Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learner

... And since I set up this blog as part of a work-related course, I should post something on the "Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners".

Like most other people who have written on this topic, I find the learning habit most easy to acquire is the habit of "playing". When I learn something new I itch to play around with my new knowledge, to make a game of it.

Next to that, I find teaching/mentoring other people a most useful way to build on my skills and knowledge, because I am forced to work out how and why I do the things I do in order to explain it to others. Sometimes clarifying things down to first principles make them easier to understand for the teacher as well as the pupil.

And lastly, the hardest learning habit I find to acquire, is the habit of starting with the end in mind. Like the shipwrecked sailor in the A.A. Milne poem, I sometimes come up with so many ideas that I find that I have trouble setting clear goals, let alone bringing them to fruition! Let's hope I don't wind up like A.A. Milne's old sailor:

And so in the end he did nothing at all,
But basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl.
And I think it was dreadful the way he behaved -
He did nothing but basking until he was saved.

Testing, testing

So here I am. Brand new blog. Time to get posting!

And since it's a reader's blog, I think I'll start by mentioning what I'm reading now: Rome & Jerusalem: the clash of Ancient Civilizations by Martin Goodman. It's a surprisingly easy read: the author seems to have a knack for turning historical facts into an entertaining narrative, while never writing down to his audience. As I progressed through the book - 119 pages to go! - it became apparent that what Goodman was describing were two of the main sources of modern western civilisation. He compares two ways of viewing the world - Roman and Jewish - in the 1st century AD, and their modern counterparts, secular and religious, still clearly create tensions in society today.

There are also some surprising resonances with modern current events: it's hard not to compare Goodman's description of Rome 2,000 years ago with America today when he writes that Romans commonly thought of all their wars as defensive wars, and that for the ordinary Roman citizen war was "like watching a story, the bloodshed kept at a safe emotional distance". One wonders if Goodman is not reading the present into the past somewhat.