Three Ways to Own Your Learning Journey

In January, Capital One partnered with Cornell Tech and Accenture to host the first Cornell Tech Women in Technology Conference – New York (WiTNY) for more than 200 women in tech and digital fields. The event offered inspiring keynotes, eye-opening panels, technical workshops, and networking. Attendees had the opportunity to interact with each other and volunteer moderators in small breakout groups throughout the day, with discussions focused on identifying common bonds as women in technology—an element that many of the participants rated as their top experience of the event.Even on the best and most inclusive of teams, it can be easy to feel like an outlier for a number of reasons. Sometimes it’s related to gender or race, but it can also be sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, academic or professional background, age, marital status, parenthood, or a myriad of other things. What’s important to focus on is finding the people that you can connect with on your work and volunteer teams, and sometimes those connections aren’t obvious. The women at WiTNY used the small group breakouts sessions to find those commonalities with each other, creating a peer network that is vital to professional success in almost any field. If you can establish those connections and reduce the feeling of being an outsider (although we will all feel like that from time to time), you can refocus that energy and brainpower on your work and collaborating with your team.At the Cornell Tech WiTNY event, I led a session on “Owning Your Learning Journey” and shared lessons from my own learning journey and some tips on various ways to make sure that you are continuously focused on expanding your skills and knowledge in whatever way that manifests. This session was particularly compelling for those attendees who recently graduated from college or are in the early stages of their careers, but the key principles apply to all ages and experience levels.A learning agenda is a conscious approach to learning new things - whether that is new skills, new tools, or new knowledge. Having a learning agenda helps your career at any stage, but more importantly it helps you develop as a person; you will be more creative, interesting, and complete if you nourish yourself consistently with education and learning.For those who recently graduated, it’s an important step to realize that after school, you are in charge of your complete learning. Everyone should always have a learning agenda for themselves; you control your curriculum. What you study or learn is always up to you—own it yourself, but seek tools and resources from your employer and community resources to help.Here are a couple tips to own your learning journey:• You are a professional learner; hone it and own it. Understand how you learn, as we all learn and study differently. It may be the case that you need to run or workout to think things out. That isn’t weird, it is simply your style. Perhaps you need silence, or white noise, or meditation to help you learn. Once you better understand how you learn, you can capitalize on that to improve your personal process.• Learn things that make you happy and not just things that are “good for your career.” On the personal passion side, learn and explore things that have no relation whatsoever to your career. On the career side of your learning agenda, explore things that will help you be better at your current job or a job you would like to get in the future. Magic happens when your personal learning agenda and your work learning agenda come together in unexpected ways. To let that magic happen you need to bring your whole self wherever you go, allowing all of your new learnings to come together and create something new. A great idea is often the intersection of unexpected things that come together in unimaginable ways.• Amplify your learning journey with skill development. Generally learning about something new is great as it gives you lots of new inspiration and can allow you to learn a lot about many topics, but at times you should focus on depth and skill. When you learn a skill the brain thinks really differently, you behave really differently and you retain that information much longer. Spend some of your learning agenda time on deep skill development for a holistic learning experience.And, finally: have fun! Learning can be amazing and uplifting. Your life and work become much richer with active learning.Interested in learning more? NY Tech Day is a great place to meet new people and learn about new technologies and the NYC tech ecosystem – if you’re there, come stop by the Capital One booth and visit our talented team of designers and developers who are reimagining the future of banking.