You Heard It Before… But Now It Means Something Else
If you are a creature of habit (like we all are) you probably go to many of the same meetings each year. No agenda is ever copied & pasted from year to year, but when you continue to hit the same events, you will likely start to hear some recycled lectures.
That’s not always a bad thing!
I was reminded of this when I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts (The Daily Stoic with Ryan Holliday) and he was discussing “Meditations” from Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. “Meditations” is a set of, basically, journal entries from Aurelius about his applications of and reflections on the Stoic philosophy.
Anyway – Ryan Holliday stated that you “go in and out of it [Meditations] and you grow with it.” Which reminded me of another text that I read several years ago (and that I have mentioned before in this monthly newsletter) “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson. In that text, Olson recommends returning to books or lectures that you’ve read or listened to before and read and/or listen to them again.
Olson explains that when you go back and read or listen to something again at a later date, you are now taking it in with a brand new set of experiences and ideas; which makes the way you interpret the text/lesson in a brand new way.
I have to admit that I hadn’t embraced that concept initially, but recently have decided to give it a shot. Shocker… it’s true!
We can employ this concept to meetings. One personal example that came to mind was in relation to a meeting I used to help implement and every year there was a dermoscopy workshop; and the workshop was presented by the same person every year.
At first I thought, “why would anyone want to sit through the same workshop again; wouldn’t that be frustrating?” But after some consideration, I realized the workshop a second time around would be a completely different experience because they have likely used the methods they learned last year for several months. Now, they can come back to the “classroom” with a stronger understanding of certain techniques and can even contribute to the conversation with personal cases or troubleshooting questions.
So, if you are writing off a meeting, hands-on workshop or cadaver lab because you’ve “been there, done that,” give it another thought. You may be surprised with what you didn’t ear the first time around or how you can newly digest the information having personal experience and the ability to ask more critical and/or useful questions.
