You may have heard of the term MVP, or Minimum Viable Product. It is the version of a product that has just enough features so early customers can use it and validate the product idea and target market. An MVP helps product developers receive valuable customer feedback early in the process so they can iterate on and improve the product.
I’ve recently started thinking about what Minimum Viable Learning (or MVL) might look like. Since most of what I’m doing right now is new to me in one way or another, I toggle between learning new concepts and extracting tangible action-oriented takeaways. Ideally I would dive into a new area of information, digest what I need and then apply it to my work. But I’m noticing that the more I know, the more I see my knowledge gaps and this creates a desire to double down on learning rather than on the application of learning. Moreover, as time passes in life, chances are that we’ve faced a few stumbles and this history of falling and failing may feed the need to make our thinking bulletproof with more knowledge. This combination of past failures and awareness of our knowledge gaps creates mountains of internal resistance so instead of working, we find ourselves opening the fridge for that ill-timed snack. So…I’m starting to employ this idea of MVL to address this anti-action cycle.
MVL acknowledges that learning, action and contribution are iterative; it is the minimum amount of information we need to create personal mental models and vocabulary around a specific issue, so we can then design and implement a solve. We can spend our lives consuming information and living on the bench, or we can get to our MVL, take action, gain feedback, and adjust ensuing action accordingly. Minimum Viable Learning can be a helpful tool in outwitting perfectionism and resistance.
“Never confuse movement with action.”― Ernest Hemingway
