Our third strategy is to Dive Deeply.
One of the purposes of all of the decision making (strategy one) and exploring (strategy two) is to help you identify your strengths and find the things that bring meaning and purpose to your life.
To Dive Deeply is to go beyond the surface. When you Dive Deeply you build on your existing knowledge, habits, and skills. You push yourself to understand better. Dive Deeply is about building up competence and mastery. It is more than introducing yourself to a subject, it is digging deeper and developing skills and expertise.
The strategy of Dive Deeply is about developing Competence. It is meant to help you find the strengths and abilities you have and to develop them and apply them to reaching your goals. It is not only meant to help you find the areas that bring your life joy and meaning but also to actively engage with them and develop them.
Dive Deeply is about having the Confidence and Connection to engage your gifts and talents with the world around you. It is about understanding yourself enough to trust in your abilities. It is about knowing that you can overcome hurdles and challenges because you have already done it before.
Dive Deeply is about having enough Autonomy to acknowledge and follow your interests and passions and goals. It is an ability to say, “my road leads this way and I am capable of following it.”
To be clear, Explore Widely and Dive Deeply are not opposites. They interact with and support each other. They are mental models to use when thinking about your Learning Journey.
It might help to give some examples of how these two strategies differ and interact with each other.
Explore Widely might mean…
Reading a book that grabbed your attention. Maybe it was recommended by a friend. Maybe you liked the cover. Maybe you read the blurb and were drawn in.
Dive Deeply might mean…
Reading a book that grabbed your attention and then diving deeper into the topic. Perhaps the book was about the experience of a young American fighting in the Vietnam War and that made you want to learn more. You found a couple of other books to read and a movie to watch. Later you find out that your grandfather has some friends who served in Vietnam and a few others who protested the war. You decide to interview them all and create a radio documentary (because you also wanted a chance to write some soundtrack music because you are learning to use your new MIDI keyboard.) You decide to ask your friend to do some artwork to accompany the audio documentary and she wants to be involved. She makes charcoal portraits of each interviewee and designs a logo for what is now becoming a limited series podcast. You sign up for an audio mixing class with an online music school because you want this to turn out good and you could improve your skills. Out of curiosity you look up some old, local newspaper stories about war protests in your town and you find a story that included one of your interview subjects.
The important thing is that both Explore Widely and Dive Deeply are important for their own reasons. The first example of just reading a book that grabbed your attention is just as valid as the second example. They are different. They accomplish different things but they both have value on your Learning Journey.
Let’s try a different example.
Explore Widely might mean …
Signing up for an American History class at your local high school. You never loved history but you figure it is probably important to have some background knowledge.
Dive Deeply might mean …
Signing up for an American History class at your local community college or university. You are ready to take on the challenge of a college level class and the American History class seemed like something that you could handle and even enjoy.
Again, both are valuable. In the Explore Widely example you are pushing yourself out of your comfort zone because you felt being exposed to history could have some value. In the Dive Deeply example you are challenging yourself to work at a higher level. It will require academic skills and discipline to do well in the college class and that is the challenge you are giving yourself.
Another example.
Explore Widely might mean …
Going to see a poetry reading at a local independent book store and buying the poet’s book to read later because she was very inspiring.
Dive Deeply might mean …
Going to see a poetry reading at a local independent book store and buying the poet’s book to read later because she was very inspiring. Then starting a local Guerilla Poetry Society where you secretly hide poetry in public places for people to discover, organizing pop-up poetry readings, and writing a Guerilla Poetry Society manifesto that will guide and inspire the Society members even after you go off to college.
Explore Widely and Dive Deeply serve different purposes.
To Explore Widely is to allow yourself the freedom to try new things, to be exposed to new ideas, to see what is out there in the world. It allows you the flexibility to discover things about yourself and test out ideas without much pressure.
When you Explore Widely it isn’t about demonstrating your skills or knowledge. It is your chance to discover things about yourself and try things on for size. Perhaps your curiosity led you to read more about gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park. There is great value in allowing yourself the luxury of listening to your curiosity. And perhaps it ends there. You need to have the freedom to follow your curiosity and that includes the freedom to stop and move on to something else.
Explore Widely comes pretty naturally to teenagers if they are given a chance to explore and not punished for taking chances. Humans enjoy learning for its own sake. It doesn’t all have to lead somewhere.
To Dive Deeply is to go beyond the surface. As opposed to Explore Widely, Dive Deeply is about deepening your skills and knowledge. When you Dive Deeply you dive into a topic and push yourself. It might be the difference between visiting a mountain and climbing a mountain.
Dive Deeply could look like an internship or getting an article published or leading a team in a project. Dive Deeply is when you are challenging yourself with something bigger, more complex, more difficult.
Dive Deeply usually requires relying on and building upon existing skills, habits, and knowledge during a Learning Opportunity. It could mean tapping into your passions and motivations. It might even be a little bit intimidating. When you Dive Deeply you might have an opportunity to show off, to play to your strengths, to demonstrate your Competence.
It is important to remember that at this point in your life both Explore Widely and Dive Deeply are important. You need to see what is out there and try new things but you also want to begin building on your strengths and developing expertise.
While the strategy of Dive Deeply is about developing specific skills, habits, and knowledge it is important to remember that the particular sets of skills, habits, and knowledge that you decide to develop should be based on what you are drawn to, interested in, and driven to do. You are building up the tool box that will help you live the life you want to live.
Dive Deeply is about developing competence but competence is not defined by reaching a certain level on a predetermined set of skills, habits, or knowledge. There is no test that says you need to score above a 90% on Creative Thinking and at least 80% on Quantitative Thinking in order to move on.
The competence you are developing with Dive Deeply will be individual to you and your strengths, interests, and goals. The skills, knowledge, and habits you are focusing on should be in relation to your interests and plans. You are building a tool kit that will help you accomplish your goals.
One way to think about diving deeply is to label some of your Learning Opportunities as “Signature Learning Opportunities”. Those are the ones that you are particularly proud of. The ones that most define you and your Learning Journey.
If someone were to ask you to talk about your Learning Journey, you might first describe these Signature Learning Opportunities because they are the ones that will best tell your story. Perhaps it was a big project you completed or an internship. Maybe you learned to speak another language or took an advanced class in a topic you love. You could have spent four years gradually developing your skills as an animator and the progress you made over the years represents your Learning Journey.
Not every Learning Opportunity where you dive deeply will become a Signature Learning Opportunity but every Signature Learning Opportunity is a deep dive. Remember that one of the objectives of Exploring Widely and Diving Deeply is to find ways that you can bring your strengths and talents to the world, to find the places where you fit in.
Diving deeply is a chance to develop your strengths (skills, knowledge, and habits) that have meaning for you and to explore ways those strengths can contribute to the world around you.
In Section four we examine some specific approaches you can take to apply the Dive Deeply strategy to your Learning Journey.
