Learning To Learn

The process of being a beginner is valuable in so many underappreciated ways.

1. Humility: if you only stay in a realm you are an “expert” in, you forget what not-knowing feels like. You can become callous towards people outside of your community or level of skill, inflate your own ego, and give others an impression that you are unapproachable or even in some cases that you are superhuman (and you thereby discourage them). You also become accustomed to being “the one with the answers” and risk telling yourself that your expertise applies outside of its narrow band. You may wade into unfamiliar territory without realizing your map doesn’t help you there. You come to appreciate that however much expertise you may have in one area, there are countless other areas where you are a novice. It also helps keep you in shape at asking questions, asking for help, and being a plain-old team member rather than a captain or leader.
2. Joy / Wonder / Child-mind: Put plainly: it is extremely fun finding new interests and stumbling through them naively. Being a beginner is freeing, like a “reset” for your mind. It also shows you how deep our world is. You realize that every possible interest is a portal to a vast community and potential lifetime of work. Even if you don’t pursue every portal, you’ll appreciate they’re there and that makes life cooler.
3. Discovery / Invention: You hone your skills of resourcefulness, research, and self-sufficiency. You also get to enjoy the process of genuinely inventing or discovering things for yourself (even when others / experts have already discovered or invented those things). It is free “Eureka” points. A related (but rarer) potential benefit is that with fresh eyes you may actually make a discovery or invention that the experts in that area haven’t made yet. The beginner is prone to “simple” questions that poke assumptions many experts don’t consciously consider all that much (cataloguing examples of this would be awesome). In fact another thought just entered my mind. I am willing to bet many areas of study / work / technology / or life in general have problems that are unique to beginners or intermediates. And that if you stumbled upon one as a beginner yourself and then solved it for folks who come after you, you could make a good bit of money (as well as just making life easier for those folks!). For example, what if you made a podcast or blog only for complete newbies for some area (say Crypto, programming, a language, etc)? Or better yet an actual product that solves beginner issues (say an IDE that is extremely beginner friendly for new programmers or a pair of skis that make learning less painful)? Of course some people do do these kind of things and have reaped the rewards. Lastly, I will add that sometimes the process of encountering problems and their existing solutions to an area new to you inspires an analogous solution in an area you are an expert in. For example, two Naval researchers who are partly responsible for the invention of RADAR were toying around with radios when they were inspired to apply their learnings as novices to the very real and known problem of detecting enemy ships.
4. Flywheel: Improving at learning creates compounding advantages. The skill will apply everywhere in your life. The more times you experience being a beginner, the easier the next time becomes.
5. Teaching: being a good student helps to be a good teacher. To understand the beginner mindset is hugely valuable for teachers.
6. Multifaceted: It also just makes you more interesting. If you are super good at one thing, that has tremendous value to others interested in that same thing but may bore people who don’t share that interest. But by exploring outside of your “main thing”, you make connections with more of the world, meet people you may have never interacted with, and overall become more dynamic.

There is an almost endless list of these (but let’s stick to these six for now). I may choose something new to be beginner at and document my experiences here, or start documenting one of those areas I am already investigating… that would be cool.