Intelligent Learning

The Economist's sister magazine, Intelligent Life, recently featured an article on 'thinking' and the 'uses of difficulty', the central point of which was that

Our brains respond better to difficulty than we imagine. In schools, teachers and pupils alike often assume that if a concept has been easy to learn, then the lesson has been successful. But numerous studies have now found that when classroom material is made harder to absorb, pupils retain more of it over the long term, and understand it on a deeper level. 

What's striking about this observation is that, while FranklinCovey don't set out to make our material intentionally 'hard to absorb', we had an experience the same week the article was published with a group of senior level participants, where we had really challenged them to consider how the new ways of thinking and new ways of working we were introducing could apply to their situation. One participant in particular commented 'this is blowing my mind', and at the end of the first day, we weren't sure if we had perhaps pushed this group too far. 

We needn't have worried. 

At the end of the second day, when we gathered participant feedback, everyone we asked reflected a strong intention to recommend this experience to others, and this was born out by comments such as

• "Found it very relevant and enjoyed learning a new way”
• “Completely different approach to building relationships founded on logical basis”
• “Great structure / format. Will drive proper preparation”
• “Completely new way of thinking about client interactions. Also an approach that I believe will make us more efficient and effective”
• “Very useful techniques. Good challenges”
• “It’s clear that this technique works"

Reviewing again the article in Intelliegent Life, its sub-heading seemed to summarise this situation well in that 'the brain likes a challenge, and putting a few obstacles in its way may well boost its creativity'.