What did you learn this week?

Last week, you may have seen that I wrote about the back-to-school season and the strange in-between time at the beginning of September.

And suddenly, we’re fully in it. This week, I taught my first class back in the Brand Design program at George Brown’s School of Design (more on that in another newsletter).

While moving between calls and another part of campus, I popped into the epic Limberlost Place building. I had heard about it before, but being inside sparked feelings of curiosity, creativity and possibility.

The places where we learn

Limberlost Place is a 10-storey, mass-timber, net-zero building near Toronto’s waterfront. It opened last year and is the first institutional building of its kind in Ontario.

And it’s an awesome building to experience in person.

I’ve often written about the power of our surroundings and how much I enjoy working from different places and spaces. Our environment can affect how we think, what we notice and what feels possible.

Back-to-school season is a great reminder of that. We’re fortunate to have a plethora of these spaces in Toronto, many within walking distance of where I live. Stepping into a classroom, campus, library or thoughtfully designed building can shift your mindset—even when you’re no longer technically a student.

There is something about September that makes learning feel tangible.

Back to school for professionals

Ron Tite also had something to say about that this week. He’s an agency owner, author and speaker, and someone I’ve followed and admired in the advertising industry since the early days of my first agency.

Much more recently, I’ve had the pleasure of working on some content with him through Clarity Content — it’s awesome how often “clarity” comes up in his work, too. Here’s one of my favourite topics we captured in the studio:

This week, I was reading Ron’s newsletter called OFF SCRIPT, and enjoyed his take on “back to school” for professionals:

Most of us understand that we need to continue learning, but we tend to treat professional education as something we’ll get to when we have more time.

Of course, more time rarely appears.
Ron says we have an “education routine problem”.

Professional learning used always to be treated as a major event: earning another degree, enrolling in an executive program, completing a certificate or attending several days of company-funded training. Those experiences are still valuable, though they require a significant commitment of time, money and energy. That makes learning feel like somewhere we occasionally go, instead of something we regularly do.

Ron describes his approach as “mental exercise”: creating small, recurring opportunities to read, listen, write, ask questions and encounter new ideas. I love a good business podcast while walking to meetings, for example, or recording my thoughts for this newsletter or a video.

Posting regularly on LinkedIn is also part of Ron’s learning routine. The commitment to share ideas gives him a reason to keep reading, forming opinions and paying attention to what is happening around him.

The takeaway is to see where you can add learning to your routine this fall.

Keeping a student mindset

Teaching is one of the ways I continue learning.
It creates structure around my curiosity.

Returning to the classroom requires me to revisit what I know, find more current examples, question which slides still hold up and listen to how a new group of students sees the world.

It’s similar to what happens through writing this newsletter, creating content, attending events and having conversations with people working in different industries. Sharing what I’m learning forces me to make sense of it. It helps me connect ideas across branding, business, creativity, education and social impact.

Learning also becomes more interesting when it isn’t limited to subjects directly connected to our jobs. A new building can teach us something about sustainability and design. A conversation can challenge how we think about leadership. A book from outside our industry can give us language for a problem we’ve been trying to solve inside it.

This season gives us a natural moment to reconsider our routines. Along with the meetings, deadlines and projects in our calendars, let’s make room to intentionally add in a new learning practice. For you, maybe that’s a weekly podcast walk, a conversation with someone outside your usual circle or a commitment to write and share what you’re discovering.

We don’t need to enrol in school to become students again.
We just need to create the conditions that keep us curious.