A Learning a Day

We often have a conversation with our kids about the idea that excellence is never an accident.

When we see a kid consistently outperform everyone else on the field, you might often hear notes about how the kid is a “natural athlete.”

When you see someone present with flair and make it look effortless, you might hear comments about how they’re “natural presenters”.

However, when you see Steph Curry sink three pointer after three pointer however, you don’t walk away thinking that’s just natural talent. You know that, behind every one of those shots, were hours and hours of relentless practice.

That’s true in every sphere of life. Excellence doesn’t happen by accident. When you dig deeper into the “natural talent,” there’s always a story.

The one nuance – excellence in young kids is often driven by external pressure. The challenge is helping them build the internal motivation and grit to sustain it over the long run. That’s a harder thing to cultivate than the excellence itself.

But either way, the core truth remains the same – excellence doesn’t happen by accident.

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” | Epictetus

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” | Epictetus

I was struck by how observations on human nature haven’t changed over the course of centuries. Epictetus’ stoic approach still resonates so powerfully today – maybe even more so in a world where it is so easy to be stirred by someone else’s possessions on social media.

My articulation of this idea is Happiness = Reality/Expectations. It is hard to change reality but significantly easier to change our expectations.

And the best way to do so is to practice gratitude for what we have. For it isn’t happy people who are thankful, it is thankful people who are happy.

I was in conversation with a friend who’s been around the block – and seen plenty of dysfunctional executive teams – about the most common types of dysfunctions. We landed on three.

(1) Solving for yourself or your people instead of the organization. The motivations are either selfish or tribal. These teams involve executives optimizing for their own position or protecting their team rather than doing what’s right for the whole.

(2) Inability to commit to a strategy with real trade-offs. Here, everything is important. Every initiative is a priority. The answer changes depending on which forum you’re in. A strategy without trade-offs, it turns out, isn’t a strategy.

(3) Inability to have hard conversations. Meetings end without clarity on decisions made and next steps taken. Forums for strategic conversations are used to discuss minutiae that doesn’t matter or to simply hear the sound of their own voice. Everyone leaves the room having said nothing of consequence.

The common thread: all three are forms of short-term comfort chosen over long-term health. And the cost is always paid by the organization.

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” | John Kenneth Galbraith (quoted in Poor Charlie’s Almanack)

Funny and wise.

John Kenneth Galbraith’s quotes have all gotten me asking the same question – how often do I do this?

The answer is more often than I’d like to admit.

The Exponential View team pulled together a thought provoking interactive resource on the Solar supercycle.

You can see the impact of learning curve projections as you tweak assumptions. The trend so far alone is fascinating however – as solar capacity increases, it is becoming exponentially cheaper.

It is a self-reinforcing cycle. The same forces that shaped the computing flywheel and made it ubiquitous are at work here.

Cost reduction creates demand. Demand drives deployment. Deployment drives more learning curves and cost reduction.

It is fascinating to think about the impact of lower costs. Suddenly, technologies that were out of reach given how energy expensive they were – from desalination to sustainable aviation fuel – become possible.

Positive exponential changes are fascinating to behold. And as far as the solar supercycle goes, we’re just getting started.

Derek Thompson shared a few fascinating charts.

Teenagers in the US aren’t reading.

They (along with adults) aren’t partying either.

But everyone is watching more YouTube (and TikTok).

The link between spending time on TikTok and most brain functions – from attention to memory to reasoning to inhibitory control are all negative. TikTok is melting our brain.

We’re seeing more young adults dislocated from both the economy and society.

Jonathan Haidt unearthed a fascinating insight among 12th graders – finding that conservatism and religion helped reduce the impact of this dislocation.

His hypothesis is that conservatism and religion might offer a binding moral matrix that protects young people from a rapidly changing world. While progressive moralities aim to grant people more freedom to “create their own identities”, this freedom is likely causing anxiety.

Societal dislocation and the legalization of gambling presents a toxic combination.

And this one continues to blow my mind – leading to the largest measles outbreak in the US in 20 years.

Don shared a quote from Michaelangelo when he was 87 years ago – “Ancora Imparo.”

It means “I am still learning” in Italian.

This is the from the person who painted the Sistine Chapel, sculpted David, and had produced more than most people could dream of in several lifetimes.

Inspiring – a lovely note to carry around.

Ancora Imparo.

Every Saturday morning, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton gathered his team for the same ritual.

First, they’d review the week’s sales in detail. Then, they’d discuss one question: what is a competitor doing that we should be paying attention to?

Employees would share observations from visits to Kmart, Walgreens, Sears. There was one strict rule: you could only talk about what competitors were doing right. Things that were smart and well executed.

Walton didn’t care what they were doing wrong. That couldn’t hurt him. What he cared about was not letting any competitor get more than a week’s advantage on something innovative.

It’s a beautiful way to institutionalize curiosity. And to steer a room full of people away from the instinct to talk about why they’re better – toward the harder, more useful question of what they can learn.

If you haven’t made an expectation explicit, don’t expect it to be internalized or understood.

The gap between what we expect and what we communicate is where most relationship friction lives – at work, at home, everywhere.

From an old Warner & Swasey advertisement, quoted in Poor Charlie’s Almanac: “The person who needs a new machine tool and hasn’t bought it is already paying for it.”

It got me thinking about the suite of incredible tools available to knowledge workers now – if you aren’t using them, you’re likely already paying for it.