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D. Bruce Merrifield, Jr

#7. Mentors - Grow Your Charges Into Autodidacts


Are you a – parent, teacher, coach, employer, and/or wise mentor? If so, what are you doing to encourage your followers to develop their autodidactic skills?  

What is an “Autodidact”? 

Autodidactic means self-taught, or relates to someone who learns without formal education. They are self-motivated, life-long learners. Some are also polymaths: people who are expert practitioners in several areas. The opposite is someone who: is sleep-walking through life on autopilot; and feels entitled to make higher, guaranteed wages doing the same routines.

Because technology is now obsoleting occupational skills faster than most folks and/or their employers can re-skill, everyone must boost their self-learning game. Schools, unfortunately, do not teach:
  • How to Learn On Your Own For Life
  • And, How to Master the Process of Mastery To Achieve New, Valued, Employable Skills.
Everyone - from kids to Seniors - claim to be “learning something new every day”, which is true in this age of - Google, Youtube and Social Media memes. But, knowing new trivia within your comfort-zone, skill-set is not re-skilling to fill new-to-the-world business needs. Why, for example, is Microsoft planning on training 2M kids in India to become AI engineers and not middle-age, US programmers?  

Characteristics of True Autodidacts? 

They are so Curious to be motivated to go beyond showing up and reacting. They come to you with deep-dive, exploratory solutions and questions that others could care less about. Humans get pleasant, dopamine hits when they are on the active hunt for new discoveries. But, how many folks now get their dopamine hits by passively consuming digital entertainment which is algorithmically tuned to be addictive and make their Data-Lords rich? 

Autodidacts are self-motivated enough to choose what they want to study and master with great persistence and creative self-direction and discipline. 

Done right, being autodidactic leads to an all-around great life. Isn’t that what we want for our proteges?   

If Yes! How do you grow your own autodidactic capabilities to be a better coach at turning your followers into greater self-learners and mastery-path experts. 

For more: Google - “how to become an autodidact?” And, check in frequently to merrifield.com for blogs like this one and longer-form essays. Site themes include: getting wiser faster; and learning how to learn, unlearn and relearn for gainful, lifetime employment and wellbeing.

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