5 Hidden Flaws in Your Learning System That Are Stalling Your Career Growth

⬆️ Mindset Shift

Your mindset has shifted FROM ‘My learning system is not a priority’ TO ‘My learning system is at the core of how I build career momentum and acceleration.’

📋 5 Learning Pitfalls to Avoid

Mediocre leaders wrongly believe learning on the job is enough to deliver their best. 

Good leaders learn on the job, seek external knowledge, and encourage their teams to do the same.

Elite-level leaders and operators advance beyond good leaders by addressing the following learning system gaps.

If you are in pursuit of elite, I encourage you to read on.

5 Ways Your Learning System is Holding Back Your Career

(1) 5-Hour Rule: You are not investing in the 5-Hour Rule, which requires you to spend 1 hour per day on outside learning, so your learning capabilities are stifled compared to other hard-charging leaders. 

(2) Learning Sources & Tools: Your learning sources aren’t properly tuned and lack coverage in areas that will help maximize your operational leadership impact - to keep your core skills sharp while strengthening secondary areas. Further, you aren’t using the tools that will make your learning time the most efficient and effective. 

(3) Memory Fitness: You do not have a lightweight and ongoing system for memorizing key details to help you thrive in high-stakes situations. This one is a force multiplier. 

(4) Capture Systems: Your personal knowledge management capture system is inadequate, causing you to forget and miss out on valuable information that could help your next big presentation. 

(5) Network Recall: You aren’t intentionally capturing, referencing, and not memorizing names and critical details about the key individuals in your work and personal life, so your network growth is hampered.

As we start this new Leadership Recall series, look for more about each item. 

For some background, I am preparing to launch a new advanced Masterclass titled Leadership Recall: Thrive in high-stakes situations by mastering an elite-level learning system, knowledge capture tactics, and memorization techniques.

This one-of-a-kind program gives leaders a razor-sharp career advantage.

With Leadership Recall, you avoid what psychologists call the forgetting curve, where critical information is rapidly forgotten. This loss of knowledge will obstruct your career growth potential. 

Instead, with Leadership Recall, you quickly draw from all your strategic learning efforts to immediately remember critical concepts and stats, powerful quotes and phrases, and the names of the key individuals in your life. You now have a finely tuned learning system, the tools, the mindset, and the know-how to perform at an elite level in high-stakes communications. Your confidence and personal brand are continually strengthening. 

You now have an unfair knowledge advantage against your competition. 

Be on the lookout for more Leadership Recall content around this essential brand-building and career-accelerating content.

📖 The OODA Loop Story

My oldest son is a Special Warfare Operator in the Air Force, and my YouTube feed knows this, delivering a mix of quality military-related content that I enjoy. 

Earlier this year, I came across this short military video of the OODA loop, a special warfare decision-making framework created by the Air Force. I saw the immediate value and added the concept to my memory system. Without this vital step, the OODA loop would have been quickly forgotten. 

A few months later, I was in a meeting and asked if I knew about the OODA loop. I said yes, effortlessly rattling off the acronym Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act from memory. It was a small victory, helping to build rapport and trust. It felt great to see a little past effort pay a big dividend. I also know my personal brand was slightly strengthened at this moment. 

Do you want to experience events like this?

💥 Operational Action

If you do one thing, do this: Invest in the 5-Hour Rule mentioned above, carve out dedicated time on your calendar, and create new rhythms so you learn at a higher level every week. Make part of your time on the car or commute-focused learning time. 

💡 What Do You Think?

What learning tactics and strategies have worked for you? Consider leaving a comment or a question so others can benefit and learn. 

🛠️ Tools Mentioned

No tools are mentioned in this post. More on tools will be discussed in future Leadership Recall posts.

☁️ AI Content Disclaimer

ChatGPT helped tune the title of this post, and Gemini made two clarifying edits. Perplexity was used to reference the 5-hour rule. Everything else is human-created.

🗓️ What’s Coming Up Next:

Be on the lookout for more Leadership Recall content to help set you apart.

Here’s to your elite-level learning,

Steve Kahle |  ELITE OPERATORS

🔵 P.S.

P.S. If you find value, consider signing up for Elite Operators Weekly if you haven’t already. I encourage you to share my content with others, which is a great way to help me build a growing community of elite operators. Also, check out my no-cost resources, like the Ideal Recurring Week Mini-Course. You can also apply for my next Productivity Accelerator, become a paid subscriber, or recommend me for executive coaching, operational and technology consulting, or speaking opportunities like this interview called Time Architecture, Transition from Stressed, and Distracted to Focused.

You can also contact me directly on LinkedIn or through this contact form.