We live in a world of knowledge abundance where anybody can learn anything, practically for free. It’s never been easier, cheaper and more convenient to become expert at something.
However, to truly become “expert creators” (ie model knowledge workers) something more than knowledge is required: we need to conquer a perpetual beginner’s mindset.
The beginner’s mindset is a childlike feeling that always pushes you to learn and satisfy your curiosity. It is indeed an incredibly hard place to be in when you actually have become an expert at something.
The beginner’s mindset gives you perspective and humility: it calls for a fresh point of view when things inevitably change around you.
You internalize this practice when you learn how to trigger an internal exhilarating sensation as things around you morph and you need to adapt by learning something new: this is the reward in itself.
Being a perpetual beginner can of course be very tough too. Mistakes are easy to occur: only a culture of high tolerance to mistakes enables people to wander in search of something new.
Just because you’re wandering, doesn’t mean you’re lost.
If you nurture a beginner’s mindset, and don’t act like a know-it-all, you will find people that are willing to teach you all you want to learn.
One of my mentors once told me:
“When the pupil is ready to learn, a master shall appear”.
This stuck with me: how true! In this sense, surrounding yourself with the right people becomes of paramount importance. I would intuitively think that you can’t hang around people that are just getting by and expect that you are going to live a rich life.
Meta-learning
In today’s world, there is a shift happening from credentials to skills, with skills taking over the place that once belonged to degrees.
- How do you make sure the skills you have are always up to date?
- How do you ensure you don’t just learn some skills and forget about them?
- How do you continuously refresh your arsenal of competences to be in line with the changes around you?
A key ability we must develop is meta-learning, ie learning about learning.
The beginner’s mindset is, once again, your solution. The beginner’s mindset turns the introvert into an extrovert, the ignorant into a curious learner, the arrogant expert into an humble student.
American futurist writer Alvin Toffler explains this very clearly in his 1970 book “Future Shock”:
“By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education […] Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.”
Where you start in life and what you are accustomed to play of course a big role.
I explain this with a personal example. In Italy, I attended a type of high school that focused heavily on Humanities (Philosophy, Greek Literature, Latin, History, etc) and was very light on Mathematics and Physics.
Because of that, as a teen-ager I never got the chance to really deep dive into scientific disciplines and, as a consequence, I thought I didn’t like them.
As a challenger kid though (lol), this didn’t prevent me from making a pretty ballsy move and go study to obtain an Engineering degree at University.
In hindsight, this was probably the first strong episode in my life where I displayed a willingness to pursue a beginner’s mindset. I didn’t really do it so thoughtfully, but I had probably understood intuitively that what you don’t like today, you may like tomorrow if you’re given a chance.
A shield against the Dunning-Kruger effect
David Dunning, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, has devoted much of his career to studying the flaws in human thinking.
He is best known for his work with Justin Kruger on the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect, a type of cognitive bias in which people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are.
In this 2014 article, Dunning explains:
“For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent.”
I argue that the very fact that you are actively working towards cultivating a beginner’s mindset in a way protects you from becoming an unaware victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Because you know that you are a beginner, you can’t fool yourself into thinking that you are an expert.
Conclusive thoughts
In my mental framework, the best expert creators are role models for knowledge workers. They find themselves experiencing a perennial discontent for stuff and situations. Even if they are accustomed to something, they believe it can be improved.
They exhibit a perpetual beginner’s mindset which pushes them to improve themselves and continuously learn.
Eventually, your success in life will be evaluated to the extent of how well you managed to serve other people, your family, your neighbors and your clients. To do that well, you must never sit still.
If you don’t look at your previous self and dislike it, this means you haven’t made any progress since.