Why Doing Things Over and Over Won’t Make You Better

If you want to transform your learning, consider the four pillars of Experiential Learning:

1. Active Experimentation: Figuring out a way to improve based on an idea.
2. Concrete Experience: Actually doing something.
3. Reflective Observation: Doing a postmortem, or reflecting on the experience.
4. Abstract Conceptualization: Drawing conclusions or principles based on the outcome of that experience that you can use for the next experience.

Just turning out clay pots, blog posts, loaves of bread doesn't guarantee improvement. Unless you also actively engage in the learning process, you might just be strengthening bad habits. Once you've formed a bad habit, it can be very difficult to break.

You might feel like you're making progress, but unless you're also learning about your situation, you might be stuck in a productivity loop, just collecting the best hack, the best software, the best list of practices. It feels like you're progressing, but you're not.

You'll only really learn if you use all four steps of the learning cycle.