Listen And Learn

Listen and Learn Old Man! 

We all have heard this wonderful phrase, "Listen and Learn", but many of us lose it in translation because midway into listening or learning we pay a quick visit to outer space.

We are all guilty and I'm guilty as charged when it comes to pretty much not shutting up and not listening. Sometimes saying nothing is saying a lot. I noticed in upper management, they want you to listen and take note of what is being said and if you have any questions, ask at the end, but beware as I have seen some interesting questions prompted that have already been answered which make you look like an absolute fool.

Now don't take this advice the wrong way, not saying to be the quiet guy/girl in the corner, but kind of get a feel for when the right and wrong time is to put in your 2 cents.

I speak from experience when it comes to listening and learning because throughout college and the beginning of my professional career, I always asked a million and one questions and put in my 2 cents sometimes when it wasn't needed. The one thing I did find with this is people like a certain level of interaction or feedback on how your interpreting things.

People love to feel important or heard, so sometimes acknowledging their remarks can make the difference in a conversation. The moral of this story is just listen to a lot of your mentors and bosses because 9/10 they have been in your shoes at some point. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you will hear things in the business/sports world where you sit back and think, "hmmm.. Yeah right", but there will be days will some of the things they say that will make sense in the end.

But while your doing all this listening and learning......TAKE NOTES! 

We all have our own little way of taking notes, but take notes that you can look back and make sense of.

 I've come across so many people who take notes and it looks like a 2 year was drawing a bicycle. Then you ask them, what does that mean, UHHHHH I don't know haha. Priceless. But with good notes, you can always look back and reference the good points they brought up. I have done this a 100 times over with some of the notes I took during college.

After you listen and learn a lot about your industry/field/career apply it all. Many of us take the time to research the information and read about it, but forget to apply it. Apply all those things you learn along the way to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

TAKE AWAY: Be aware of your ever changing environment. Stay up with the demands of your market. This can be done with Research, Listening and Learning.

Hope you enjoyed these words of advice.

Signing off....

Anthony F.
-The Young Insider-