TPM #317: The Lost Learning Tool
With the rise of the smart phone and short attention span, are we missing out on lessons learned via the book?
As I settled into my seat for the flight home the other day, something caught my eye. Something unusual. The person next to me opened her book to keep her company during the flight. Much to my further surprise, she could not have more than 18 years old.
No smartphone.
No headphones.
No scrolling through the movies on the airplane screen in front of her.
A book.
No pictures.
An old-school book. She had that book out the entire flight.
It made me stop and think of why this seemed so unusual. I, myself have been reading books less in the last year of 2 than ever before.
This is wild, because I was a reader.
I love the tactile feeling of the book. The pages, and the information being discovered page by page.
Books were the learning tool standard back in the day. Textbooks in school and we would go to the library to do research. Now it is google and Ai.
I remember lugging around the massive anatomy textbooks through university. I learned just as much about coaching and business from books over the years than any formal education.
Anytime I wanted to brush up on some ideas, or programming or strategies, I relied on books more than any form of learning. Books shaped my professional career. They also were a great learning tool in my youth, reading up on all the great athletes that we admired.
There is so much to learn from books. So many available to us.
It makes me wonder if our younger generation is missing out on the lessons and stories of the athletes and inspirations of yesteryear by not having access to books.
While this was on my mind, I found a recent article documenting an example of this, how a book helped one the best current basketball player in the world, and how she learned from one of the best to ever play without even talking to him.
It came from lessons taught to the young athlete through Phil Jackson’s 1995 book Sacred Hoops. The lessons the book shared about developing team mates for the benefit of team performance was shared with Caitlin Clark by her university coach.
The article documents strategies and lessons that are credited with helping Clark’s university team perform at a higher level.
A link to the article is below
Regardless of the challenge we face as parents, coaches and athletes, we can usually find how others handled similar obstacles via books. The book as a source of knowledge is a different resource than social media.
We have so many great lessons and stories to learn from. Turning a young person on to the power of reading and learning via the book could be the best thing we have read today! (pun intended).
Find a book for someone you love that addresses something relevant. Development occurs in different ways.
Here is the article referenced above: