Learn Like a Lobster summary

Are you ready to learn like a lobster? Then you need to stop thinking of ‘learning’ as yet another checkbox on your to-do list and start integrating it into your everyday routines. And there’s a really simple way to begin. Stop calling it learning; start calling it experimenting, instead. When you approach your workday as an experiment, you’ll be surprised at how much valuable learning you uncover.

Why the word-swap? Well, experimenting makes learning experiences feel way less intimidating. Think about the difference between saying "I need to change how I run meetings" and "I'm going to experiment with how I run meetings." The second sentence feels more approachable, doesn’t it? 

Why do lobsters keep growing? Not because they’re more driven or disciplined than their fellow crustaceans. Simply because of a biological mechanism that necessitates their continuous growth.

Humans have a mechanism that promotes continuous growth available to them, too – the question. Every question, no matter how small or simple, opens up opportunities for learning and growth. And there are three kinds of questions that are especially productive for fueling learning: the coaching question, the situational question, and the conversational question.

When a lobster moves across the vast seabed it’s constantly sifting through what it finds there. It’s scanning for food, for building materials, for opportunities. 

There’s a vast resource available to you, too. One that you should be in the habit of constantly sifting through: your personal data. Now, some personal data is immediately available to you, like your step count or your screen time. But when it comes to your professional performance, you may need to sift, lobster-like, to find useful data points that can guide your growth. So where should you start your search?

Lobsters grow continuously. But that doesn’t mean growth comes easily to them. When a lobster sheds its hardened shell, its body, with its soft new exoskeleton, is left exposed and vulnerable. The lobster must be careful to hide from danger and predators until its new shell has calcified. But there’s a payoff. With every moulting, the lobster increases its size by roughly 20 percent.

Your growth, like the lobster’s, will be challenging and scary at times. But when you focus on learning over fear, even the most uncomfortable moments will transform into learning opportunities. 

Lobsters don’t get to choose the moment when they shed their shell. And neither do you. There will be times in your working life when it feels like your protective shell has been ripped away – when you send the wrong email, flub the presentation or fail to execute the project. These embarrassing mistakes don’t feel like learning opportunities, but they are. You just need to approach them in the right way.

Making a mistake feels unpleasant. This is why, when you inevitably make one, your brain goes into overdrive, trying to shield you from that unpleasant feeling, with strategies like avoidance, overanalysis, or blame-shifting. These strategies might protect your self esteem but they’re also preventing you from accurately assessing your performance, and from finding ways to perform better in future.