Inspiration | Life

Learning and Creating

Becoming a lifelong creator

Which do you prefer — learning or creating? Many consider themselves lifelong learners, but how many consider themselves lifelong creators?

Let’s examine the differences to find what’s best for us to live a great life.

Learning and creating

Like many of you, learning has been an important part of who I am. Discovering my love for learning significantly impacted my career and life. Because most of the things I loved to learn about involved people and business, I had ample opportunity to apply what I learned by experimenting in real-life situations.

Learning by itself, while helpful, would have meant far less had I not been able to put it to use. Curiosity plays a significant role in driving our desire to learn. Learning is not separate from creating. It is simply applying the thoughts learning provides to create. Learning always precedes creating.

When you can apply what you learn and see positive results, it can motivate you to learn more. The more you know, the more you can think differently and the more you can create.

When I first picked up a guitar at about ten years old, I quickly learned a few chords. I practiced, learning from anyone I could for years, and became reasonably proficient, playing in a band for a short time. Unfortunately, life interfered, and I stopped learning guitar in my early twenties, although I still enjoy playing occasionally.

I lost my drive to learn more when I became too busy to play. As with anything physical, it takes practice to maintain such a skill, so I can’t play as well as I used to, even though I enjoy it.

Life is like that, isn’t it? When we lose interest in something we once enjoyed learning, we retain some of the skill or ability, but without ongoing practice, it begins to atrophy.

Yet, the songs I created on the guitar are something I still hold dear. Their importance and meaning have far outlasted learning to play. I still marvel that I could create unique music that remains meaningful to me today. As with most of our creations, we tend to love them.

Creating as a result of learning

While I have spent much of my life learning, I find even greater satisfaction and enjoyment in seeing my creations come to life.

Recently, I ran across the following words of wisdom that made me realize the importance of creating.

“It is better to create than to be learned;

creating is the true essence of life.” Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971)

While I agree with Niebuhr that creating is the true essence of life, it could not be so were it not for learning. Learning and creating are dependent upon each other. While you can learn and create very little, you can’t create without knowledge from learning.

“Learning to create is essential, necessary, vital & fundamental. It is the centrepiece in which you create the life that you really want.” John Whitmore (1937–2017)

For example, creating drove my interest in computers in 1983. To my surprise, Mike, our data processing manager (this was before the days of IT), dropped off a PC, software, and printer with a stack of manuals at my lab. The company was doing well; the $10,000 worth of equipment (~$30k today) was a reasonable investment in our lab. It didn’t hurt that I was good friends with Mike and had mentioned we could use a computer!

Knowing nothing about using a computer, I asked Mike if he would help me learn. The busy man that he was, he pointed to the stack of manuals and said, “Read those. You’ll figure it out.” During the next few weeks, I did precisely that. Fortunately, I have always loved anything electronic, so I dove in without help and learned to use a computer from scratch.

Computers at the time were primitive compared to today, and the learning curve was steep. PCs displayed only letters and numbers in green on the display. At the time, graphical interfaces for CP/M and MS-DOS were non-existent.

I learned to work with two operating systems, CP/M and, soon after, MS-DOS. At the time, we had SuperCalc as a spreadsheet and WordStar for its word-processing capabilities. And who could ever forget the then ubiquitous BASIC programming language?

Everything in my lab and office was done by hand using ledgers, adding machines, calculators, and typewriters, with files going into many file cabinets.

This newfangled machine with it’s software was mind-blowing! Our office productivity and processes improved dramatically, as did our reports and submittals for large construction projects.

But the spreadsheet is what hooked me. It was like having countless interactive calculators without needing to write a program! It put our company on the map as the only one in the state with computer-generated submittals. It made our job much easier. At the time, our submittals received approval far more quickly because things produced on a computer and printed on a dot matrix printer had to be correct (or so architects and engineers thought back then)!

In no time, I went from being a leading technical expert to becoming a valuable internal consultant, creating improved business processes few had thought of.

The entire process of learning and creating new things on the computer helped us make a giant leap into the future before any of our competitors!

I will never forget the thrill of creating a new spreadsheet and learning macros to merge its output with the word processor. Today, I still marvel at how that ancient computer changed my life and career. What an exciting time it was!

Since those early days of creating, I have had the pleasure of obtaining several patents. Yet none of that compares to the potential for creating today. Besides the opportunity to help people create new lives for themselves through coaching and mentoring, I have since joined the ranks of others in publishing a book and many articles. I hope these activities and creations will help people create what they want and recreate themselves well into the future.

“Through learning we re-create ourselves.

Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do.

Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it.

Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life.” Peter Senge (1947-present)

Final thoughts

I never dreamed that learning to use a computer in the ’80s would kick-start me to becoming a lifelong creator, even during retirement! When I read the content published on Medium and other platforms by numerous writers, it is amazing how much creativity exists. So many people are creating great work, not out of thin air, but from their vast learning and experience. It is the ultimate form of creating the “true essence of life,” as Niebuhr put it.

One of the most important things a writer can do today is to write with their legacy in mind. Think about it. What we write and publish today could remain hundreds or thousands of years into the future. Far longer than our ancestors could have imagined. The accessibility of such information will likely become much better as well.

As you work and write, imagine the potential impact you will have on other people in the future, including your relatives, when they read your writing. What you create by writing will truly be the essence of your life!

BillAbbate| LinkedIn |Twitter| Medium| Facebook| AmazonAuthorPage | Truth

Bill Abbate Leadership Writer and Editor in ILLUMINATION

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