Chapter 4 - The Importance of an Always Be Learning Life
To read:
Growth Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: The fs.blog explores Carol Dweck’s journey into how our conscious and unconscious thoughts affect us, and our ability to improve.
Homo Deus - A Brief History of Tomorrow: Yuval Noah Harari’s book is a “breathless, compulsive inquiry into humanity’s apocalyptic, tech-driven future,” writes The Guardian.
Post-pandemic: COVID has made crystal clear both how important our technology is to human flourishing, and how well we can deliver, argues famed VC Marc Andreessen.
To listen:
Nimble entrepreneurs: What sets them apart is not their mastery of any given field, but the speed at which they zip up a learning curve, says LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman in this Infinite Learner podcast.
Pandora’s box: Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE discusses the success of Pandora’s visionary founder Tim Westergren and offers three tips for founders looking to bring a more aesthetically beautiful future to the world.
Revisionist History: Malcolm Gladwell journeys through the overlooked and the misunderstood – and asks whether we got it right the first time in this podcast series. Sometimes the past deserves a second chance.
What is Vedanta? Vedanta means the culmination of knowledge. It is the ancient Indian philosophy that answers the fundamental questions of life, explains A. Parthasarathy, my teacher in Mumbai.
On a lifetime of reading: Gary Hoover, founder of the book superstore chain Bookstop, talks about his business background, his love of reading, and his nearly 60,000 volume library
Believe in yourself: We can grow our brains’ capacity to learn more when we simply accept that in fact this is possible. It’s called the “growth mindset.” Take a listen to author Carol Dweck.
Chapter 4
The Importance of an Always Be Learning Life
“The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
— Alvin Toffler, author, and futurist
It’s hard to exaggerate just how important the credo “Always Be Learning” is to the life of the entrepreneur. It’s also easy to invite confusion on this topic, in an age in which we bathe in information. After all, aren’t we learning more and learning it faster than ever before?
Not quite.
I know it may feel like we are learning more. We are certainly exposed to more information. And this explosion of knowledge enriches our lives. Today, the entirety of human knowledge doubles roughly every 13 months, according to a calculation first created by the futurist Buckminster Fuller. Stir that with the theory of “Singularity,” pushed by Google’s artificial intelligence czar Ray Kurzweil, and all that’s behind it, and soon the entire store of human knowledge will be doubling every 12 hours.
In my world — and I suspect in the world of the entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs reading this book as well — we scramble in the face of this reality. New channels, new apps, new markets. You have 15 blogs and 20 newsletters you like to get through, in addition to the more regular news feeds. Your iPhone pings relentlessly with the bold and the bonkers. That podcast ran longer than your morning jog, so you need to catch up later along with the other three you’ve promised yourself to get to. But first, check your email, texts, your Twitter feed, Slack, LinkedIn, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, and your voicemail (if you still have it, which I don’t). How do the Q3 KPIs stack up against those from Q2? What about those changes in tax law? Just exactly how does a “SPAC” work and how did it become so popular overnight? No wonder you feel guilty about your secret desire to read a novel.
I get it. We live at the intersection of two imperatives. On the one hand, there’s never been so much that you need to learn in a world and business environment that is as fast-changing as the Texas sky. On the other hand, we’re being deluged with data, information, and knowledge in such volumes that it’s all but impossible to keep those three categories apart — a continuum in fact at the heart of what we do at my company data.world. I often tell aspiring entrepreneurs and veterans alike that this is what I call “Red Queen Syndrome.”
You probably recall her from high school when you read Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. There’s the part when Alice is schooled by the Red Queen in that important life lesson that today’s entrepreneurs fail to heed at their peril. It’s where Alice finds herself running faster and faster with the Red Queen — but staying in the same place.
“Alice looked round her in great surprise” reads the story, describing her dash to nowhere. “ ‘Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!’
“ ‘Of course it is,’ said the Queen, ‘what would you have it?’
“ ‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing’.’’
So I’m here to deliver the bad news. Running faster and harder, becoming more “efficient,” creating another “metric” to surpass, and doubling the speed in your podcast listening, will not do much to curtail the fire hoses of words and numbers. Sure, you could use a digital detox. You need to get your phone under control and check your email less frequently. Do those things, as smart leaders everywhere now advocate. But that alone won’t keep the Red Queen and her syndrome away. What I’m talking about here is moving your focus to the far end of that data-information-knowledge continuum. To be clear, the CEO of data.world is not telling you that you need to ignore data and information. Far from it. What I am saying is that managing both requires you to actively seek knowledge, even wisdom. You need to embrace an “Always Be Learning” mindset and practice.
Another way to think about this Red Queen dilemma might be with the insight of a more recent author, one whom I admire greatly and discuss below. This is Yuval Noah Harari and the insight, or at least my interpretation of it, comes from his book Homo Deus - A Brief History of Tomorrow, and more on him awaits you on the Digital Companion.
In the course of our evolution into the literate, high-tech species that we are today, the explosion of information that we have invented and rely upon is essentially a huge algorithm. It’s an ever-expanding, data-driven methodology that organizes modern life.
“In literate societies, people are organized into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm,” Harari argues, “and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions.”
Don’t misunderstand. This growing “algorithm” is not the enemy. I’m not advocating some back-to-the-land, off-the-grid lifestyle where we turn our back on technology. Harari’s algorithm is the architecture of the 21st economy and the best hope for civilization in the face of so many challenges. Aviation is six times safer than it was 30 years ago and 22 times safer than it was 50 years ago. The next time you board a plane, consider that the technology around you is monitoring everything happening inside the plane, everything that’s happening outside the plane, and everything else happening in some 50 time and space dimensions. Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients have been successfully treated without physical intervention thanks to the “CyberKnife” that incises tumors with so-called “radiosurgery.”
Just think of the COVID-19 pandemic, how successfully we migrated to Zoom, and the medical miracles that are now creating, however slowly, the exit. Marc Andreessen, the Netscape founder, and famous venture capitalist recently wrote a great essay on this in his publication Future.
“Moderna, a product of the American venture capital system, created the first mRNA COVID vaccine within two days of receiving the genetic code for COVID by email,” Andreessen wrote in the essay, which is on the Digital Companion.
But while the global algorithm is the source of virtually all progress and prosperity, mastery of it — which is the job of the entrepreneur — requires us to step outside of it, to gain a holistic perspective, to see it from the outside. In short, to practice an Always Be Learning life. Steve Jobs’ inspiration for the I-phone didn’t come from his Twitter feed. No, it came from the many books he read. These include Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki, Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lapee, and The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Bill Gates reads a book a week and claims his all-time favorite is Business Adventures, a collection of anecdotes from business more than 50 years ago. Warren Buffett somehow finds the time to read at least 500 pages a day. “Go to bed a little smarter each day,” Buffett has advised. “That’s how knowledge builds up. Like compound interest.”
But so many don’t. I’m sure you’ve met more than a few of the arrogant jerks who’ve memorized the jargon of your specific field or sector but have nothing new to add. These are among the many people who have stopped learning, and never realize it. They are stranded in the realm of the Red Queen but don’t realize that they are simply running in place. Unfortunately, I’ve worked with a few of them in my career and it is crushing to a person like me who has an Always Be Learning mindset. Frankly, I fear the number of those who have stopped learning — those ruled by the algorithm rather than choosing to rule it — is growing. The arrogant, wealthier ones among this bunch believe that they got to that point because of their “genius” and completely discount luck, circumstance, or more importantly the giants on whose shoulders they stand and who made their successful journey possible.
I have certainly enjoyed great success in life, and I frankly have worked very hard for it. But I owe everything that got me to the point that I could attain that success to a very long list of people. I reflect on those who comprise that list often, and I credit them at every opportunity. It includes my computer teacher back in middle school, my wife, my mother to whom my Lucky7 blog and this book is a tribute, my CEO coach, my co-founders, some of my investors and advisors, and many, many others.
As far as practicing an Always Be Learning life, well that is a little harder to cover. And it’s about far more than just books, as essential as they are. Let me tell you how I do it:
First, as suggested, I read obsessively — and I cast a very wide net in doing so. I regularly consume Wired magazine and have since the first issues. It does an amazing job of covering how technology is evolving and also changing society. I read the Wall Street Journal. I regularly read so many articles shared by friends on Facebook from credible sources, like The Washington Post and The Atlantic.
I regularly read books — lots of them. As I mentioned above, one of the books that stirred me most was Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. I think it was written to scare you in many ways, and in fact, he suggests as much, caveating his dire predictions in one passage as, “less of a prophecy and more a way of discussing present choices.” But he makes great and original points and his book makes you think.
As an aside, I should also mention that Harari is an inspirational entrepreneur as well. In Chapter 18, Forming Your Company’s Values, I’ll get more deeply into the values and social responsibilities of entrepreneurs and the concept of Conscious Capitalism. But Harari is a living example of this. His company Sapienship is making investments in the development of animal-free food products, including cultured meat and lab-grown milk, areas where Debra and I are investing as well. And I’m also impressed that in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in response to then-President Donald Trump’s elimination of U.S. funding to the World Health Organization, Harari personally donated $1 million to the agency at a critical time.
A couple of years ago, I held two incredible discussions on Homo Deus with a diverse group of readers, including Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin where I live, and author and serial entrepreneur Byron Reese, whose books include Wasted, How We Squander Time, Money and Resources and What We Can Do About It. Reese is one of the most brilliant people I know in Austin and we are proud investors in his past company, Gigaom, and his new company, JJ Kent. John Mackey, the co-founder, and CEO of Whole Foods Market called Byron’s most recent book, The Fourth Age, the best book he’s ever read on artificial intelligence. I would agree. It is incredibly practical and places AI in a thorough historical context.
Both of these books relate strongly to the work of author Simon Sinek, whose books include Start With Why. Among the resources I include on this chapter’s Digital Companion section are links to a number of Sinek’s TED talks that go to the heart of the argument I am making here. “Very few people or organizations know why they do what they do,” Sinek argued at TED, framing the dilemma I describe here about those who have abandoned the Always Be Learning mindset and yet don’t realize it.
Another book that is attuned to the concept I’m sharing here is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck. Her term for continuous learning is “growth mindset,” a reference to the power of simply believing that you can improve, grow and master new skills. Dweck refers to people who view talent as a quality that they either possess or lack as having a “fixed mindset.” By contrast, people with a growth mindset enjoy challenges, strive to learn, and consistently see potential to develop new skills. Take a few minutes to check out her TED talk, which I link to on the Digital Companion.
Along with books, I read a lot of blogs, such as the essays on First Round Review, the magazine produced by the VC firm First Round Capital, and almost anything written by Benedict Evans. Evans is a brilliant market strategist and helps you think more sharply about industry evolutions. He is clearly a superpower for the VC firm of Andressen Horowitz as one of their general partners. His weekly newsletter is a must-read, in my opinion.
I listen to a lot of podcasts while exercising, and on the way to and from work as we resume doing so. I used to think that the single best podcast for entrepreneurs was Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale. Not long ago on Masters of Scale, Reid interviewed Barry Diller in a two-part series on Infinite Learners, which is an awesome listen and, of course, something you can find on the Digital Companion. Today, I think the crown for best podcast for entrepreneurs goes to Mike Maples, Jr. for Starting Greatness. It is even more practical and actionable than Reid’s. Also, there are links on my Digital Companion to a lot of great content on Kara Swisher’s Recode Decode, such as an amazing interview with Scott Galloway, serial entrepreneur and author of the book The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Galloway is a brilliant market strategist who predicted that Amazon would buy Whole Foods given the overlap between Amazon Prime customers and Whole Foods shoppers. That catapulted him to tech-Nostradamus-like fame, and then Swisher tapped him to start a podcast together named Pivot, which is also terrific. Another podcast that I love, which is not tech, is Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History. All six seasons are just exceptional, and I look forward to listening to them each summer.
Earlier in this book, I mentioned my good fortune to be chosen for a year-long Henry Crown Fellowship for mid-career entrepreneurs run by the Aspen Institute. This is a two-year program of periodic seminars and projects designed to develop community-spirited leaders. Along with the other twenty-plus fellows, I read a lot of material curated for us by the Institute. This included Aristotle, Mahatma Gandhi, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, Plato, Leo Tolstoy, and many others. The Henry Crown Fellowship for me was like a second MBA — but in a more profound way. I don’t say that lightly because my MBA from the Wharton School deeply shaped my growth. But the fellowship gave me new and broader insight and understanding. The ancient philosophers Aristotle and Plato ground you in the essentials of human behavior, which have not changed very much — though we’ve made progress in our cultural values on such issues as equal rights for women and people of color. Gandhi and Rev. King give you the confidence and know-how from their creation of movements, and entrepreneurship is in many ways about creating movements, changing the world as I wrote in the opening chapter. They certainly imbue you with awareness of how easy you have it compared to their circumstances. This is not to minimize how difficult it is to create a movement of any kind, whether it changes a nation or an industry. Their historical examples, and those of so many other truly great leaders who changed the course of history, like author and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, are important sources of wisdom and inspiration to help build your confidence as you face the natural resistance you will to any kind of change.
Second, I engage myself in select conferences, such as TED, which I call the world’s best classroom with the world’s best students, and the Aspen Action Forum, where fellows from the Aspen Institute, including Henry Crown Fellows, gather every year. Both of these ignite and further my continued learning. I’ve gotten value as well from Techonomy, the annual thought leadership conference in New York. In 2016 the founder David Kirkpatrick, who authored The Facebook Effect with Mark Zuckerberg, interviewed his co-author right after the presidential election, an experience I’ll never forget. Zuckerberg has come a long way since then on his understanding of the issues of misinformation and I hope he progresses further. I go to a few off-the-record events every year, which is frustrating because I can’t talk about them here but those are the rules. I’ve attended Goldman Sachs’ annual Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. I also usually attend the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. I learn a lot about America, Israel, and Washington at AIPAC and we are proud supporters of the organization at Hurt Family Investments.
Third, I seek out mentors. Lots of them. We have over 30 Advisory Board members at data.world, and I had a similar number of advisors at Bazaarvoice. I have an incredible mentor in Jason Pressman from Shasta Ventures, who led our first round of funding and serves on our Board of Directors (I’ve known Jason for 18 years and he is just exceptional). Jason sparks and stirs my thinking. Gary Hoover, the founder of what became the business information service D&B Hoovers, is a great mentor. His long email threads, with lots of business-focused analysis, provoke my thinking. He is a very independently-minded libertarian thinker. If you haven’t read Gary’s book The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning you are missing out. A C-Span interview with Gary is on the Digital Companion. Gary's book will systematically take you through this process so you too become a lifelong learner. Whole Foods Co-founder John Mackey is a guide too. I’ve been very fortunate to be mentored by him over the years. His commitment to veganism has impacted my diet and several other things and it was an honor to serve alongside him on the Conscious Capitalism Board. But my number one mentor is my wife, Debra. I’m serious. When we got married I had $1,000 to my name and she had $2,000. Twenty-six amazing years of marriage later, I can’t count how many times my best friend has helped me.
Fourth, I do a lot of reflecting. Over the years, I’ve evolved from my introverted youth to become much more extroverted and I ruminate on things a lot. This helps reinforce my learning. I’ve learned over the years not to beat myself up — just to reflect and realize I’m human and constantly evolving. Going to India to study the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta under Swamiji Parthasarathy was an incredible experience that helped me. The philosophy of Vedanta enabled me to gain control of my mind, which is where the secret to happiness resides. And another book I will recommend is Parthasarathy’s Governing Business and Relationships. Another friend and mentor who has helped me with this is Kirk Dando, my CEO coach. We do a trip together every year to reflect together on our hikes. More resources on Vedanta, Parthasarathy, and Dando are, again, on the Digital Companion site.
Fifth, I actively try to shake myself up and question what I think I know. That’s why I went to India to study Vedanta in the first place. That’s why I’ve had a few dinners with Bruce Sterling, the former Austinite, and absolutely brilliant science fiction author. I follow his very edgy State of the World interview on the WELL every year with our local, brilliant Jon Lebkowsky. The WELL, an acronym for the “Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link,” is the world’s oldest continuously operating virtual community and it was founded by the thinker Stewart Brand whom I write about in Chapter 6, The Fallacy of Risk. I also spend a lot of time reading on Quora about topics that you would probably never guess that I’m interested in.
And back to podcasts for a moment, I occasionally listen to Waking Up by Sam Harris, which was recommended to me by Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Angeles, named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek magazine. It is different. Harris is a brilliant, independent thinker. I find that listening to him stokes my individualistic gene further. Thinking independently, and rationally, is incredibly important as an entrepreneur. You have to actively work on not riding the inevitable emotional highs and lows of entrepreneurship, and Harris is about as emotionally grounded as one can get, a trait honed by years of meditation. I personally do not meditate but I do other things to stay grounded, such as going on long walks/hikes and vacations to think or read a great book, which captures the wisdom of the ages, in a very slow and deliberate manner.
These are just some of I escape the realm of Lewis Caroll’s “Red Queen” and step outside the dynamics of Harari’s global “algorithm” to look back upon and reflect upon it. I realize, of course, that I have the good fortune and opportunity to attend invitation-only conferences, drop in on TED conferences and have lunch with well-known authors, thinkers, business leaders, and academics. So it’s important to underscore here a point I sought to make in my opening chapter. These are resources that everyone can access. The entry that I’m privileged to enjoy is great, of course, but its relevance is diminishing by the day as everyone increasingly has access to the finest of minds and ideas. You might say that the tools wrought by the “algorithm” are exactly what allows us to understand it at a higher level of awareness. There is no innovation you cannot explore online, no author or thinker you cannot follow or even interact with on Zoom. Virtually all the knowledge in the world’s universities is now as close as your laptop or even your phone.
Yes, this new world of exploding knowledge can be bewildering at times, even exhausting. If we let it. Or, we can use this new reality as history’s greatest opportunity and we can truly live the Always Be Learning life. My parting thought here is a plea that you actively seek knowledge and wisdom.
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
— Isaac Asimov