Hostages, tourists, and explorers.
Learning is a journey.
We've all heard the cliche. It is popular (on posters, fortune cookie messages, screen savers, coffee mugs, etc.) to compare our lives as humans to journeys. Learning, launching a startup, trying a new product, playing the piano (as a kid, or as an adult), training for a marathon, and going on an actual trip (of course), are all journeys.
Each of us approaches a journey differently. It depends on the situation, our personality, our fear or love of uncertainty, what is at stake if we succeed or fail along the way, or what happens if we get lost. There are at least three different ways we go on a journey:
We go on the journey as a hostage.
We go as a tourist.
We go as an explorer.
Let's see how these three journeys differ.
As a hostage, we are forced to go. Our captor makes us go, tells us where we have to go and how to get there, and threatens penalties, pain, or worse, if we don't reach our destination. In a real hostage situation, we are controlled by the threat of being hurt or killed. The analogy works in less serious situations, too, when we have no choice of whether we go on the trip and no influence on the outcome. In these situations we are hostages. As a hostage, we gain no benefit in a journey. Our goal is to survive, to just get through it.
We can also travel as a tourist. We go where somebody tells us to go: a tour company, a website, or friends who have been to the place before us--each tells us the "right" places to go to, the best places to eat, the best places to shop, the best places to stay, and the best places to be entertained. As a tourist, we are not forced to follow their advice, as a hostage might, but we do so anyway because we don't know our alternatives. We go as tourists in order to manage the uncertainty of traveling a new route, or to a new place. We turn to somebody who has expertise we can trust. We follow their recommendations, even their decisions of what is "right", because we don't know a better way. Fear and uncertainty conspire with each other as we think about our trip. Will we enjoy it? Will we be cheated? Will we find it valuable? If we have never been there before, we cannot know, so we follow someone else's plan. We worry less, and we have someone else to blame if things don't work out (maybe a bonus?). We avoid the most dreaded fear of all: FOMO! We go to recommended places so we don't miss out. As tourists, we travel with a GPS, we select the recommended destination, then follow the recommended path. This gets us there in the surest, shortest, fastest, most efficient way.
When we travel as explorers, things are different. It's true, an explorer doesn't know exactly where they are going to end up, or what they are going to find when they get there. They are guided by some belief that it will be worth it. If they have a general direction in mind, the explorer will use a compass instead of a GPS. The path and the final destination are not fixed. The trip may take longer than expected. When the explorer reaches...wherever they end up..they may find it difficult to enjoy or appreciate what they find. Along the way, they will find people who don't understand them, cannot help them, and are not like them.
So, why would we ever want to explore? To learn something new for ourselves and maybe others. We see, eat, and experience things that others have not. We find things that we didn't expect. We realize doing that is valuable in its own right.
In short: Explorers lead. Tourists follow.
Before a tourist ventures anywhere, an explorer goes there first. Maybe the friend who suggested the trip to you was their own explorer, or maybe they were just one in a long line of tourists, passing on the same information. At the very beginning, somebody explored and found something that tourists would later find interesting.
I grew up in the Northwest part of the US, near Seattle. When I was younger, a guy in a nearby town started traveling to Europe and exploring small towns, trying out new restaurants, and enjoying new experiences that few American tourists ever saw. He shared his experiences in his self-published travel book in 1979, called Europe Through the Back Door (Wikipedia). By the 1990s, this explorer, Rick Steves, had a nationwide travel show on TV in the US and a multimillion-dollar company.
Rick was the explorer. Now that he is so famous he has attracted many tourists to follow in his footsteps. This has not always been good. There are many small towns in Europe today that are victims of the "Rick Steves Effect." They were once cozy, off-the-beaten-path destinations. Today they are overrun with tourists. (See here for one person's interesting take on the Rick Steves effect.) Early travelers to Bangkok's Khao San Road started a similar trend (Lonely Planet was launched in this way).
Let's expand the analogy of this Exploration journey to other human endeavors, like learning and innovation. We can learn like tourists. We can do innovation like tourists. We follow somebody else's study plan. We have our choices made for us by our school, our parents, our company, or by following the trends claimed by online influencers.
Let us be clear: being a tourist is a great way to start a journey. If we know nothing, except that we want to go, then we can start by following the advice of somebody who has gone before us. This is also true in a learning or innovation journey. Others who have more expertise or experience provide valuable guidance to get us moving up the learning curve. Getting stuck with questions about whether we are learning the right thing is a great source of Procrastination! A quick "Hello World" exercise gives us an immediate "win" on our new learning journey. Follow that up with some well-designed courses and we have a great head start on our new journey.
Just don't be a tourist forever. We don't want to remain a follower on a path trod upon by many, many others. Competition is stiff and it is impossible to stand out. Herds offer safety in numbers, but we are powerless to take any control of our lives.
When you start exploring, and step out on a path less traveled, you become a better learner and a better innovator. We have a full spectrum of learning opportunities beyond the narrow offerings that we are provided in school and at our workplace. My favorite skateboarding physicist, Dr. Tae, talks about this at the end of his video.)
Be an Explorer. Once you feel the Flow, you will never turn back.