Learning happens everywhere.
It doesn’t matter if you’re doing a master’s degree with an international university or just listening to books in your spare time. It’s about constantly improving your skills, feeding your curiosity, and embracing the idea of being a beginner for life, much like Ernest Hemingway writes in Men Without Women (also available on Audible):
Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.
So, if you’d like to grow your mind, here are some of my favourite Seth Godin quotes from his 2021 blog posts, together with a recommended title from Blinkist.
If there are people who are playing at a different level than you who are embracing an approach that feels unnatural to you, you may have found the technique that you’ve been missing. ~ Natural technique doesn’t exist
Learn more: Moonwalking with Einstein
In our personal lives, we can coast on a particular credential or bit of knowledge for years. And then one day, we realise we’re obsolete. The idea is the same: We need to plant our trees before we want the shade, and fix our systems before they break. ~ Infrastructure
Learn more: Long Life Learning
While more knowledge can change belief, it usually doesn’t. Belief is a cultural phenomenon, created in conjunction with the people around us. ~ Belief and knowledge
Learn more: Why People Believe Weird Things
Sooner or later, learning wins out. The paper fades, but what you know and who you become lasts. ~ A seat at the table
Learn more: The Personal MBA
Education is a model based on scarcity, compliance and accreditation. It trades time, attention and money for a piece of paper that promises value. But we learn in ways that have little to do with how mass education is structured. ~ The revolution in online learning
Learn more: The End of College
The scientific method is a process, not a lab coat or a textbook. Changing one’s point of view is a virtue, not a flaw. ~ Certainty, accuracy and leadership
Learn more: The Half-Life of Facts
Our tools can be re-used, and our assets have value to us and to others. Skills can be an investment, compounding as they grow. ~ Investments and expenses
Learn more: Peak
Just about anything worth learning is worth learning the hard way. ~ Lessons learned the hard way
Learn more: Smarter Tomorrow
Anecdotes aren’t science. Like coincidences, they’re by-products of our story-seeking minds, connections we make as we search for solace in a confusing world. ~ Anecdotes are not science
Learn more: The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit
It’s often easier to discover the truth if we believe it’s there in the first place. ~ Seeing and believing
Learn more: Truth
In a world that keeps changing, regardless of how much we might want it to slow down, learning is the attribute that is often overlooked. ~ What did you learn on vacation?
Learn more: Smarter
Well-educated isn’t the same thing as smart. Talents are different than skills. Learning is not the same as education. Successful isn’t the same as rich. ~ Easily confused
Learn more: What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School
It’s easy to be in favour of more data. After all, until we reach a certain point, more data is the best way to make a better decision. But then, fairly suddenly, more isn’t better. It’s simply a way to become confused or to stall. ~ Limiting data in search of information
Learn more: The Art of Logic
If you want more information, be careful about the data you seek out. ~ Limiting data in search of information
Learn more: Stop Reading the News
We’re living in the age of an always-connected universal encyclopaedia and instantly updated fact and teaching machine called the Net. This means that it’s more important to want to know the answer and to know how to look it up than it is to have memorised it when we were seven. ~ The modern curriculum
Learn more: Curious
In an expert-run industrialised economy, there’s a lot of pressure to be the one who’s sure, the person with all the answers. Far more valuable is someone who has all the questions. ~ All the answers
Learn more: Humility Is The New Smart
An anecdote is not evidence. But we often treat it that way. ~ Life by anecdote
Learn more: Weaponized Lies
The world is changing fast and we’re all more connected than ever before. The good news is that these are all skills, they can be learned and it’s imperative that we teach them to others. ~ Tools for modern citizens
Learn more: Range
The question isn’t whether or not each of us is going to get better at using our tools, the only issue is: how soon? ~ Shift your tech time horizon
Learn more: Bounce
Truth is hard to find. Truth is difficult to understand when it arrives. But truth doesn’t work to evade us. It usually stays still until we find it. ~ Truth is elusive, but it isn’t evasive
Learn more: When Einstein Walked with Gödel
“Will this be on the test?” is a question invented by industrialists. It’s the cornerstone of traditional schooling at scale, because it is such an effective way to indoctrinate kids to become cogs in the system. ~ School vs. progress
Learn more: The Case Against Education
Folk wisdom is priceless. It’s the sum total of shared human experience, usually around our emotions. But folk wisdom is not the same as folk expertise. ~ The expertise gap
Learn more: The Death of Expertise
We have a chance to learn and move forward if we care to. ~ Books unread
Learn more: Unlearn
Outsized rewards go to people who figure out how to master a skill or a point of view, and then commit to doing it again and again. ~ Very good at a simple game
Learn more: The Polymath
When an unexpected event occurs, we look for stories, coincidences, supernatural causes and other forms of solace to explain something that frightens or surprises us. But unexpected events are usually caused by simple mechanisms. ~ Novacula Occami
Learn more: Everything is Obvious
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