Episode 140 - Variety is the Spice of Development

<h2><strong>SUMMARY</strong></h2> <p class="">Variety may be the spice of life, but it also helps with personal development.</p> <p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true"> </p> <h2><strong>TRANSCRIPT</strong></h2> <p class="">Welcome to episode 140 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we discuss how variety can help with learning and development.</p> <p class="">You may have heard the expression that variety is the spice of life, but variety also turns out to be important for development and learning. Research shows us that learning in a broader and more variable setting ultimately helps us to do three things:</p> <ol data-rte-list="default"> <li> <p class="">It helps us to better identify which elements are relevant</p> </li> <li> <p class="">It helps us to make broader generalisations</p> </li> <li> <p class="">It forces us to reconstruct memories - getting us out of the ruts that might otherwise trap us</p> </li> </ol> <p class="">Let’s take an example from the research. If an infant is learning what a dog is as a category, it’s quick and easy to just show them one type of dog. Show them that exact dog, and they will tell you that it is a dog. It takes longer to learn what a dog is if we expose that same infant to multiple types of dogs, however they’re then much better at generalising that learning to a new type of dog. If I’ve only ever seen one type of dog, I may not correctly identify a new type of dog as a dog. If instead I learned what a dog is by seeing lots of different examples, I’m much better able to correctly identify a new type of dog.</p> <p class="">The same principle applies for adults learning a new sport. One option if I’m learning tennis would be to practice one shot over and over again. Another way could involve learning and practicing lots of different shots. The second way takes a lot longer to get us to the point where we can hit the ball over the net, but it is going to be much better in the unpredictability of a tennis