Key Strategy Two: Explore Widely

The second of our key strategies is to Explore Widely.

At some point in your life you have probably been asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Please forgive the adults in your life who ask you this question. It is possible that they don’t know how to talk to young people and this is the only question they can think of. It is possible that they don’t know the answer for themselves and they are looking to you for some ideas.

Feel free to answer like a teenager, “I want to be alive.” “I want to be taller.” “I want to be happy.” “I want to be older.”

You don’t need to know the answer to that question. At least not in the way that they mean it.

Let’s talk about ways to plan your Learning Journey even when you don’t really have a plan for your life. Even if you do have a plan for your life, these ideas might help you too.

This strategy is called, Explore Widely. It is all about pushing yourself to see the bigger world, trying new things, considering new ideas, and seeing ways that you might find your place in the bigger world.

Remember, you don’t even know what you don’t know, yet. You might be smart and talented and a very nice person but it is a big world out there. There is nothing wrong with not knowing everything. This strategy is all about being open to new things.

One of the hardest parts of this strategy is being open to “not knowing”. It is not about demonstrating how smart you are, showing off your abilities, or proving that you already know everything. It is quite the opposite.

To be successful at exploring widely you need to be fine with being a beginner. You need to think like a Kindergartener and embrace the excitement of encountering new things every day. Kindergartners aren’t worried about “not knowing” they have a beginner’s mindset and gobble up all the excitement around them.

Traditional schools are designed around graded classes. You take a class that has homework, quizzes, tests, papers, projects. Each of those things is graded. In some ways the entire class is designed around the need to assign a grade at the end. That creates a mentality in which grades and learning go hand in hand.

In a traditional school success is measured by getting a good grade. A good grade is earned by demonstrating that you accomplished what was asked of you. So we come to equate success with showing off that we can follow directions. If we do what is expected of us we get a good grade.

It is a simple idea but very pernicious. It doesn’t leave room for having a beginner’s mindset. It is also exactly the wrong attitude when using the Explore Widely strategy.

You need to approach learning from a very different mindset. Embracing a beginner’s mindset means being ok with being vulnerable, looking for things you haven’t done, yet, seeking out things you haven’t learned, yet, experiencing things you haven’t experienced, yet, and not worrying so much about being graded or showing off what you already know.

Let’s get into the weeds and figure out what this might look like in practice.

If we start with the idea that a strategy of Explore Widely means being exposed to things that you don’t know about, that creates a conundrum. How do we know what to explore if we don’t even know what we don’t know about?

In a traditional school, they approach this problem by making sure that every student takes a minimum amount of classes in a select group of subject areas, like math, history, science, etc.

On your Learning Journey there are no requirements like that. Requiring specific subjects doesn’t make much sense for a Learning Journey.

In fact, you already know that Learning Opportunities aren’t only about subject areas. You have options. You can decide who you learn with, how you learn it, how long it might take. You can learn by creating something or learn by doing something. You can combine topics, practice skills, develop habits, and much more.

When you Explore Widely you can explore different kinds of content but you can also explore different methods of learning, different mindsets, different skills. You can combine things and invent unique Learning Opportunities or you can find an existing Learning Opportunity in your community.

Exploring Widely means exploring all of the various ways you can answer the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions.

There is no straightforward answer to the question, “how widely is widely enough?”

That is up to you to decide.

Section four gives you some examples and exercises that you can use to explore various ways to think about what a strategy of Explore Widely could mean for you. There is no checklist for you to work through or prescribed path to follow, instead exercises around Explore Widely are meant to give you options to consider when planning your Learning Journey.

The simplest approach to Explore Widely is to consider all of the different types of Learning Opportunities that are possible and make sure that you are pushing yourself to try new things.

A Learning Opportunity can take place at different types of locations; online, in a classroom, at a museum, outside, while traveling, on a campus, at a coffee shop. Are you pushing yourself to learn in different locations?

A Learning Opportunity can be done alone or it can involve different people. Are you always learning with the same people or from the same people? Are your Learning Opportunities always teacher-led? Maybe you could find a mentor or guide? Maybe you could be a mentor or tutor to a younger student? Are you usually learning alongside people your own age? Can you find or create a Learning Opportunity that allows you to learn with older people or younger people?

A Learning Opportunity can be short or long, intense or stretched out. Are all your Learning Opportunities the same length and same schedule? Perhaps you could focus on only a single project for a period of time and see if that is a good way for you to learn. Maybe take on an activity, learn a skill, or develop a habit that is ongoing with no fixed start and stop dates.

Not every Learning Opportunity needs to be a teacher-led class. There are a lot of ways to learn something. Learn by Creating, Learn by Doing, Learn by Discovery. Volunteer, intern, job shadow. Play a sport, join a club, try out for a play, perform in public, put on an event. Read a book. Write a book. Go to a concert. Hike in the mountains. Learn to swim. Play games, make art, fix things. Do these things because you want to try new things and have new experiences. Not everything has to be preparation for a future career. Doing different things in order to Explore Widely is all the reason you need.

So far, we know our Learning Journey should include Making Decisions and Exploring Widely, now let's look at strategy three, Dive Deeply.