Structured Learning Experience – 3P Model Put to Test

 

As the saying goes “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not” (Albert Einstein), 

I wanted to put my 3P model to real test. Although I had initialsuccess in learning with 3P model, there is an inner feeling in me always tells that something more tangible and practical can be achieved with this. I decided to experiment on 2 aspects of my life: Personal and Professional.

Personal Aspect:

In personal aspect, I wanted to run, run consistently and run better. As per the Planning phase, I needed an initial steer which came from my friend who wanted to shred some weight and feel better and looking for a company. It all started at the end of spring and beginning of summer 2020. Although I had prior experience of weekly 5k park runs, I set myself a goal of 5k every time I run. We had wearables that tracked and reminded of our goals every day and we decided to run in the evenings after work, thanks to the summer and permitted rules to run during COVID.

Planning was perfect and as we moved onto Practice phase we started to run consistently 5k every day within first 3 weeks of run. But something was not right as time of completion was recorded as ~39 minutes whereas I used to tick off average 27 minutes during our weekly 5k park runs. One day along with our wearables, we took our phones with maps on coupled with 2 different apps to track the running route, as expected the culprit was wearable that is showing wrong reading during run. All the while it was showing 5km in ~39 min, it was a great relief that actually we were already running 7.5-8 Km consistently at the end of first month. We quickly moved out from Habit to Lifestyle after 21 days of practice and continued running 5-6 days a week giving a day or two rest. Due to the workload when we missed a day that was planned already, we felt like some part of our routine was missing.

During Process phase, we validated that our objectives were met and shared our experiences with friends and family on how we maintained consistency. We also found our purpose, we want to run to see the better version of ourselves but never burdened ourselves that we have to run. We realized it’s time to set the bars high with revision of goals to hit 10k under 60 min once a week initially. As we achieved that we set to run 10k as many days as possible in a week and later we ran 10k daily with a consistent timing of 55-56 minutes.  Despite the change in partners and running all alone by myself I kept on setting new targets and I eventually ran 15k once and half marathon by the end of summer 2020. Maybe it’s time to treat myself a new wearable that can measure accurately; this picture to the left reminds me that, as it measured 15km for my first ever half marathon run giving results in miles/hour (as it always does) instead, perhaps.

There were hardships in achieving this feat like runners knee, friends telling you don’t need to run as you are already lean and at times not a conducive weather condition. I took the advice for runner’s knee with good knee pad/runners socks and as I exactly knew what I wanted to achieve and committed to the results, I ran better when conditions were worse to the fact that my first 10k run came in chilly, windy and drizzling conditions.

Professional Aspect:

In professional aspect, I wanted to achieve Professional Cloud Architect Certification from Google. For the Planning phase, Initial steer came from organisation I work for, TCS, which provided opportunity to improve the digital skills and I set a goal to achieve this by end of summer 2020. There are ~90 hours of material with labs for hands-on in 7 different courses for the architecture track from Google.

In parallel to my experiment with run, I managed to pick up the habit of reading 30 minutes after my daily run in the evening with little more time on weekends during Practice phase. Slowly and steadily this became my routine and I managed to complete all courses for the architect track by the end of summer. Afterwards I have moved on to other study materials, practice exams, YouTube videos on some core concepts, revising labs etc. Eventually, albeit bit later, I attained certification in Oct 2020.

During the Processing phase, I helped sharing my experience with few other colleagues in their preparation and achieving certification. I intend to help more people on their cloud journey in future too and also put my new skills in practice to improvise and bring benefits to the organisation and clients I work for, as my next set of goals.

I always remember 2020 especially the summer which taught an important lesson during difficult COVID times with less resources at work to manage stakeholder expectations and yet achieving 2 key things that I had never imagined I could in tougher situations. I attribute most of the success to my 3P model of structural learning which has given a robust framework to achieve something practical and result oriented despite of difficult circumstances to deal with. You too can give it a try or pick a model that best works for you and put it to test with which you can see real benefits and visible outcomes!