Don't Learn So Damn Slow

Most of us are not tough enough to let the losses sink deeply enough into our psyche that they motivate us, yet not so deeply that they cause delusion.

The average human either wallows in despair and gets stuck or buries their mistakes too deeply to be of any use in the future.

“Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life. As a corollary to that proposition, which is very important, it means that you are hooked for lifetime learning. And without lifetime learning, you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you learn after you leave here.” - Charlie Munger

Don't learn so damn slow...

Nature is a nasty teacher. It should only be the teacher of last resort. I have to get way better at this.

Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often people know what they are NOT good at - and even then more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone something one can not do at all.

Let those words sink in. Great concepts like this are always elegantly simple and easy to overlook.

What he is saying is that your past failures probably weren't from a lack of discipline, or a lack of willpower, but from the fact that you had misidentified what you were truly good at. 

We think we know our talents. But we usually don't. 

The human mind is built to trick us. Scientists have known this for years. They call it "Illusory Superiority". They define it as "a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities."

Studies show that the average man thinks he is 5 IQ points smarter than he really is (strangely women tend to underestimate their IQ by 5 points). 

It's hard to know yourself. Even Socrates said that the reason he didn't spend time talking about religion or the gods was that he had such a hard time "Knowing Himself". He was spending so much time on self discovery that he didn't have time to speculate about what happens after death.

 Most of us are delusional about something and it's usually about our own strengths and weaknesses. I think it stems from fear, fear of rejection, or fear of people not liking us if we are honest about our flaws.

 Charlie Munger, who Bill Gates and Warren Buffet call the smartest man alive, says that there are 25 reasons we make mistakes in judgment. Reasons like social bias, association bias, chemical bias, and senescence bias.

But the bias most relevant to managing ourselves he calls "Simple psychological denial".

It's that fear that gets us. That's why I'm so big on courage. When you have courage everything falls into place. But when you operate out of fear life is a never ending cascade of psychological biases. 

If you are broke the obvious signs are that you need to learn more about managing and making money. If you are fat you need to admit that you probably suck at controlling what you eat. If you are lonely you have to read the obvious signs that your people skills need work. If you never get called back after the first date maybe the obvious sign is that you need to use breath mints.

1. Concentrate your time and energy on your strengths: Put yourself only in situations that bring out your strengths. If you are good at starting things but never finish them then partner up with someone who likes to finish things.

2. Improve those strengths: Build skills and increase your knowledge in your areas of strength. If you are a naturally good networker than become the world's best networker. Read books on networking, sales, marketing, psychometrics, and find a mentor who is a master networker. Commit to seeing your strengths as a sculpture that you continually refine. 

Like Munger says, "Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve."

3. Overcome your disabling ignorance: Don't take pride in not knowing things. I hear people saying weird things like "I'm not good at math". Well guess what, to be good at just about anything you have to know basic math. Don't make some sweeping justification of ignorance. Even though you need to specialize in your strengths you still need to have basic skills in a wide variety of areas. 

4. Fix bad habits: Sometimes what you think is a weakness is just a bad habit. Bad habits can be fixed. Then you will see that seeming weaknesses were actually strengths all along. For example, maybe you think you are bad at follow through. But maybe you just have a bad habit of watching too much TV. Throw the TV in the trash and suddenly you will discover how productive you actually can be.

5. Overlook true weakness: Those areas that are truly weaknesses (that aren't just ignorance or bad habits) should not be focused on. It's a way better use of your time to just increase mastery of your strengths. 

“The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.” - Charlie Munger