Blockbuster and Kodak companies that didn’t fail because they stopped learning, but because they couldn’t unlearn the habits or business practices that no longer worked.
Kodak invented the digital camera and shelved it because it threatened their film business. Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million and passed, because their whole model was built around a habit that used to work brilliantly, i.e., the late fee.
The thing that made them successful is exactly what made them blind. The same trap catches individual careers all the time.
That management style that worked when you led a team of three? It might be exactly what’s holding you back leading a team of twelve. That “I do my best work solo” instinct that made you a standout individual contributor? It could be the very thing keeping you from being trusted with cross-functional influence.
Growth isn’t only about what you add. Sometimes it’s about what you’re finally willing to let go of.
Why Unlearning Matters Now
Unlearning is the deliberate process of letting go of outdated knowledge, habits, and mental models that no longer serve you. It’s about making room for something more relevant to take their place. It’s different from forgetting. Where forgetting is passive, unlearning is a choice.
And it matters more now than at almost any point in recent memory. The World Economic Forum has estimated that up to 50% of employees will need reskilling as automation and AI reshape how work gets done. And separate research shows the vast majority of workers already sense this urgency, with 87% acknowledging they’ll need to keep acquiring new expertise throughout their careers.
Nobody mentions in those statistics that reskilling assumes there’s room to add something new. But if you’re still operating on the old mental model, the new skill has nowhere to land.
Why Letting Go is Harder Than Learning Something New
If unlearning were easy, everyone would already be doing it. It isn’t, and there’s a real cognitive reason why.
Psychologists call it the Einstellung Effect, a bias where people default to familiar solutions even when better ones are available, simply because the familiar one worked before. It’s why an experienced professional resists a new tool with “the old way worked just fine.” They don’t do this out of stubbornness, but because the brain is wired to reach for the well-worn path first.
There’s also an emotional layer most productivity advice skips entirely. Letting go of an old approach can feel like letting go of a piece of your professional identity. If “being the go-to person who fixes everything” is how you built your reputation, questioning that habit can feel less like growth and more like loss.
Naming that discomfort matters. It’s not a sign you’re doing something wrong. It’s a sign you’re doing something real.
The Signals That Tell You It’s Time to Unlearn
You don’t need a crisis to know when a habit has expired. Watch for these signals:
- The same approach keeps producing diminishing returns. What used to get a strong reaction now barely registers.
- You feel resistance to new tools or processes, but can’t fully explain why. That gut “no” is often the old habit protecting itself.
- You’re the bottleneck, not the solution. If people wait on you because you insist on doing it “your way,” the way may have outlived its usefulness.
- Your feedback has started repeating. If the same growth area shows up review after review, it’s rarely a skills gap. It’s usually a habit gap.
You already have the expertise. The Career Visibility Diagnostic tells you whether it’s showing up where it counts.
Five Tips to Unlearn The Habits Holding You Back
1. Run A Regular “Belief Audit”
Set aside time—quarterly works well—to ask honestly: “which of my go-to approaches are working because they’re still right, and which are working because they’re familiar?” The two aren’t always the same thing.
2. Separate The Identity From The Habit
You can retire an old way of working without retiring the reputation you built with it. Try reframing it as, “I’m updating how I operate,” not “I was doing it wrong.” That single shift in language makes the process far less threatening.
3. Get Curious Before You Get Defensive
When someone suggests a new approach and your first instinct is resistance, pause and ask why. Sometimes the resistance is valid insight. Often, it’s just the comfort of the familiar talking.
4. Practice In Low-Stakes Moments First
Don’t wait for a high-pressure project to test a new approach. Try it somewhere small, such as a low-stakes meeting, a minor process, so the unlearning doesn’t have to happen under pressure.
5. Watch For The Habits Hiding In Plain Sight
The hardest ones to unlearn aren’t the obvious outdated tools. They’re the invisible mental models: ”good employees never say no,” “asking questions makes me look unprepared,” “my value is doing, not delegating.” These rarely show up on a skills gap analysis, but do show up in what you keep avoiding.
The Reframe That Makes Unlearning Easier
Letting go doesn’t mean losing what made you good. It means updating your approach to match the reality you’re actually operating in today rather than the one you built your habits around five years ago.
Ask yourself the question worth sitting with: What’s one belief or habit you’re still holding onto that no longer earns its keep? What might open up if you finally let it go?
Final Reflection on Unlearning Habits
Every career eventually reaches a moment where the very thing that got you here won’t get you there. That’s just the shape of growth.
You don’t need to unlearn everything at once. Pick one habit this month—one instinct that’s outlived its usefulness—and consciously set it down. The space it leaves behind is exactly where your next chapter gets to begin.
