We were excited to lauch it and yet when it came to 'learning' how to use it we put it off.  Then along came Christmas and we all got to take some much needed vacation time.  

So over Christmas I instigated a new tradition with my family this year, of setting up a 1000 piece puzzle on the dining table not really sure if any of the 4 other adults in my Christmas party would be interested.  Well I needn't have worried; we were fighting to get to the table!  Imagine our dismay though when we got to the 999th piece and realised that there was a piece missing!  I had taken the puzzle out of its box and put the pieces into a plastic bag just before Christmas.  Oops.

So I couldn't help thinking about why the 'puzzle' of figuring out the new website hasn't had us all around the dining room table fighting to fix the pieces together.  We're developing a new product at the moment called the Science of Success.  In the course we learn about something called myelin.  Myelin is the equivalent of insulation on a piece of copper wire.  Instead of insulating copper wire, myelin insulates your brain's neurons so that they fire more efficiently.  The more efficient they fire, the easier it is to do.  Hence myelin helps us build skill.

So my personal resistance to 'learning' how to use the website was because I didn't have any existing neurons that had tried the new system before.  My neurons were firing slowly and hence it felt 'hard' to learn how to do it.  The breakthrough for me though was that as I learned about 'how' my brain learns, for some reason it seemed easier to try.  This apparently is reinforced in a study by Carol Dweck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck).  I found my mindset changed.

So the good news is that the missing piece of my learning puzzle is myelin and myelin can be grown.  You just need to practice.  Oh and the missing puzzle piece?  Well that turned up in my kitchen drawer.  Very puzzling.

Natalie@emergelearning.ca

Twitter- Natalie_emerge