8 Habits of effective professional learners

At mme moe, our mission is to work out the habits of effective learners, and then see how we can materialise those habits into functionality that everyone can use. We have worked with and interviewed business people, sportstars, teachers and principals to find out how they got to be as good as they are, and this is what we have found so far!

They have a habit of continuous reflection. Effective people have a habit of having a good, hard look at themselves. They are serious about getting better because their professional lives depend upon it. They use this reflection to be continually aware and mindful. Many of them, including the high performing athletes, keep a diary of their reflections.

They have a habit of targeted connecting either with people who can be useful to them, or with people who they can be useful for. The stereotype of the successful loner turns out to be not the case. And perhaps surprisingly, for effective people, it is not all about them. They have almost a service mentality and want to help other people.

Effective people leave no stone unturned to know their competence. If they are going to spend time and resources improving, they tend to work very hard to know their baseline competence – what they are good at and what they could be better at.

Effective people can see the big picture and can identify their rate of improvement. They see things through a holistic lens that gives them an insight into the general trajectory of their improvement process.

They absolutely prioritise. They know that there is always a lot to improve on. It doesn’t matter how good they are, there are always things they know they can improve on. But they also know that trying to improve on everything all at the same time means that they don’t end up improving anything. They know the most important things they have to get better at, and they know the most urgent things they have to get better at.

They don’t leave improvement to chance. They plan to improve. The break down fundamental objectives to specific targets, and they know when they need to reach identified milestones.

Effective people know that they can’t improve significantly without the support of their community. So they make sure they resource themselves by connecting to targeted material and people.

And finally, they learn what they need to learn when they need to learn it. They use their agency to get on demand access to learning resources.

These are our starting set of core principles for mme moe. If you are a teacher or a principal, mme moe is ready for you. Are they habits you would like to have in order to get better at what you do? If so, please contact us and we can see if we can’t adapt mme moe to your context!

Contact [email protected]