I'm going to throw a question out that we've been talking about in the MindLeaders halls. I have no answer to it, but it's an interesting conversation to continue.
What do you think is the percentage of time that people spend on finding quick answers to questions versus in-depth study of a subject? For example, figuring out how to build a pivot table in Excel versus studying for a certification or building leadership skills?
The closest thing I've thought of that comes close to answering this is informal learning (which will mostly be those quick-hit I-just-need-the-info-and-go experiences) versus formal learning. Wikipedia's entry on informal learning includes the chart at the right. Stretching that data like silly-putty suggests that people spend 20% of their training on reference and longer-term study, and 80% on short-term answer-finding.
I'm tossing this out to see what other thoughts or information people have about this. What's your impression of the balance of pick-up learning versus longer study?
Comments