BOOK: Never Stop Learning (Brian Staats)

This was required reading for my job. I finished this book 7/14/2020.

Quick Recap:

This book dives into practices, stories, and tips for constant learning in life from a business professor with loads of references to famous studies, stories, and anecdotes. It's this reliance on anecdotes and cliche saying that can sometimes make me lose focus because it's not super tangible. However, overall the message and the lessons of the book are fantastic and there are a couple that I am hoping to implement myself.

Lessons Learned:

1. Specialization vs Variation

This was one of my favorite parts of the book because it addresses something I find myself struggling with. I am constantly learning and soaking up information, but it sometimes feels so general and useless. To be successful, you must incorporate both because too much specialization can blind you while too much variety means no depth. They together can help you take a novice's perspective which is a key learning technique. It's this balance that is so key and something I loved hearing about.

2. The Learning Curve

The use of the learning curve as a way for us to gauge our understanding is challenged in this book. Any task can be split up into multiple things, and thus made easier. So, for example, a surgeon must master many experiences like using a scalpel, suturing, cleaning hands in order to master his job. Each experience is important to learn, but it makes our understanding of the process and the learning curve less daunting. This is sometimes forgotten when we are talking about skills. Like coding for example is a tough curve, but really it can be split up and isn't as daunting as it may appear when you see it as many tasks rather than one large overarching one.

3. Bias

Staats talks extensively in this book about bias whether that's action bias, outcome bias, confirmation bias, availability bias, or many more. I think the key here is that the way lives our lives as humans mean we fall prey to the biases like everyone else. One of my favorite examples he gave for outcome bias was the idea that when a team wins people don't question the performance, and when they lose they dive into the problems and possible solution. It goes to show how many outcomes can cloud our understanding of the process. There are absolutely times when a team wins and it was so close and a total failure, but because of the outcome, no one questions the process. We need to recognize our biases even though it may be hard and seem counterintuitive.

4. Process

The books dive into the idea of focusing on process and perfecting what it's in your ability. They give two examples that I enjoyed and would like to share. The first was from Dave Brailsford, an extremely successful coach for team sky. He focused on the process of both things that were directly related to training and that which wasn't. For example, he looked at how riders trained and ate but extended by also making sure they washed hands to avoid illness, had the best pillow for sleeping at hotels, and the most effective massage gel. It's these marginal measures that pushed the team over the edge. The second example was of Dr. Booth, an orthopedic surgeon made sure that his process was all within his control. That meant retaining his same team for every surgery all the way down to behind the scenes people. It's this focus on detail that illustrates the importance of looking at inputs when understanding the outcome.

5. Creating a strength report

Staats had this great idea of asking someone to compile stories of moments where you shined in your work. I love this idea because it allows you to sit back and recognize what qualities you have mastered and what you need to work on. Understanding yourself in all your nuances is key to success and happiness and so I am constantly trying to find ways to take time for myself and reflect. This is obviously hard to do in a fast-moving world, but for me, it sometimes may just mean going on a bike ride or reading a book.

Quotes:

"Mistakes aren't a necessary evil. They aren't evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we'd have no originality). And yet even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning. I also acknowledge that acknowledge this truth is no enough. That's because failure is painful. and our feeling about this pain ten to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth." - Ed Catmull (The founder of Pixar)

"Having no problems is the biggest problem of all" - Taichi Ohno (Toyota Founder)

"To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge." - Confucius

"Supposing is good, but finding out is better" - Mark Twain

Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it" - Stan Smith ( Tennis Legend)

"The trouble with every one of us that we don't think enough... knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success in this business or any business." Thomas Watson (IBM founder)

"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier" - Colin Powell

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when its the only one you have" - Emile Chartier