Hot for Teacher: BODIES & BOTS #18
Reading Time: 3 minutesNo, I’m not talking about inappropriate relationships between professors and students.
Education helps fuel fires.
The good kind of flames. The passions that lead to prosperity. The spark of an idea that, with the right learning and mentors, can make you millions. The AI that can save you hours without making you stupid. And, according to science, even the growth of your brain…even up to age 100 and beyond.
But, as a kid and teen, I was very squirmy in classroom chairs. Not because I needed a bathroom break. I was, quite simply, incredibly bored most of the time.
- Did an internship instead of finishing my last semester of high school.
- Got Psych credits in college by working in the outpatient ward of a state mental hospital and in a rural elementary school.
- Built a marketing career without an MBA, finally getting to the C-suite. Street smarts are sometimes way better than book smarts.
- Adopted social media in 2005, before most people knew what it was.
- Wrote a book about AI in 2017.
Right now, I am teaching myself to build an app and publishing an AI-assisted comic book memoir on Substack. Neither of which I had done before.
None of that happened in a classroom.
Keep that fire burning!
The question isn’t whether you’re smart enough to learn. It’s about knowing how YOU actually learn best. And what are you going to do with that?
A brief history lesson about education
Compulsory education as we know it was designed in the 19th century. Prussia built it. America borrowed it. The model was optimized for producing compliant factory workers, not curious thinkers. Kids sat in rows. They memorized. They were tested.
In 1893, a committee of ten men (no women) standardized the American high school curriculum. Their goal was uniformity. The same subjects, the same sequence, for everyone. What you might actually want to know was not on the agenda.
It worked brilliantly if you love simply following instructions.
How do YOU learn?
Here’s what the research says about learning styles: the visual/auditory/kinesthetic breakdown most of us grew up with has largely been debunked. Turns out most people don’t have a fixed “type.”
Think about when you’ve learned something that truly stuck. Was it a lecture? A textbook? Or was it a conference where someone said something you weren’t expecting? A problem you had to solve on your own? A skill you needed right now and figured out anyway?
Most people learn best when there’s a reason.
Adults who engage in continuous learning earn 8-15% more over their careers than those who don’t.
Companies with strong learning cultures are 92% more likely to innovate.
If you have your own business, continuous learning gives you a competitive edge.
The people who keep growing aren’t always the smartest in the room. They’re the ones who figured out how to keep feeding the fire.
What the science says
Your brain doesn’t stop growing. It rewires with novelty. Research on neuroplasticity confirms that learning new skills, especially uncomfortable or unfamiliar ones, builds new neural pathways at any age. A 2024 University of Toronto study found that people who regularly engage in new learning activities show significantly slower cognitive decline than those who stick to familiar routines.
What DON’T you know?
Sit with that for a second. Not what your job requires. Not what you think you should know. What are you actually curious about? What do you wish someone would just explain to you? Hell…I bought my mother a tablet when she was 94 and taught her how to use it. She was suffering from blood cancer and on oxygen at the time. What’s YOUR excuse for refusing to learn? Just sayin’…
School trains the curiosity out of us. Laziness and aging often sucks it out of some people. The good news: it comes back fast.
So, what are you going to do about it?
Here’s the lighter fuel…
Pick one thing. Mess around with it. Build something. Go somewhere. Sign up for a conference outside your usual lane. Teach what you already know to someone who doesn’t yet know it.
The goal isn’t mastery. It’s motion. And the fire doesn’t care how old you are.
Bodies & Bots on Substack this week goes deeper: how AI can help you learn faster, what tools are actually worth your time, and how to get started if you’re hesitant.