Building a Personal Apprenticeship

What have you always wanted to do but didn't give yourself time for? What skills have you wanted to master in the past but never spent the energy doing so? Have you ever looked at your skills and thought "I should have done more".

It's common to look back on our education or personal development and think we could have done better. We look at ourselves now and think "Ok - I'm going to fix this and do another degree" or "I'm going to get that course done". But there is another path to mastery we never consider - the personal apprenticeship.

What is an apprenticeship?

Apprenticeships are commonly a company-sponsored program. They allow the employer to train new employees in relevant skills. After completing the apprenticeship, the employee has a set of valuable skills for their industry whether it be a trade, a medical discipline or something like software engineering. Compare this to a university student who has very few job-relevant skills after a university degree. All of this and the apprentice gets paid. It's win-win.

Industrial apprenticeships are fantastic programs, but we don't have to rely on companies for them. We can take the same apprenticeship model and apply it to anyone who has a career or hobby they are passionate about.

An apprenticeship more generically is...

An apprenticeship is a period of focused learning. The apprentice isn't focusing on income or title - they're focusing on their work. The objective is to acquire practical skills and sow seeds. The more seeds sown during the apprenticeship, the more opportunities will open up. The apprentice focuses on developing a few high-quality skills (ie. not lots of things). Over time, the apprentice combines their skills together, building them into a toolkit of mastery for their craft.

Secondly, apprenticeships are unique to each person. Everyone falls into the trap of looking at someone else we admire and trying to copy them. It is useful to look at others' paths, but only as a guideline. Following someone else's path will lead to a loss of focus, disinterest and ultimately burnout. We see this all the time in certain disciplines - just look at the dropout rates in universities for software development and medicine. These are financially attractive disciplines, but they require a person who is dedicated to the craft.

Apprenticeships must be challenging. An easy apprenticeship is pointless - nobody learns anything. We learn fastest by overcoming difficult situations. A good litmus test for a person's progress is how many difficult things they have accomplished. This could be a research paper, writing a blog or article, giving a speech or presentation, delivering a project or passing an exam. The more challenges someone encounters in their apprenticeship, the more they learn.

Designing your own apprenticeship

The apprenticeship model is extremely practical and useful for sowing seeds for future success. But we don't need to rely on a company or university to design an apprenticeship for us. Look at the three criteria for a good apprenticeship:

• The objective is to learn.
• It is unique to you.
• It must be challenging.

The objective is to learn

Tell yourself that you are carving out a period of time specifically to learn and develop your skills. You're not looking for promotions (though if they come then great!). You're not looking for a career change (not yet anyway). This period is about focusing on the domain or set of skills you believe are important.

It is unique to you

The apprenticeship should focus on something that drives you. It should be something that grips you - a vision of your future.

For example, let's say you want to become the CEO of a large company someday. Your apprenticeship might focus on setting up a very small, profitable business. This would enable you to learn about things like tax law, business finance, profit and loss, marketing and product development.

Or if you wanted to switch careers into university lecturing, your apprenticeship could focus on developing the skills for a PHD.

Another great thing about a self-directed apprenticeship is there is no time limit. You can take it slow and build up your big, deep ideas for yourself. If you are busy with work or family and can't commit lots of time to your apprenticeship, that's great! This will allow you to hone your skills over a longer period of time.

It needs to be challenging

If your self-directed apprenticeship is easy, don't bother with it. Good learning requires you to struggle with the content or skill. A challenging apprenticeship also means you won't get bored after a week. Your perseverance will give you wins to be proud of.

Finally, if it's not challenging, you're not setting the bar high enough. You need to decide if your apprenticeship is worth it. Why do you really want to go down this route? What grips you about this field or study or skillset? A high bar will produce expertise you are proud of. It also means nobody else will have the same expertise - other people don't want to do the difficult things you've done!

A personal example

I've just kicked off my own personal apprenticeship in Learning Science. I've ticked off the three criteria:

• Period of focused learning: The first phase of this personal apprenticeship will be over 6 months and split into monthly increments. Each month will focus on an overview of an area I want to study, from learning science to organisation change to neuroscience. After the six months, I will take a recap of everything learned and decide on next steps.
• Unique to me: It connects a bunch of skills and work experiences I've enjoyed over the last few years.
• It's challenging: The skillset is a bit of a rarity in my field (ironic considering the title "Learning and Development"). I've incorporated difficult challenges to complete along the way, which you can see highlighted in the diagram below. (Right click => Open image in new tab)