, I realized that learning was the central part of my work, and I started to treat myself as a learning worker instead of a knowledge worker.

This newsletter points to some of the content I've pondered in recent months and weeks as I've been building my company, The Learning Worker.

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​In this edition:

• Why you should become a learning worker instead of a knowledge worker.
• How intermediate packets can help make short work sessions valuable.
• The seven principles of the future employee/learning worker.
• Why learning has become the work for knowledge workers.
• Two book recommendations.

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New on Ramses.blog

📄 Forget the knowledge worker; become a learning worker​

In a world where change accelerates, knowing things is no longer sufficient. To thrive in chaotic times, it’s necessary to make sense of the situation and adapt quickly. In other words: we need to go from knowing to learning, and knowledge workers need to become learning workers.

In this article, in give my view on the new type of knowledge worker we need. I also touch on the principles of the future employee (more on that below) and how working has become the work for knowledge workers (also linked below).

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Learning from the web

📈 Bending the Curves of Productivity (Tiago Forte)

If you're a knowledge worker, you only create value once you deliver output that someone else can use as input. Until that output is sent, no value has been created.

​Tiago Forte makes a case for packaging up your work more often so you can share it with others. This enables you to work in shorter sessions, provide value more often, and collect more feedback to make sure you're on track.

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If you work in an organization and only have limited control over how you plan your day, mastering the creation of intermediate packets is key. Without it, you can't use the available time to create value.

Intermediate packets enable you to create value in every work session, even when time is limited. They have several benefits, according to Tiago:

• You can create value in any span of time.
• Intermediate packets are less intimidating.
• You become interruption-proof.
• You receive better feedback.
• Your work becomes a productivity flywheel.

👩‍💻 The 7 Principles of the Future Employee (Forbes/Jacob Morgan)

I first came across the term learning worker through an article by Jacob Morgan, who has been evangelizing the idea for some years now. The learning worker is one of the seven principles that Jacob identified that make the 'future employee' (although I think we need them now).

In my view, all of the principles that are discussed in this article make the learning worker. From learning to teaching, every step is needed to solve complex problems and serve those we aim to help through our work.

These are the seven characteristics of the type of employee every knowledge-based organization needs:

1. Has a flexible work environment. You can do your work wherever, whenever.
2. Can customize work. You can shift roles and adapt easily.
3. Shares information. You don't hold knowledge to yourself for political motives, instead sharing freely what you know.
4. Uses new ways to communicate and collaborate. You no longer default to email, instead looking for the best tool to share knowledge.
5. Can become a leader. Technology enables you to leverage your ideas by sharing them freely, making it more likely you become a leader.
6. Shifts from knowledge worker to learning worker. It's no longer necessary what you know, but how quickly you can look it up and interpret the information.
7. Learns and teaches at will. You need to learn as you find yourself in new complex situations, and you need to teach what you know to others so together you can find a solution.

Looking at these principles, you could think this is something your company should facilitate for you. But don't be fooled: you can start applying them in your team and benefit hugely (I've done it and had success in a very rigid corporate environment).

👨🏽‍🎓 Work Is Learning and Learning Is the Work (Harold Jarche)

Everyone obsessed with personal knowledge management should look at Harold Jarche's ideas on personal knowledge mastery.

I came across Harold's ideas beginning of this year when I wanted to cultivate a learning culture within my team. We were facing many unknowns as we were reorganizing and implementing a new ERP system. The future was unclear, to put it mildly.

This article helped me a lot to look at our challenges through a different lens. Learning is the work now that we have to adapt to changes in our work all the time. The learning Harold talks about isn't the type you can find with a Google search; it's implicit and tacit knowledge that takes a lot of dialogue and observation to arrive at.

If you're interested in becoming a learning worker and want to help others in your team, this article is a good starting point. If you want to know more about this type of learning and knowledge sharing, I recommend checking out Harold's book Perpetual Beta (more on that below).

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Book recommendations

I rarely recommend a book, let alone two. But as I've devoured these books in the past weeks and this newsletter is about sharing what you learn, these books are the perfect recommendations.

📕 The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

What's the fifth discipline? It's systems thinking. But it ties four other disciplines together: personal mastery, mental models, building a shared vision, and team learning. Together, these five disciplines enable organizations to become learning organizations.

I dare to say The Fifth Discipline is a classic, but unfortunately, I see very talk about it online. If you want to become a learning worker, this book is a must-read. But it also provides a very accessible and thorough introduction to systems thinking, for which alone it's worth picking up.

📒 Perpetual Beta by Harold Jarche

Last weekend, I bought a copy of Harold Jarche's ebook Perpetual Beta and finished all it by Wednesday. It puts to language many of my intuitions and learned behaviors.

What I like about this book is that it gives very clear models and examples of how to make learning the central focus of the knowledge worker's role.

I think many of you will appreciate this book, as it gives a model of how we can use social networks, (online) communities of practice, and work teams to come to deep insights to solve complex problems:

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If you want to first sample what the book is about, Harold has made chapter 7 (about personal knowledge mastery) freely available. Click here to download the PDF.​

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From my Twitter

🧠 What is metacognition?​

On Monday, I started the phenomenal Collector to Creator course by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. While some elements remind me of Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage (which is a huge compliment in my book), Anne-Laure has found ways to be even more valuable and practical.

The first week we discussed metacognition, a crucial tool if you want to become a better thinker and creator. As I like to do with courses that impact me, I've started sharing my course notes in a Twitter thread. Click here for the entire thread.​

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Closing words

That's it for this edition! Although it didn't have an article, this newsletter still amounted to over 1,200 words. Wow! Thank you for reading through to the end.

As always, if you want to share your thoughts or recommended resources, reply to this email or send me a tweet.

Speak to you in two weeks!

—Ramses