Thing 3: 7.5 Habits of Highly Effective Learners

I think the easiest habit for me will be either #4: "Have Confidence as a Competent, Effective Learner" or #7.5: "Play!" I already think of myself as a lifelong learner and player (well, maybe not so much), and have for a long time.

Learning, for me, is an end in and of itself. It's the process that I enjoy: feelings of progress, mastery, and discovery, WOW moments. In particular, being exposed to new ideas is exciting. It's easy to understand how you can play, tinker, and discover with new technologies and gadgets, and the same feelings are there, but I've always found that playing with ideas is most fun. The biggest wows come from finding out about a new or different way of looking at the world, and playing with the implications in the way you've always understood the world to be or to work.

Having said that, I think the hardest habit is #1: "Goals." It's important, when you are trying to learn how, to understand what it is you are trying to learn how to do, and to direct your learning to meet that goal. But for me, when I'm learning and playing, I'll be learning about. I'll be excitedly learning about Flickr (and maybe Picasa too), delic.io.us, feeds, and all the other interactive web media. And while I'm learning about these 23+ things, I'll be thinking about how they might be used in the library and what that means for the library.