Watch and Learn, Or Not?
Learning on the job is the best way to do it, or so the saying goes. But I’m in the business of providing training. You might find it strange then, that I’m going to tell you I think that statement is often true. The reason why might surprise you, and I hope it helps shape how you approach professional development whether you do it in person, over Zoom, on Youtube, through a textbook or via some other medium.
Here it is. The reason why learning on the job is often “best” is that you actually DO something when you are trying to solve problems on the job. You use information and put pieces together in different ways. You figure it out. Let me be clearer about this, you HAVE TO do this, out of necessity. There is no real choice. The client expects it done, the boss needs it or requires it, the deadline is yesterday and it’s your responsibility. So, guess what, you learn—often in a hazardous way to your mental well-being, and often in a way that takes more hours and frustration than if you had some guidance so that you could circumvent about half of the wrong ways to do something that led you to a functional one. I’m not even going to say the right one or the best one, functional is where most of us get without good guidance. Sometimes you’re lucky and you have a great director who guides you along the way. In this case, you learn on the job because you have an effective teacher AND you are a good student. You take in their advice and execute it, repeatedly– the doing bit is still essential.
Now, what education do? What can professional training do? Certainly, it can give you information, and this information can help reduce the amount of frustration it takes to learn certain things on the job on your own. It can offer you alternative perspectives you might never think of in your whack-a-mole efforts to put out fires and solve problems. It can provide perspectives that differ from your directors and that might, ultimately, help everyone out. Even a simple tutorial can cut your time in figuring out what you need to do. It can tell you certain steps to take given specific parameters (e.g., for X type of project, with X type of style, Y type of software, etcetera etcetera), BUT here’s the catch, no matter how great the content is, you won’t learn what you need to know by just sitting through the session or watching a tutorial, just like you won’t learn from your director by staring them blankly in the face when they offer a piece of advice instead of actively listening to what they are saying and trying to implement it into your routine.
Imagine what it would mean if watch and learn really worked!!! Creative Directors, Studio owners, wouldn’t you have such a surplus of great artists if a line on a cv or resume that said watched tutorial on color grading meant that they knew how to do it? Or, maybe you wouldn’t have a surplus. Maybe you’d be out of a job because everyone could just watch something and voila, your junior animators are now your equals! It might be nice though. Trying out new jobs would be easy. All those creatives wanting to become producers could just train up by watching a few hours of content, and those producers who want to do creative, well, that’s no problem either. Role transfer SOLVED!
That’s just not how it works. You need to remember information to say you’ve learned it, and to master a skill you need to be able to execute it with ease. That takes dedication and practice. Most of us tacitly recognize this and it’s hardly surprising. These ideas have been circulating at least since the days of Aristotle, and we witness their truth in our everyday lives, but in case you’re skeptical, the fact that learning is active not passive has been confirmed by contemporary neuroscience and is well-documented in adult learning theory.
Yes, all training should be structured well, and it should be clear and engaging so you can take in the information easily. Psychology tells us this. Some types of training do this better than others. Ideally, all training should inspire curiosity and motivate you to learn, that helps too. The best training also provides opportunities for you to practice and offers feedback for you to correct your mistakes. So, these are the components of effective training, BUT to learn you need to be a good trainee. You have to use the information, AND you have to practice practice practice– the right things, the right way– in order to acquire the skills the instructor is trying to teach. You are the other half of the equation.
So, what does this mean for how you approach professional development? Well, there are lots of books out there you can look through to get some very specific ideas for how to structure your own practice. I’ll list some that have shaped my thoughts in this article, but there are two additional ideas that stand out to me as particularly important:
If you really want to learn something, prioritize your learning. Haphazardly watching a video or listening to something on Skill Share in the background isn’t going to cut it.
Do the work. Be diligent about trying to implement whatever ideas, principles or skills are being taught. Experiment, if the situation calls for it, and if it works ask why, and if it doesn’t ask why. Think through the answer.
Learning is never passive. Watching isn’t doing. If you want to actually learn something, prioritize your learning and show up for it—no half-measures. Practice deliberately, not just until you get it right, but until you can’t get it wrong. Take ownership of your development. The best tutorials, the greatest mentors, and the sharpest training sessions can give you a lot, but they can only take you so far. At the end of the day, it’s what you do with the information that counts.
Collins, Stella. Neuroscience for Learning and Development: How to Apply Neuroscience and Psychology for Improved Learning and Training, 3rd Edition. Kogan Page, 2023.
Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Harvard University Press, 2014.
Kosslyn, Stephen. Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive. MIT Press, 2020.
Merril, David M. First Principles of Instruction. 2024
Rhodes, Matthew G., Anne M. Cleary, and Edward L. DeLosh. A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. Oxford University Press, 2019.
