“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Living in our time requires different skills, one of the most important of which is unlearning activities, skills and formerly productive (or wise) activities such that new learning can take place.

Living in the 21st century

Habitual behaviors usually occur in chains of activities: an initial stimulus sets them off, and then a sequence of events occurs. Habit chains are set off by triggers, which are stimulus events that bring the habits to mind and reinforce their execution.Once a trigger sets a habit chain in motion, it is difficult to stop it: You either don't notice it is happening or it plays with your mind so you don't care.

Automatic behaviors

'Flood' the old action with the newly desired action or habit.Rather than focusing on the unlearning part, simply design the new action you would like to take its place. With this approach of flooding your old routine with newly designed actions, the process of new learning overwhelms and makes extinct the old actions you wanted to unlearn.

The shortcut to unlearning

<div>
Your mom tried to teach you good habits when you were a kid: Always say please and thank you, brush your teeth every morning and evening, get your homework done before you play - the list goes on.
You have learned great habits that keep you healthy, happy and productive. It's all part of moving from being your mom's kid to becoming a fully developed mammal.
What do you do now, when you need to learn a new habit and unlearn an old habit at the same time?
Let's say you habitually follow a routine in the morning. First, you brush your teeth, then head to the kitchen to desperately seek out caffeine, then ... well, you get the idea. Eventually, you head off to work where you have another routine, most of which you perform unconsciously.
What if you wanted to shift one, two or three aspects of your routine? You would need to shift the ingrained patterns of behavior. Simple, right?
Well, how about the scenario where the software platform you have mastered has been replaced by a required upgrade to something completely foreign? You have no choice but to learn something new!
Welcome to the 21st century. Living in our time requires different skills, one of the most important of which is unlearning activities, skills and formerly productive (or wise) activities such that new learning can take place. 
As futurist Alvin Toffler once wrote, "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." 
So How Do You Unlearn Something? 
By definition, habits are something you do automatically, without thinking. They are performed, for the most part, unconsciously. Habitual behaviors usually occur in chains of activities. This means that some initial stimulus sets them off, and then a sequence of events occurs. Habit chains are set off by triggers, which are stimulus events that bring the habits to mind and reinforce their execution. Once a trigger sets a habit chain in motion, it is difficult to stop it: You either don't notice it is happening or it plays with your mind so you don't care. 
Well, now your team implements a new software platform, despite the fact that you are completely competent and comfortable with the old one. Or your child brings home a parent-teacher tracking and communication system done entirely online.
Learning and unlearning are required to move forward!
What you have to accomplish, as quickly as possible, is to make the old habit or action extinct. Well, there exists a robust theory of <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-extinction-2795176">extinction</a> that essentially says you need to make an action extinct before you can learn something new. In your case, you just want to log on to the new software platform at work or see your child's math grade.
The Shortcut To Unlearning 
There seemed to be two basic ways to pass chemistry when I was in high school. I could stay after school two or three days every week for additional help, or I could find the smartest looking lab partner. Admit it. You had the same choice to make too.
Unlearning is similar in some respects. I say we take the partner-with-the-smart-kid approach, and get to learning the new stuff, just like passing chemistry.
Here's the simple, ingenious approach to safely transform your old learning or habit super quickly: Simply "flood" or overwhelm the old action with the newly desired action or habit!
This approach works much like a full immersion approach to learning a foreign language. You can practice conjugating verbs and reading, writing and speaking in a language lab, but you'll only gain so much verbal skill before you have to order off a menu in Barcelona. If you lived in Spain, you could fully immerse yourself in the new language and flood your system with it rather than worrying about translating from Spanish to English.
It's a bit daunting at first, but you quickly improve since all of the learning is fresh and new. You'll move from a rank beginner to minimally competent fairly quickly and then progress to proficient, simply because all your focus is on the newly desired learning rather than the old action. If you've ever supported a college student studying abroad, you realize when they return home how much more fluent and confident they are with their language skills. Total immersion into a society where daily activities depend upon the proper use of the language provides the key here.
Unlearning has already become one of the most important skills in a rapidly changing marketplace. Consider the apps, websites and technologies today that simply did not exist 10 years ago. No iPhones, no GPS, no Instagram, no Facebook, and yet today all of these seem commonplace. We handle it all reasonably well - until we don't.
Rather than focus on the unlearning part, simply design the new action you would like to take its place. Take, for instance, replacing coffee with green tea.
With this approach of flooding your old routine with newly designed actions, the process of new learning overwhelms and makes extinct the old actions you wanted to unlearn. You simply get there faster by dwelling on which tea choice you make this morning. There is no focus at all on coffee.
The choice of where to focus your attention and energy simply affects the speed with which you will grow, learn, relearn and unlearn anything.
Flood your brain with what you want, and you'll get it quicker and with less effort.
</div>

Your mom tried to teach you good habits when you were a kid: Always say please and thank you, brush your teeth every morning and evening, get your homework done before you play - the list goes on. You have learned great habits that keep you healthy, happy and productive.

Why Learning To Unlearn Is So Important

ALVIN TOFFLER

Living in the 21st century

Automatic behaviors

The shortcut to unlearning

George 's ideas are part of this journey:

Related collections

Similar ideas