This week, I´m bringing you a proverb from Hawaii, no less (thanks, Ryan!): Ma ka hana ka ʻike, which could be translated as "in doing, one learns", or in other words: true knowledge is acquired through practice.

This is a picture of a draft I made a couple of years ago using line drawing techniques, something I learnt from a work colleague (thanks, Valerie!) and that I really enjoyed, despite being terrible at it.

Now, why was I terrible at it? Well, because drawing is not something I would have practiced much (or at all, to be honest). At some point towards the end of my childhood, I remember looking at one of my drawings and coming to the conclusion that, given that I wasn´t any good at it, it was better to give it up.

And now, looking back, I realize I did the same with many other activities: try it once, be mediocre or bad at it, and immediately consider it a lost cause. Sports, arts and crafts, and even cooking for a good few years, all fell into this category. Anything creative and/or spontaneous requiring skills I didn´t have.

What never crossed my mind back then was that I didn´t have those skills yet, but I could cultivate them. Back at that time, there was no mention of, or at least I never heard about growth mindset .

The good news is that nowadays we do know skills can be cultivated and improved. But what´s the best way to do that?

The clue could be in a learning model that´s one of the most widely used by companies: the 70/20/10 rule, which originated in a study from the nineties, and postulates that, in a workplace environment, 90% of the learning is not of a formal nature, but informal:

• 70% of learning is experiential: it comes from on-the-job experiences, performing tasks, facing new situations, making decisions, and above all, living new and challenging experiences.
• 20% is social learning: it happens through discussions, information sharing with colleagues, collaboration in pairs or groups, work with a coach or mentor, etc.
• Only 10% is formal learning, including training courses, masterclassess, books, articles, videos...

As you can see, this rule agrees with the Hawaiian proverb: the best way to cultivate skills is to practice them. Ideally, we would start to practice after having learned a bit about that particular skill, and we would be part of a group that can support us in that learning.

So this article is dedicated to all of those who, like me, are or once were an "eternal pupil", so that we finally stop: once you have the knowledge foundations and find a community that can support you in your growth, it´s time to take the plunge and start practising NOW. Not "when you are ready", because that´s never going to happen if you don´t get started.

So, what about you? What are you going to practise this week?