Performance Zone vs. Learning Zone

I came across this very interesting TED video by Eduardo Briceño. It talks about "performance zone" and "learning zone". It strikes a chord with me and I would like to share with everyone.

Have you even feel stuck although you are working as hard as you can? Do you feel you are not improving as fast as you should or wanted to? Maybe it is time to understand the difference between "performing zone" and "learning zone".

"Performance Zone" is where you are execute flawlessly and failure is costly. There is no safety net for error. On the contrary, "Learning Zone" is where mistakes are expected (or even encouraged) and failure is part of the learning process.

If you are like me (or anybody who is working at IT company at Silicon Valley), you are always facing due dates, deadlines, release schedules. In another words, we are always stuck at "Performance Zone". The problem is that there is only so much we have mastered and there are so many things which we are not good at. We will never learn new things when we are always at performance zone. No wonder we feel we are stuck. It is because we have nothing new to offer.

If this sounds familiar, it is time to step into "Learning Zone" where we can experiment with new things without the fear of failure. This reminds me of Google's twenty percent free time policy. It encourages employee to be in the learning zone, doing something which is not directly related to the current job. I believe this partially contributes to Google's success.

We are doing those subconsciously in a certain degree. We go to conferences, read articles and books, attending training etc. Those are instances of "learning zone". The idea is to make it deliberate. We can tell ourselves: "I am in the learning zone now. It is OK for me to experiment, to make mistakes, to look stupid, to ask naive questions, to make a fool of myself".

Not only "learning zone" is important to individual performance, it is also crucial to team or company performance. Try to foster and build a learning zone for your team so that they can also improve. Build a safety net for them so they are not afraid of making mistakes. You will be surprisingly rewarded for this.